History Theatre, in partnership with Minnesota History Center, begins 2014 with its annual weeklong festival featuring works-in-progress by Minnesota playwrights.

For this year’s RAW STAGES showcase, the lineup consists of staged readings of four scripts, three of them new commissions. Individual, general admission tickets to each reading are $10; festival passes to see all four works are available for $25. All shows are at the Minnesota History Center.

“Boundary Waters” by Carlyle Brown. A staged reading directed by Marion McClinton is on January 14.

First up is “Boundary Waters,” written by Carlyle Brown (reading directed by Penumbra veteran Marion McClinton). The play centers on a life-altering week in the life of voyageur and fur trader George Bonga, a man of both Native American and African-American heritage “living on the boundaries of black, white and Ojibwe.” It’s the winter of 1837 and he’s in the Boundary Waters, on the trail of an Ojibwe man accused of murdering a white man at a trading post on Cass Lake.

The RAW STAGES reading of Carlyle Brown’s new play, “Boundary Waters,” will be Tuesday, Jan. 14, at 7 p.m. in the 3M Auditorium of the Minnesota History Center, 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul. For tickets and information about the cast and crew, visit the show page online. “Debutante Ball” by Eric “Pogi” Sumangil. A staged reading directed by Randy Reyes is on Jan. 15.

Wednesday’s show is an intergenerational, family story set against the backdrop of a grand debutante ball in Minnesota’s Filipino-American community. The staged reading will double as a fundraiser for Fil-Minnesotan’s ongoing storm relief efforts in the Philippines following November’s devastating Typhoon Haiyan.  It’s a revised script by Eric “Pogi” Sumangil (directed by Mu Performing Arts’ new artistic director, Randy Reyes), filled with hip-hop and traditional love songs and all the pomp and ceremony that accompany this rite of passage for Filipino youth. More broadly, it’s billed as a story that “explores the struggles between tradition and assimilation, parental pressure and independence.”

The RAW STAGES reading of “Debutante Ball” by Eric “Pogi” Sumangil will be Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. in the 3M Auditorium of the Minnesota History Center, 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul. For tickets and information about the cast and crew, visit the show page online. “Glensheen” by Jeffrey Hatcher, with music and lyrics by Chan Poling. A staged reading directed by Anya Kremenetsky is on Jan. 16.

Next is “Glensheen,” a musical written by 2013 Ivey Award-winning playwright, Jeffrey Hatcher, with music and lyrics by Chan Poling of The Suburbs and The New Standards. This staged reading, directed by Anya Kremenetsky, centers on the sordid family drama and mystery surrounding the unsolved 1977 murders of heiress Elisabeth Congdon and her nurse Velma Pietila at the eponymous Duluth mansion.

The RAW STAGES reading of “Glensheen” by Jeffrey Hatcher will be Thursday, Jan. 16, at 7 p.m. in the 3M Auditorium of the Minnesota History Center, 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul. For tickets and information about the cast and crew, visit the show page online. “Radio Man” by Garrison Keillor. A (sold-out) staged reading directed by Ron Peluso is Jan. 19.

This year’s festival concludes Jan. 19 with “Radio Man,” a new script-in-progress by writer Garrison Keillor, creator of Lake Wobegon. In this comedic new musical about chasing contentment, “the creator of ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ is visited by his characters — Guy Noir, Private Eye, the cowboys Dusty and Lefty, residents of Lake Wobegon, and his own family ghosts” – all of whom are dissatisfied with their lots in life. Alas, the staged reading on Sunday (directed by Ron Peluso) has long since sold out.

For the full schedule of staged readings, visit www.historytheatre.com/2013-2014/raw-stages.