Where New Plays Take Root: freeFall Theatre’s Bold Commitment to Original Work

By Avery Anderson

In a theatre landscape dominated by revivals and recognisable titles, freeFall Theatre in St. Petersburg continues to chart its own course—planting seeds for the future of American theatre one premiere at a time. Their latest offering, For Closure!, is a sharp-witted, Florida-set farce from playwright Hannah Benitez that speaks to both the company’s appetite for invention and their long-standing commitment to risk-taking storytelling.

Set in a fictional Gulf Coast town with a psychic, a lesbian couple, and a lot of slamming doors, For Closure!  is a contemporary farce that feels rare in today’s theatrical canon. “There’s a lack of producible new farces,” says Benitez. “It’s a genre I love, but not a lot of playwrights are writing them anymore. So I wanted to create something that could scale down without losing the fun.”

freeFall Artistic Director Eric Davis immediately saw the potential. “We’ve wanted to produce one of Hannah’s plays for a while,” he says. “The idea of something rooted in Florida, with this comedic spirit—it just felt right. Our audiences really respond to new work, especially when it feels local.”

That local lens has shaped many of freeFall’s original productions, and For Closure! is only the latest in a long line of new works developed in-house. Since 2012, the company has premiered over a dozen original plays and adaptations, including Rip.Tied. by Pulitzer Prize finalist Aleshea Harris, White Fang (now titled Wolf’s Blood) by Jethro Compton—whose The Curious Case of Benjamin Button just won the 2025 Olivier Award for Best New Musical—and Fable by Doug DeVita, a smart, showbiz-infused world premiere that recently hit the stage in 2024.

freeFall’s own team, too, has been prolific. Davis has written or adapted several plays for the company, including The Tempest: Esta Isla Es Mia, The Machine Stops, and The Importance of Being Earnest With Zombies. Composer Michael Raabe, a frequent collaborator, has helped bring musicals like OZ, The Night Before, and Peter Pan to life with original orchestrations.

“The development process is different every time,” Davis explains. “Some pieces start with just a title and an idea. Others come to us as scripts that we think are ready for the next step. But it always starts with asking, ‘Is this a good idea? Is this something we believe in?’”

For For Closure!, the process was refreshingly simple. Benitez wrote the script in a few weeks, pitched it directly to Freefall, and after a reading, the team said yes. “Eric has such a great dramaturgical eye,” she says. “He caught the little things—continuity issues, character inconsistencies. It made the play stronger.”

Their rehearsal room was filled with familiar faces—Matthew McGee, Sara DelBeato, Kelly Pekar, Renata Eastlick, and others—actors who knew how to shape the work from the inside out. “Everyone was chill,” Benitez laughs. “We hired a great group of people who knew when to step back and trust the process.”

That trust, built over years of collaboration, is perhaps freeFall’s greatest asset. While other theatres retreat to “safe bets,” Davis and his team continue to lean into the unknown. “We want to create new stories for the theatre at large,” he says. “And we want to explore what storytelling can look like, not just now, but in the future.”

Their next premiere, The House of Future Memory, pushes that idea even further. A devised work featuring improvisation, scripted moments, and real-time generative AI, it’s designed to evolve nightly based on audience input—a theatrical experiment in both content and form.

But for all its ambition, the goal remains simple: “We want to make something that matters here and now,” Davis says. “And if it goes on to live somewhere else, that’s just a bonus.”

Benitez, reflecting on what it means to have a premiere at freeFall, is clear: “It keeps me going. If theatres like freeFall didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be able to do this professionally. It’s part of my personal ecology.”

When asked what she’d say to theatre-goers sceptical of new plays, she doesn’t hesitate: “Life is short. Do you want to die wearing the same suit every day?”

At freeFall Theatre, the answer is clear. They’re here to try on something new—and invite the audience along for the ride.

For Closure! by Hannah Benitez

Now through May 11, 2025

Tickets at freeFalltheatre.com

A Look Back at freeFall Theatre’s World Premieres

• Rip.Tied. by Aleshea Harris (2012)
• American Monkey by Mihkel Raud (2014)
• The Buffalo Kings by Natalie Symons (2015)
• The Tempest: Esta Isla Es Mia adapted from Shakespeare by Eric Davis (2015)
• The Importance of Being Earnest With Zombies adapted from Wilde by Eric Davis (2015)
• The Pirates of Penzance in Space adapted from Gilbert & Sullivan by Eric Davis, with orchestrations by Michael Raabe (2016)
• Peter Pan adapted from J.M. Barrie by Eric Davis, with original songs and orchestrations by Michael Raabe (2016)
• White Fang (now Wolf’s Blood) by Jethro Compton (2017)
• The Machine Stops adapted from E.M. Forster by Eric Davis (2018)
• The War of The Worlds: A Live Drive-In Radio Experience by Eric Davis, with musical arrangements by Michael Raabe (2020)
• Scott and Patti Get a Real Job by Scott Daniel and Matthew McGee, with musical arrangements by Michael Raabe (2021)
• The Rose and The Beast: Walkthrough Experience adapted from Francesca Lia Block by Eric Davis (2021)
• The Night Before by Matthew McGee, with original songs and orchestrations by Michael Raabe (2021 & 2022)
• A Skeptic and a Bruja by Rosa Fernandez (2022)
• OZ: A New Musical book and lyrics by Eric Davis, with music and lyrics by Michael Raabe (2023)
• Nightsweat by Natalie Symons (2023)
• Fable by Doug DeVita (2024)

For Closure! by Hannah Benitez (2025)