Kent State University at Trumbull will give early exposure to eight new plays with its 2025-26 Sips & Scripts series.

The season will open Wednesday with “The Life of Lily,” directed by Jessica Brumfield, who is theater coordinator with Kenzie James at Kent-Trumbull this school year with Eric Kildow on sabbatical.

It tells the story of a father-daughter relationship, starting with Lily’s birth. Each scene touches on a year in Lily’s life from ages 4 to 24. Some scenes focus on seemingly mundane events; others detail life-altering ones.

“It deals with a lot of heavy themes, which are normally the ones that I (direct), just because it’s more emotional,” Brumfield said. “Without spoiling the ending, it’s got a psychological twist at the end, which I always find very interesting.”

Cordell Ramsey plays the father and Maggi Rihel is Lily.

Sips & Scripts productions are performed at Darlene Lounge in downtown Warren and presented in reader’s theater style — actors are reading from scripts and performing without costumes and sets and usually without props.

“The Life of Lily” does have one prop — a stuffed bunny that the playwright thought was integral to include. Brumfield said she and Johnson worked out a compromise on how to include the stuffed animal.

That’s one element that makes Sips & Scripts shows different for directors compared to a regular season production. If Kent-Trumbull is staging a play by Shakespeare or Edward Albee, the director doesn’t have a chance to confer with the writer during the rehearsal process.

And one of the reasons playwrights submit their work for consideration is to see how it works in front of an audience, get that feedback from directors and work out potential problems when the work only existed on the page.

One time a play by a male writer had a female character who was going through puberty. Brumfield said she was able to point out the elements that didn’t ring true. She also had cast a social worker to play a social worker in the script, and she was able to offer real-life experience on how certain situations would be handled as opposed to how they were addressed in the play.

“I can message the playwright and say, ‘Hey, this reads weird. Is there something we can do?’ Last year I did one that was completely impractical if we were trying to stage it. I looked at the guy and was like, ‘Practically, how is this going to work?’ I have a bit of a tech background, so I can tell them when things aren’t going to work.”

2025-26 Sips & Scripts season

• Wednesday — “The Life of Lily,” written by “Wild Bill” Johnson, directed by Jessica Brumfield

• Oct. 1 — “The Show,” written by S. Joshua Mendel, directed by Emelia Sherin

• Nov. 5 — “Claire the Chair Presents the History of Broadway,” written by “Wild Bill” Johnson, directed by Brian Westerley

• Dec. 3 — “The End Is Nigh (And Yet, So Far),” written by Greg Mandryk, directed by Nate Chapline

• Jan. 14, 2026 — “Agnes of Camelot: A Fable of Power, Sex and Love in the Kingdom,” written by Bronwyn and James Jameson, directed by Harmon Andrews

• Feb. 4, 2026 — “The Boyfriend,” written by Gregory J. Lavelle, directed by Keith Stepanic

• March 11, 2026 — “Plop-Plop/Fizz-Fizz,” written by Harry Clark, directed by Dakota Smith

• April 1, 2026 — “Rustbelt Trilogy,” written by Dale E. Seeds, directed by Shiloh Hart

All staged readings start at 7:30 p.m. at Darlene Lounge, 145 W. Market St., Warren. Admission is free, and seating is general admission.