City Lights’ new works festival features familiar faces

The two playwrights whose scripts are being featured in “Lights Up!,” City Lights Theater Company’s annual festival of new works, on June 14 are familiar faces at the downtown San Jose theater.

Lauren Doyle has had a staged reading of their play at “Lights Up!” before, and Kit Wilder has seen two of his plays on City Lights’ main stage, including “Truce: A Christmas Wish from the Great War,” co- written with Jeffrey Bracco, in 2014 and 2024, and Toxic in 2023.

For this year’s festival, City Lights is staging Doyle’s “Breadcrumbs, Honey, & Bone” and Wilder’s adaptation of “The Great Gatsby.”

Erin Southard is directing the former play, a mystery about a woman who inherits a strange house in the New England woods and finds herself pulled into the town’s secrets as a local disappearance forces her to confront what she’s willing to risk to survive.

“Gatsby” is being directed by Mark Anderson Phillips, who in 2024 helmed City Lights’ production of “An Inspector Calls.” Perhaps in reference to the musical version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel currently on Broadway, this adaptation is being billed as “a highly theatrical, language-forward adaptation that honors Fitzgerald’s prose (and) focuses on character and longing rather than spectacle.”

The day opens with a Maker Fair at 1 p.m., followed by a reading of “Breadcrumbs” at 2 p.m. In between the readings, City Lights hosts a spaghetti feed (with vegetarian and meat options), and the Maker Fair reopens. The reading of “Gatsby” begins at 5:30 p.m. Each reading will be followed by an audience talkback.

At the Maker Fair, City Lights Executive Artistic Director Lisa Mallette will display and sell her hand-painted hostess gifts, including coasters, tea lights and photo cards. The fair also features Julie Nuñez of Yulita Studio, with washi tape, stickers and other cute items; and Arturo Montes, who will be serving from a matcha cart.

Rancho Roben Rescues will also be in attendance, selling farm-fresh eggs as a benefit for the organization, which operates an animal sanctuary for rescued farm animals.

Tickets for the full day are $20 ($10 for students), and all events are at City Lights Theater, 529 S. Second St., San Jose. For more information, visit cltc.org/lights-up-2026.