Days End
by Brett C. Leonard
presented by LAByrinth Theater Company at the 2026 Colorado New Play Festival
About the Play
Unfolding in New York City over more than two decades, DAYS END examines a fractured family as they move through years of anger, addictions, disappointments, laughter, and undeniable love. As the play opens, we meet estranged spouses, Bobby and Jessie Padilla, having just made love on the morning after the funeral of one of their sons. Told in reverse chronology - culminating on the night when Bobby and Jessie first met - this bold new play reveals a family broken by both circumstances and choices, but always bound by enduring, complicated love, each searching for redemption and each other, simultaneously concluding with heartbreak and triumphant hope.
2026 Festival Reading
June 14th - 4:00pm MT
Library Hall - Bud Werner Memorial Library
Festival Creative Team
Brett C. Leonard
Playwright
Stephen McKinley Henderson
Director
Tanya Palmer
Dramaturg
Brett C. Leonard has been a member of LAByrinth Theater Company since 2003. Select premiere productions include The Long Red Road (Goodman Theatre), Guinea Pig Solo (NY's Public Theater, first-ever co-production with LAByrinth), Unconditional (NY's Public/LAByrinth), Roger and Vanessa (London's Latchmere Theatre 503), Ninth and Joanie (Bank Street/LAByrinth), Snapshot (Collaboraction) and 10-minute plays, What I'm Looking For, and Beauty and Light (Collaboraction Sketchbook Festival).
Stephen McKinley Henderson (Director) throughout Henderson's 50-year career as actor/educator, he's enjoyed eclectic experiences as a director. Beyond his university responsibilities at SUNY Buffalo, Stephen directed Mamet's, Oleanna for Kavinoky Theatre and Rajiv Joseph's, Gruesome Playground Injuries for Laboratory Theatre. For St. Louis' Black Repertory Theatre Stephen directed The Ninth Wave by Leslie Lee and Jeff Stetson's, The Meeting, part of Kennedy Center's Imagination Celebration, 1994. Off-Broadway he directed Zooman and the Sign by Charles Fuller for Signature Theatre. His production of Ali!, a solo homage to the legendary champion by Graydon Royce and Geoffrey Ewing moved from Sheridan Square Theatre to London's Mermaid Theatre, 1993, and was remounted for the Olympic Arts Festival, Atlanta,1996.
Tanya Palmer (Dramaturg) currently serves as the Assistant Dean and Executive Artistic Director at Northwestern University’s School of Communication, overseeing programming at the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts. She also works as a freelance dramaturg and creative producer and is an ensemble member at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago. Prior to joining Northwestern, she served as the Director of New Play Development at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago for 14 seasons where she worked on several world premiere productions, including The Long Red Road by Brett C. Leonard, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. She also spent 5 seasons at Actors Theatre of Louisville as the Director of New Play Development, overseeing the reading and selection process for the Humana Festival of New American Plays (RIP). Originally from Calgary, Canada she lives in Evanston, Illinois with her family.
About LAByrinth Theater Company (New York, NY)
LAByrinth Theater Company, founded in 1992 as The Latino Actors Base, was created to deliberately interrupt the racial status quo by giving voice to artists of color and reflecting a world where color is the norm and not the exception. LAByrinth Theater Company is a diverse, impassioned, tightly knit ensemble of multicultural artists that empowers individuals and builds community by creating member-driven, incendiary new works of theater. Artistic Directors - Dina Janis and Neil Tyrone Pritchard, Board Chair John Gould Rubin. Read more at: www.labtheater.org.