2020     2021     2022    2023
Original Works Series

This year's Original Works Selection​, Jeff Irvin’s “The Texas Book of Beasts” is told through a series of 25 short scenes featuring four characters: a property developer, a university professor, an idealistic biologist, and a toad. This cast of characters is involved in raucous public meetings as the twenty-something woman learns to organize a diverse community to save the endangered toad's habitat from a large encroaching development. Featuring metaphors in verse, interjections in unison, and group movements that mimic Texas fauna, "Texas Book of Beasts" is a melodrama and romantic comedy about learning to recognize a sharp brain and a good heart.  

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Jeff Irvin is the author of “High Noon in the Styrofoam with Timely Nick and Betty Brown” (Dramatic Publishing), a series of three comic melodramas commonly used as community fundraisers. “The Texas Book of Beasts” is derived from a series of shorter 25-minute works: “Emily’s Unusual Morning” (workshop performance at State Theatre in Austin), and three pieces performed at the FronteraFest Short Fringe (“The Texas Book of Beasts,” “The Texas Book of Beasts: Year of the Gar,” and “The Texas Book of Beasts: Year of the Rooster”) at the Hyde Park Theatre in Austin in 2018, 2019, and 2020. He has been a member of ScriptWorks since 2015.

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