In addition to a spotlight production headlining the festival, the Tennessee Stage Company’s New Plays festival also features a series of staged readings of works in the latter stage of development. This year, three new plays by up-and-coming playwrights get staged readings at CBT’s LAB Theatre, where stripped down settings and small audiences help the playwright and crew refine their work and plan for a full-scale production. For this festival season, I was able to attend a staged reading and workshopping “talkback” for Black queer playwright Aleah Vassell’s new play, A Sad Vampire.
A Sad Vampire is a dark comedy that introduces audiences to Michelle, a down-on-her-luck vampire (yes, a real vampire!) who finds herself in an Applebee’s bar on Halloween night. If losing her job and her ex ghosting her (literally, he’s a ghost) weren’t bad enough, Michelle has to confront her ghost-ex, his new werewolf girlfriend, and her demons. This staged reading in the CBT LAB Theatre was facilitated by H. Caitlin Corbitt and featured McKinley Merritt as Michelle the vampire, Chip Morris as Jay the Applebee’s bartender, LoRen Seagrave as Michelle’s ghost ex Shade, and H. Caitlin Corbitt as Shakira, Shade’s new werewolf girlfriend.
Merritt’s Michelle is funny, but she’s distant. She delivers the humor of someone who is done, fed up, but is using humor to mask the hurt and frustration. She grows and warms up throughout the events of the night, finding a renewed self-assuredness and growth. Throughout this Merritt maintains a certain grit to Michelle that is endearing and admirable; she’s strong to begin with, but becomes even more so toward the end. Chip Morris as Jay captures that good-hearted and well-meaning ally who could still learn a thing or two, especially when it comes to asking Michelle too many questions about being a vampire. Morris lends Jay an overly excited, eager-to-help and learn attitude as he confronts his own misconceptions.
Seagrave as Shade still haunts Michelle, and between trading jokes with Jay, trying to explain his behavior to Michelle, and debuting his snarky new girlfriend, Shade’s night is also turned upside down. Seagrave rides those emotional waves from humor to fear to anger deftly, and they happen quickly, especially when Shakira enters the equation. Shakira is, in Corbitt’s own words, the “worst white woman you can imagine,” and Corbitt really captured a inflexible and misguided self-assurance for Shakira, who is caught up in the events of the night in more ways than one. The cast is at its best in big, argumentative moments, but that doesn’t take away from the quiet intensity of smaller moments, like a hard conversation between Michelle and Shade outside the bar or a touching denouement with Michelle and Jay after Applebee’s closes.
Staged readings are typically minimalistic and low key, so the Applebee’s setting was simulated with a few stacked crates and stools serving as the center of action. It was just enough to evoke the setting, allowing a good bit of physical interaction with the set but minimal enough to allow the viewer to fill in the blanks for themselves, important for this stage in the production design process. Costuming was also minimal but evocative, helping to characterize each role subtly; however, Michelle’s attire felt a bit costumey (which could be one of the many jokes woven throughout this play; Jay’s the only person in the play who is actually wearing a costume—he’s human, after all).
If you enjoy dry humor and dad jokes, A Sad Vampire is chock full of them—Vassell loves a good pun and was even open to adding or tweaking a few for this production at the suggestion of the cast. And while this play is full of wordplay, there are a few cute physical gags here and there, like Merritt’s Michelle dashing to hide behind the bar when Seagrave’s Shade walks inside. But beneath that humor is a deeper message that confronts issues of identity and injustice. Vassell and the cast map the supernatural onto the struggles of BIPOC LGBTQ individuals, where language is powerful and myths about monsters are shown to be harmful, hurtful, and unfounded.
You can check out another staged reading of A Sad Vampire on Friday, January 16 at the CBT LAB Theatre on the UTK campus. Tickets are available for $15 at https://givebutter.com/NewPlayFest2026.
