A community theater in Spring Hill is spending its whole weekend on plays nobody has seen yet.
Stage West Playhouse’s Second Annual New Works Festival runs Friday, August 21 through Sunday, August 23 at the theater’s home on Forest Oaks Boulevard in Spring Hill — three days of original plays and musicals by emerging and established playwrights, most of them getting their first audience anywhere.
The centerpiece is a world premiere: “One Seat Over,” a full-length play by Brian S. Brijbag, a BroadwayWorld Tampa Award-winning playwright. Stage West held open auditions for it back in April, which is the kind of lead time a community playhouse puts in when it’s treating a new script as a real production and not a staged reading.
The festival is in its second year. The first one, in August 2025, was built around local writers getting their stories in front of an audience for the first time — the kind of thing a 501(c)(3) playhouse can do that a for-profit touring house generally won’t. It’s the same room that hosted a full-band Queen tribute earlier this month, which gives a sense of how much Stage West’s calendar swings between touring tribute acts and homegrown work.
When: Friday, August 21 through Sunday, August 23, 2026
Where: Stage West Playhouse, 8390 Forest Oaks Blvd, Spring Hill
Cost: Tickets start at $16.81
Phone: (352) 683-5113
One thing worth knowing before you book: the exact showtime for each individual piece across the three days isn’t published on the venue’s own listing as of this writing — call the box office or check Stage West’s ticketing page directly for the day-by-day lineup before you plan around a specific script.
If new work isn’t your thing
The county’s standing options don’t go anywhere this weekend either. The Spring Hill Farmers Market runs every Saturday on Commercial Way, and Weeki Wachee’s mermaid show has been running since 1947 — it’ll be there next weekend too.
For the full rundown of Hernando’s regular weekend rotation, there’s what was on the weekend before this one.
Festival details are drawn from Stage West Playhouse’s own listings and can change — confirm with the box office before you go.
Photo: BWChicago, licensed CC BY 2.0, via Flickr. (Generic theater stage, not Stage West Playhouse.)