Meet The 2008-09 Featured Writers...
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Larry Tremblay |
|
Leslie Ayvazian (BEHAVE YOURSELF) recently appeared on Broadway in Richard Greenberg’s play, A Naked Girl on the Appian Way. Other Greenberg plays include Jenny Keeps Talking (MTC) (a one-woman play written for her), Safe As Houses (MacCarter) and Neptune's Hips (Ensemble Studio Theatre). She also appeared in his American Playhouse film, Ask Me Aagin. Other theatre credits include Raised in Captivity (Vineyard Theatre), Lost In Yonkers u/s (Broadway), Lips Together Teeth Apart u/s (MTC). Leslie wrote and appeared in Nine Armenians, which was produced at the Mark Taper Forum and at the Manhattan Theatre Club where it won the Outer Critics Award for best new play. High Dive, Leslie’s one-woman show was produced by the Play Company at the Long Wharf Theatre and at the Manhattan Class Company. Her new play, Lovely Day directed by Blair Brown opened at the Play Company in January. Television credits include, "Law & Order: SVU" (recurring) and "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." |
|
Chantal Bilodeau (translator, ABRAHAM LINCOLN GOES TO THE THEATER) is a playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Canada. Her plays include Pleasure & Pain (Magic Theatre; Foro La Gruta and Teatro La Capilla, Mexico City), The Motherline (Ohio University; University of Miami), Tagged (Ohio University; Alleyway Theatre), as well as several shorts that have been presented by Brass Tacks Theatre, City Theatre Company, The Met Theater, Philadelphia Dramatists, Raw Impressions, and Women’s Project. She has been a fellow in the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab, the Lark Playwrights Workshop and at the Dramatists Guild and has received grants from NYSCA, the Canada Council for the Arts, Stichting LIRA Fonds (The Netherlands), the Quebec Government House, Étant Donnés: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts and Association Beaumarchais (France). Her translations include plays by Quebec playwright Catherine Léger (commissioned by the Lark), French-African playwright Koffi Kwahulé (commissioned by The Lark) and Jean Cocteau (commissioned by Théâtre Soleil Levant in Switzerland). Current projects include The Quantum Fairies in collaboration with composer Lisa DeSpain and lyricist Mindi Dickstein and the translation of Terre Sainte by Algerian playwright Mohamed Kacimi. |
|
Michael Bradford (OLIVES AND BLOOD) an Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut, where he teaches theatre history, dramatic literature and playwriting. Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Connecticut and a Masters of Fine Arts from Brooklyn College CUNY. He has written numerous full length and one-act plays. His play, LIVING IN THE WIND, was produced Off-Broadway at the American Place Theatre. His work has also been produced at numerous venues, including the Hygienic Arts Theatre, the LARK Theatre(NYC), the Ensemble Studio Theatre(NYC), the Access Theatre(NYC), and eta Creative Arts Foundation, Inc., Chicago, Il. His work has received numerous workshops, including the Actors Theatre of Louisville. He has received the Manhattan Theatre Club Playwright Fellowship, residencies at the LARK Developmental Theatre (NY), the New York Stage and Film Company Residency at Vassar and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism Writing Fellowship. His play, WILLY’S CUT AND SHINE, was recently published by Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. and can also be found in the anthology, “Seven More Different Plays”; edited by Mac Wellman. His first film script, “A CONTEMPLATION OF TREES, was produced by Stonewall Films in the Fall of 2007 and his latest play, FATHERS AND SONS, World-Premiered at ACT (A Contemporary Theatre) in Seattle, Wa., May 2008 and will also be published in early 2009 by Broadway Play Publishing. His current projects include a Residency/Workshop of a new play/musical, MIGRATION at the eta Creative Arts Theatre, Chicago, Il., and a new play focusing on the murder of the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca. |
|
Thomas Bradshaw (Workshop Fellow) His newest play Southern Promises will premiere at Performance Space 122 in September. His play entitled Purity was produced at Performance Space 122 in January 2007 and his plays Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist and Cleansed were produced on a double bill at The Brick Theatre in February ‘07. His plays Prophet, Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist, Cleansed, and Purity are all published by Samuel French, Inc. Strom/Cleansed were nominated for Outstanding Original Full Length Script by the 2007 New York Innovative Theater Awards. He has been featured as one of Time Out New York’s ten playwrights to watch, as one of PaperMagazine’s 2006 Beautiful People, and Best Provocative Playwright by the Village Voice in 2007. His play entitled Prophet was presented at P.S. 122 in December 2005 and StromThurmond Is Not A Racist won The American Theater Coop’s 2005 National Playwriting Contest. His was a fellow at New York Theater Workshop in 06-07’ and is now a Usual Suspect. Cleansed will also be published in Plays and Playwrights 2008. He has been a member of Soho Rep’s writer/Director lab as well as Lincoln Center’s. He performed in the premiere of Richard Maxwell’s The End Of Reality at The Kitchen in January 2006 and he performed in Young Jean Lee’s Pullman, WA at P.S. 122 in March 2005. He performed throughout Europe with The End Of Reality in the fall of 06’. He received his MFA from Mac Wellman’s playwriting program and is a Professor at Brooklyn College and Medgar Evers College. Thomas is also the recipient of a 2006 Jerome Foundation Grant. Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist was produced in Los Angeles in June 08’ and Thomas’s play Dawn received a workshop with New York Theater Workshop at Dartmouth College in August. Dawn will also be translated into German and be presented at Theater Bielefeld in Germany in October. His play Purity was published by Theaterheute in Germany in April and his play Dawn will be published by Theater Der Zeit in October. He is currently working on an adaptation of The Book Of Job which has been commissioned by Soho Rep. He is also Soho Rep’s 2008-2009 Streslin Fellow. |
|
Erin Marie Bregman (THIS IS NOT A TORTURE OR AN ENGINE) studied literature and playwriting at the College of Creative Studies at UCSB where she was a recipient of the Dilling Yang Fellowship in Dramatic Arts, and Corwin Award. She received a Magic Theater/Sloan Commission in 2006 to write I.S.O. Explosive Possibility, a short play about stem cell research. Erin has had work performed or developed at the Playwrights Foundation, Just Theater, UCSB New Plays Festival, UCSB Summer Theater Lab, and PlayGround. This is Not a Torture or an Engine was developed at BASH! 2008 (Bay Area SHorts), part of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and was a finalist for the Princess Grace awards in 2008. Erin was a finalist this year for the Jerome Fellowship, and is currently working on a commission about Czech composer Leos Janacek for Just Theater, as well as a play about drowning with director Molly Aaronson-Gelb and composer Dina Maccabee for a summer festival will Fools Fury. |
|
Alfonso Cárcamo (DECOMPOSITION) Mexico, DF 1974. Graduated in 1998 with an acting degree from the Central University of Theatre of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As an actor he has appeared in the play El Veneno Que Duerme based on Pedro Calderón de La Barca’s La Vida es Sueño, directed by Ricardo Díaz; La Hija del Aire by Pedro Calderón de la Barca directed by Mónica Raya which premiered at the XXVIII Siglo de Oro Festival in the Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso, Texas. He has worked with the following film directors: Carlos Cuarón, Ariel Gordon, Ernesto Contreras, Luis Ayhllón, and Sergio Arau. Carlos Cuarón’s short film was selected for the Critics Week at the Cannes Film Festival in France. In 1999 he adapted and directed El Hombre, a tale originally conceived by Juan Rulfo, at the Granero Theatre of the Centro Cultural del Bosque for the New Creators season. In 2000, and after the passing of Gerardo Mancebo del Castillo, he finished the play La Noche que raptaron a Epifania o Shakespeare lo siento mucho. It premiered in March 2001 at the XVIII Festival del Centro Histórico in Mexico City and later was presented at the Julio Castillo Theatre of the Centro Cultural del Bosque. In August of that same year he received the award for best monologue by the online journal ALOGENO for Error O26/C. In 2002 his adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus premiered at the XXX International Cervantino Festival. It was directed by Ana Francis Mor and produced by the National Institute of Fine Arts, the XXX International Cervantino Festival, the Farfullero Theatre Company, Galaxie Productions and Carlos López. It was also produced at the Galeón Theatre of the Centro Cultural del Bosque from January thru April of 2003. This same year he taught a playwriting and directing course to the street theatre company “Sintelón” in the City of Tampico; from this course the spectacle Y sin Embargo se Muev was developed. In October of 2003 he wrote El lugar de las Apariciones, a Homage to Juan José Arreola directed by Aracelia Guerrero and presented at the Sala Manuel M. Ponce del Palacio de Bellas Artes. Also in October the show he co-wrote with Irela de Villers, Pasos en Equis, formed part of the Art 02 Event of the Centro Cultural del Bosque. At the beginning of 2003 his cabaret show Pedro Paramount premiered at the Hábito Bar directed by Jesusa Rodríguez. In August of the same year his play La Extraordinaria Historia del Pájaro Azul y Otros Cuentos Interminables premiered at the Theatre for the Performing Arts in the National Center of the Arts and the next year was produced at the Julio Castillo Theatre of the Centro Cultural del Bosque. In 2003 he was awarded the Young Creators fellowship for playwriting from the National Fund for Culture and Arts for which he developed the project “Asesinos Múltiples” which included his two plays Carpo y Lanx and Sara y El Silencio. |
|
Mariana’s plays include Darkroom and The Wake (NewWorksLab, 1996 and 2007), Fool’s Journey (finalist, 2001 O’Neill Playwrights Conference), Two Minutes in the Lobby, Waiting for the Post Office to Give Birth to Time and Dessert Stories, (Labyrinth Summer Intensive Retreats and at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, among others venues). Her short plays, Pitahayas (finalist, 2003 Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award), Night of the Cat-Sitter, Clowns and Static have been presented at The Public, and The Milagro Theatre. As a free-lance writer, Mariana published the monthly column En español, por favor, in the magazine Marketing y Medios from 2004 to 2006, which was a finalist for the 2006 American Business Media’s Neal Award for best department in a trade publication. She has also written for Marie Claire en español and offoffoff.com, and co-wrote an article about Morocco scheduled for publication in the magazine National Geographic Traveler Mexico this December. Mariana directed a bilingual production of Eduardo Machado’s The Cook for Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, TX, in 2006. Other directing credits include workshop productions of Space Oddity at Aaron Davis Hall, Dinner with Jobita and la Chacha at Intar and Pilgrim at the PRTT, all written by Henry Guzmán, as well as gigs with The A Train Plays at The Neighborhood Theatre, The 24 hour plays at Intar and The Atlantic, The 52 nd Street Project, and many workshops and stage readings . |
|
Katori Hall (THE MOUNTAINTOP) is a playwright-performer hailing from Memphis, Tennessee. Her plays include Hoodoo Love (mentored by Lynn Nottage, 3 AUDELCO nominations, 1 win, published by DPS), Remembrance, Hurt Village, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, The Mountaintop, On the Chitlin’ Circuit, Oreogirl (published by the Ninth Letter) and Freedom Train. Her work has been developed and presented at the following venues: the Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, the American Repertory Theatre, Kennedy Center, Cherry Lane Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, BRICLab, Women’s Project, World Financial Center, Lark Play Development Center, New Professional Theatre, Stanford University, and Columbia University. Hall Wasserstein Prize and the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. S he has been a Kennedy Center Playwriting Fellow at the O’Neill. She was a member of the 2007-2008 Lark Playwrights’ Workshop and the 2006-2008 Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab. She is currently the playwright-in-residence at the Women’s Project. She is a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer's Group at Primary Stages. As an actor, Hall’s credits include Law & Order: SVU, The President’s Puppets (The Public), Growing Up a Slave (American Place Theatre), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (American Place Theatre), the world premiere of Amerika (Theatre de la Juene Lune/American Repertory Theatre), Spring Awakening (Moscow Art Theatre School), Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (Classical Theatre of Harlem), Schooled (WOW Café Theatre) and Black Girl (Sande Shurin Theatre). She graduated undergrad from Columbia University in 2003 with a major in African-American Studies and Creative Writing. She was awarded top departmental honors from the university’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS). In 2005, she graduated from the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting. She currently attends the Juilliard Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program. Visit her website at: www.katorihall.com. |
|
Samuel D. Hunter (PONY Fellow)is originally from Moscow, Idaho. He received his BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2004, an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop in 2007, and is currently a playwright-in-residence at the Juilliard School. Most recently, Sam was awarded the 2008-2009 Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship from the Lark Theater. His plays include: I am Montana at the 2008 Ojai Playwrights Conference, 2008 Juilliard New Play Festival, 2007 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2007 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Norman Rockwell Killed My Father at the 2005 O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Abraham (A Shot in the Head) at Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Abraham (I am an Island) in Studio 42's Scattered Festival at Collective: Unconscious, Pigheart at the 2007 Iowa New Play Festival, and his newest play, Idaho / Dead Idaho, which recently received its first reading at Juilliard, and will have a reading in September at Ars Nova as part of their Out Loud reading series Sam has taught at the University of Iowa, Fordham University, and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at Ashtar Theater (Ramallah) and Ayyam al-Masrah (Hebron). He lives in New York with his partner, dramaturg John Baker. |
|
Aditi Brennan Kapil (NEA Consortium - Selected Writer) is an actress, writer, and director, of Bulgarian and Indian descent, raised in Sweden, and currently residing in Minneapolis, MN. She is a graduate of Macalester College with a BA in English and Dramatic Arts. Her latest play, LOVE PERSON, A four part love story in Sanskrit, ASL and English, was developed during a Many Voices residency at the Playwrights’ Center, work-shopped at the Lark Center for New Play Development in NY, and selected for reading at the National New Play Network conference. LOVE PERSON is being produced in a rolling world premiere at Mixed Blood Theatre (MN), Marin Theater (CA), and Phoenix Theatre (IN), in the 2007/08 season. In 2008/09 it will be produced by Live Girls in Seattle, and Victory Gardens in Chicago. “Love Person” has been nominated for the Blackburn Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Steinberg Award. AGNES UNER THE BIG TOP, A FAIRY TALE is slated for production at Mixed Blood Theatre in 2010. Aditi’s playwriting credits include a number of plays for youth, including THE DEAF DUCKLING, a bilingual (ASL & English) educational touring show about growing up Deaf, created in collaboration with Deaf performer Nic Zapko for Mixed Blood Theater, and THE ADVENTURES OF THE HANUMAN, KING OF THE MONKEYS, a Bollywood style musical inspired by tales from the Ramayana for SteppingStone Theater for Youth Development (March 2006). She has also collaborated on several productions with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater, notably GOTAMA, a play about the early life of the Buddha, and BENEATH THE SURFACE, a water circus. She is currently developing CHITRANGADA: THE GIRL PRINCE for SteppingStone Theatre for Youth, a play in iambic verse loosely based on an episode in the Mahabharata. MESSY UTOPIA which she directed, and co-wrote with Seema Sueko, Velina Hasu-Houston, Janet Allard, and Naomi Iizuka, received an Ivey Award, and #6 in the City Pages Best of the Twin Cities 2007. |
|
Arthur Kopit (Workshop Fellow) is the author of: Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad; Indians (Tony Nominee, Finalist for Pulitzer Prize); Wings (Tony Nominee, Finalist for Pulitzer Prize); a new translation of Ibsen's Ghosts; the book for the musical Nine (based on Fellini’s 8 ½), music and lyrics by Maury Yeston (Tony Award for Best Musical, 1982 and Tony Award for Best Musical revival, 2003, and about to start filming, with Rob Marshall directing, and Daniel Day-Lewis as Guido); End of the World with Symposium to Follow; the book for the musical Phantom; the book for the musical High Society; Road to Nirvana; BecauseHeCan (originally entitled Y2K); Chad Curtiss, Lost Again, and numerous one act plays. Current PROJECTS include Discovery of America, a play based on the account of the Spanish conquistador, Cabeza de Vaca, and two plays about memory, one called Autumn Light, the other with the working title, The Incurables. AS A TEACHER: Mr. Kopit has taught playwriting at the Rita and Burton Goldberg Graduate Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU, Yale Drama School, Yale College, Columbia University, Harvard, CCNY, Hunter College, Princeton, and, this past spring, at Denison University, where he was Jonathan Reynolds Playwright-in-Residence. Mr. Kopit is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Dramatists Guild, the Dramatists Guild Council, and The Lark Play Development Center, where he heads The Lark Playwrights’ Workshop. He lives in New York. |
|
CarsonKreitzer (TBA) Carson's The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer won the Lois and Richard Rosenthal New Play Prize, the American Theatre Critics’ Steinberg Citation, the Barrie Stavis Award, and is published in Smith and Kraus’ “New Playwrights: Best Plays of 2004” and by Dramatic Publishing. SELF DEFENSE or death of some salesmen has been produced in Providence, Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and is published by Playscripts and in Smith and Kraus’ “Women Playwrights: Best Plays of 2002.” Other work includes Flesh and the Desert, 1:23, The Slow Drag (New York and London), Valerie Shoots Andy, Heroin/e(Keep Us Quiet), Freakshow, Slither, Dead Wait, and Take My Breath Away, featured in BAM's 1997 Next Wave Festival. Ms. Kreitzer has received grants from NYFA, NYSCA, the NEA, TCG, two Jerome Fellowships and a McKnight Advancement Grant, as well as a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, UT Austin. She is a resident playwright at New Dramatists, an associated artist with Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, and the Fire Department, and a member of The Workhaus Collective, The Playwrights’ Center and the Dramatists Guild. She is currently under commission from The Guthrie Theater, Chicago’s Next Theatre, and the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. |
|
Lisa Kron (Workshop Fellow) has been writing and performing theater since coming to New York from Michigan in 1984. Her play Well opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theater in March 2006, receiving two Tony nominations. It premiered at the Public Theater in 2004 and was listed among the year’s best plays by the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Newark Star Ledger, Backstage, the Advocate, and is included in the anthology, “Best Plays of 2004-2005.” 2.5 Minute Ride (Obie Award, Drama Desk nom., GLAAD Award)premiered and at the Public Theater in 1999 and has been presented all over the world at theaters including the London Barbican, and Japan’s Rinkogun. Other plays include 101 Humiliating Stories (PS 122, Lincoln Center, Drama Desk Nom.), Charity and Montecore (2006 Humana Festival, New York Fringe), and 43/13 (Dad’s Garage, Atlanta). Kron is a founding member of the OBIE and Bessie Award–winning theater company The Five Lesbian Brothers. Fellowships/Grants include: Lortel and Guggenheim Foundations, NEA/TCG, Cal Arts/Alpert Award, Creative Capital Foundation, NYFA. Projects in the works include Five Questions for Center Theater Group, a musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, as well as new plays for the Sloan Foundation through Playwrights Horizons and for Drew University. |
|
Rogelio Martinez (WILL IN SPACE) This past Spring, his new play,
All Eyes and Ears, was presented by INTAR on Theater Row directed by Eduardo Machado. His previous play, Fizz, developed with an NEA/TCG grant at INTAR, was produced at the Ohio Theater. Learning Curve premiered in February 2005 at Theatre Row and was subsequently published in May 2006 by Smith and Krauss in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2005. Arrivals and Departures was produced as part of the First Annual Summer Play Festival. I Regret She's Made of Sugar, commissioned by South Coast Repertory, earned Rogelio a Princess Grace Award. He is also a recipient of an NEA/TCG Residency Grant, a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is an alumnus of New Dramatists. His play My First Radical was workshopped at the Ojai Playwrights Conference. Union City, NJ…, produced at E.S.T. and starring Rosie Perez, won the James Hammerstein Award. Illuminating Veronica, a play about the early years of the Revolution, will soon be published by Broadway Play Publishing. His new play, Will in Space, has been developed over the past year at Primary Stages. In addition, Mr. Rogelio's work has been developed and presented at the Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Mark Taper Forum, and the Magic Theater, among others. He has been commissioned to write a new play by the Denver Center Theater and the Atlantic Theater Company. Rogelio is part of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer's Group at Primary Stages. He teaches playwriting at Montclair University, Lincoln Center Theater, Primary Stages, and INTAR. Rogelio was born in Sancti-Spiritus, Cuba, and came to the U.S. in 1980 on the Mariel boatlift. |
|
Kay Matshullat* (conception/lyrics, DANCE OF DESIRE) most recently directed the workshop of Don’t Fuck With Love, her play, based on Alfred de Musset’s Don’t Trifle With Love, at the Red Bull Theater in New York. She has also adapted/directed Moliere’s The Miser, Rehearsal at Versailles and George Dandin and Brecht’s Saint Joan of the Stockyards. Her New York directing credits include the premiere of Vaclav Havel’s The Conspirators, Derek Walcott’s Pantomime, the world premieres of Catherine Filloux’s Eyes of the Heart at the National Asian American Theater Company and Beauty Inside at NewGeorges Theater. She has worked at numerous regional theaters including, The Cleveland Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival and The Vineyard Playhouse. At Williamstown Theater she founded their new play program where she selected and developed scripts and produced 4-5 new plays per year. Matschullat is a faculty member at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she recently received the Dean’s Development Grant for her play, Don’t Fuck With Love. She has received an NEA Residency grant at Williamstown Theater, numerous foundation production grants, and, she is presently a Fulbright Senior Specialist. She received her B.A. from Harvard College and her M.A. from New York University. Upon her graduation from college, she was Researcher on EYES ON THE PRIZE and VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY, both award winning series for PBS.
|
|
Deirdre O'Connor's (Workshop Fellow) productions include Hero (Naked Angels, Armed and Naked in America), The Death of May McAllister (Northeastern University), Penicillin (Naked Angels, The Mag 7), White Jesus (Naked Angels, Democracy Project), The Attic (St Ann's Warehouse, Labapalooza), Wednesday, (Naked Angels, Fear). Deirdre was a 2008 Cherry Lane Mentor Project Fellow mentored by Michael Weller. Her play Jailbait will be produced by The Cherry Lane Theatre in 2009, She is a graduate of Hampshire College, and Columbia University's MFA Playwriting program where she received the John Golden Playwriting Award. Deirdre writes for “The Electric Company” which will begin airing on PBS in January 2009. She is a member of the Naked Angels Writers Group and Teaching Artist for the Roundabout Theatre Company. |
|
Lynn Rosen's (PUDDY TAT) developed PUDDY TAT as a Writer-In-Residence at The New Harmony Project, at the Lark Play Development Center at New York Stage & Film, and at Centerstage in Baltimore (2008 First Look Series). It also received a 2009 mini-workshop with New Georges. Her short play WASHED UP ON THE POTOMAC will be produced in Centerstage’s 2009-2010 season, and was also in Ensemble Studio Theatre's Marathon. Lynn is currently developing WASHED UP into a full-length, the first draft of which was included in The New Group's New Works series. Lynn’s play BACK FROM THE FRONT was recently produced by The Working Theater, directed by Connie Grappo. Excerpts of BACK FROM THE FRONT were included in The Fire Dept.'s acclaimed 2008 show “At War: American Playwrights Respond to Iraq.” BACK FROM THE FRONT was first seen in The New York International Fringe Festival, directed by Giovanna Sardelli. PROGRESS IN FLYING, commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, was a finalist for the 2007 Humana Festival of New American Plays. It was also included in Geva Theatre's American Voices New Play Reading Series and was workshopped in EST's First Light Festival, directed by Daniella Topol. Lynn was nominated by Tina Howe to be in The Lark's 2004 Playwrights' Workshop, led by Arthur Kopit, where she developed her play APPLE COVE. APPLE COVE received a BareBones production at The Lark in 2005 and was subsequently produced at Todd Mountain Theater Project. It has also been translated into German for production in Europe. Other productions include: NIGHTHAWKS (Willow Cabin Theatre Company in NYC, and The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., Published by Samuel French); and NEXT! (Don't Tell Mama in NYC, Das Meininger Theater in Meiningen, Germany, and Bühnen der Stadt Köln & Theater der Keller in Cologne, Germany). Lynn is a member of the Women’s Project Playwright Lab, EST, The Fire Dept., The Dramatists Guild, and is an Affiliated Artist at New Georges. She was recently named one of “50 to Watch” by The Dramatist magazine. |
|
Ian Rowlands (TBA) originally trained as an actor at the Welsh College of Music and Drama. To date, he has been the Artistic Director of four theatre companies, most recently North Wales Stage which specialised in multi lingual / disciplinary work. As a dramtist, he has written many plays / films including - A Light in the Valley for the BBC (Dir. Michael Bogdanov - Winner of Royal TV Society Award) and in theatre, the award winning Marriage of Convenience , Blue Heron in the Womb , Pacific , Butterfly, Blink - which, has was produced at 59E59 as part of the Brits Off Broadway season 2008. |
|
Adriana Sevan (Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Awardee) a native New Yorker, is an award winning actress and playwright. Her critically acclaimed one woman show, Taking Flight, has been thrilling audiences across the country. It was recently awarded a 2007 San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award and is a finalist for a 2008 Audie Award for Best Solo Narrative. As a playwright, she has created, developed, and performed her work at the Sundance Theatre Lab, South Coast Repertory, The Mark Taper Forum, The Lark Play Development Center, INTAR, and Dixon Place. In 2006, Taking Flight, had its world premiere at The Kirk Douglas Theatre , produced by Michael Ritchie and Diane Rodriguez/Center Theatre Group. The play was then recorded live with LA Theatre Works for a nationwide broadcast, on Public Radio, for the series, “The Play’s The Thing.” Taking Flight has continued to have sold out runs at San Diego Rep, The Fountain Theatre, and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Sevan is about to begin a nine month playwriting residency, led by Pier Carlo Talenti, at The Mark Taper Forum. As an actress, she has just completed a film called Harvest, opposite Barbara Barrie and Robert Loggia. She has appeared in multiple guest-starring roles on TV, including “The Unit,” “Law & Order,” “Sex & the City,” “Deadline,” “Dellaventura,” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” Onstage, her theatre credits include work at South Coast Repertory, Yale Rep, Coconut Grove Playhouse, LA Theatre Works, The Public Theater, Classic Stage Company, Shakespeare & Company, ACT, and HERE. She currently guest teaches at CAL ARTS, and leads transformational workshops for at risk adolescent girls using creative writing, improvisation, and personal myth-making as tools for girls to discover and express their vibrant, vital, and unique voices. |
|
Saviana Stanescu (BARBARIAN WOMAN) was born in Bucharest, Romania, on a cold February morning during Ceausescu’s dictatorship, and “reborn” in New York in the hot days of 2001. Her plays have been widely presented internationally and in the US. Recent New York productions include "Waxing West" (2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Full-length Script) and "YokastaS Redux'’ at La MaMa Theatre, “Flagstories” at TBG Theatre (part of Myth America Project co-written with Arthur Kopit, Theresa Rebeck, Israel Horowitz, Jason Grote, Matthew Paul Olmos, Loyd Suh), "Suspendida" at the Ontological Theatre, "Balkan Blues" at the NYC Fringe Festival and Manhattan Theatre Source, and the site-specific "I want what you have" at the World Financial Center. Saviana won the 2007 Marulic Prize for Best European Radio-drama for “Bucharest Underground”. Her short play “Aurolac Blues,” performed at HERE Arts Center, was published in the anthology “Plays and Playwrights 2006”. Two monologues have been published in the Playwrights’ Center’s “Monologues for Women” and “Final Countdown" was translated, produced and published in France. She has also published six books of poetry and drama including "Google me!" (poetry), "Black Milk" (four plays) and "The Inflatable Apocalypse” (Best Romanian Play of the Year UNITER Award in 2000). Her plays have received readings and workshops at Voice&Vision, Lark, New York Theatre Workshop, New York Stage&Film, Playwrights' Foundation, Traveling Jewish Theatre, Immigrants Theatre Project, Martin Segal Theatre Center, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, Odeon Theatre, Act Theatre, Theatre Gerard Philipe de Saint-Denis, Gare Au Theatre, etc. She was a 2005-2007 TCG fellow with the Lark Play Development Center, where her plays “Waxing West” and “Lenin’s Shoe” had barebones productions. Currently Saviana is a NYSCA playwright-in-residence with Women’s Project and writer-in-residence for East Coast Artists. Saviana holds an MA in Performance Studies (Fulbright fellow) and an MFA in Dramatic Writing (John Golden Award for excellence in playwriting) from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, where she now teaches in the Drama Department. |
|
Lloyd Suh (Launching New Plays into the Repertoire - selected playwright) |
|
Elizabeth Swados (composer DANCE OF DESIRE)
has composed, written, and directed over 30 theater pieces including The Trilogy, Nightclub Cantata, Runaways, Alice in Concert, Doonesbury, Rap Master Ronnie, The Haggadah, Jonah, Job, Esther, Jerusalem with Yehudah Amichai, The 49 Years, and Missionaries. Her work has been performed at The Flea Theater, La MaMa, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, at regional theaters throughout the United States and at locations all over the world. She has published novels, non-fiction books, children's books and poetry. Recent productions include Atonement, a theatrical oratorio presented by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, her own adaptation of S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk at NYU/Tisch, Spider Operas at PS122 (with Mabou Mines), and Political Subversities, a political revue that has been presented in two Culture Project festivals as well as at Joe's Pub. My Depression: A Picture Book, was published in April 2005 and her theater textbook, At Play: Teaching Teenagers Theater, was published by Faber & Faber in June 2006. A new book of poetry, The Handcuff King, will be published by Hanging Loose Press this fall. Ms. Swados recently wrapped a children's CD, Everyone is Different, in conjunction with Forward Face in March, 2007. Currently, she is working on several new musicals, including Kaspar Hauser to go up at the Flea in February 2009. She is a faculty member at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Awards: Five Tony nominations, three Obie Awards, Guggenheim Fellowship, Ford Grant, Lila Acheson Wallace Grant, PEN Citation, and others. Most recently Ms. Swados received a special grant to record selections from all of her music from over the past thirty years. These new renderings of her music will be available on CD and the Internet over the next three years. |
|
Caridad Svich (adapter, DANCE OF DESIRE) a playwright-songwriter-translator and editor of Cuban-Spanish-Argentine-Croatian descent. She is the recipient of New Dramatists’ 2007 Whitfield Cook Prize for New Writing for her play Lucinda Caval, and the 2003 National Latino Playwriting Award for Magnificent Waste. She’s also received a Harvard University Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Bunting fellowship, a TCG/Pew National Theatre Artist Grant, and has been short-listed twice for the PEN USA-West Award in Drama. 2008 premieres: her free adaptation of Lope de Vega’s erotic comedy The Labyrinth of Desire at Miracle Theatre/OR, and her play with songs Twelve Ophelias in a site-responsive Woodshed Collective production at McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn. In 2009: her adaptation of Allende’s The House of the Spirits at Repertorio Espanol/NY and her new play Instructions for Breathing at Passage Theatre/NJ.
Other recent premieres : The Tropic of X at artheater-Cologne (Germany), her play with alt-country songs Thrush at Salvage Vanguard Theatre/TX, and her US adaptation of the Serbian dark comedy Huddersfield as a TUTA production at Victory Gardens Theatre/IL, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (a rave fable) at 7 Stages/GA and Son of Semele/CA, translation of Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba at the Pearl Theatre/NY, and her multimedia collaboration The Booth Variations at 59 East 59 th Street Theatre/NY and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, contributing editor of TheatreForum, associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review (Routledge/UK), affiliate artist of New Georges, and founder of the international theatre alliance and press NoPassport. Additional Awards/Residencies: NEA/TCG Residency at Mark Taper Forum Theatre, Jonathan R. Reynolds Playwright in Residence at Denison University; Thurber House Fellow at Ohio State University; resident playwright at INTAR Theatre/NY. She has been guest artist at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, the Royal Court Theatre, Actors Touring Company/ UK at the Euripides’ Festival in Monodendri, Greece and has taught playwriting at Yale School of Drama, Bennington College, Rutgers University, and the US-Cuba Writers’ Conference in Havana. Previous key credits : Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man’s Blues at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park (winner of the Rosenthal New Play Prize) under Lisa Peterson’s direction, and Any Place But Here at Theater for the New City/NYC under Maria Irene Fornes’ direction. Fugitive Pieces at Cleveland Public Theatre/OH, Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, Texas, and at Salvage Vanguard in Austin under Jason Neulander’s direction, The Archaeology of Dreams at Portland Stage Company’s Little Festival of the Unexpected. She holds an MFA from UCSD. Her works are archived at the University of Miami, Florida and at the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University. Her works can be accessed at www.alexanderstreetpress.com, www.lulu.com, and her website is www.caridadsvich.com Publications: Some of her translations are collected in Lorca: Major Plays Vol. I and II (NoPassport Press) and Impossible Theater (Smith & Kraus). Plays: Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man’s Blues (TCG), Fugitive Pieces, Luna Park, and Any Place But Here are published by Playscripts Inc. Prodigal Kiss and but there are fires are published by Smith & Kraus. Iphigenia…a rave fable (BackStage Books and TheatreForum), Twelve Ophelias (Kendall-Hunt Publishing), The Archaeology of Dreams (Stage & Screen), Gleaning/Rebusca (Arte Publico), Brazo Gitano (Ollantay Theater Journal). She is editor of several books on theatre published by Manchester University Press/UK and others. |
|
Larry Tremblay (ABRAHAM LINCOLN GOES TO THE THEATER) is a writer, director, actor and specialist in Kathakali. He has published some twenty books and is one of the Québec’s most-produced playwrights. His work is noted for the diversity of genres it explores. Thanks to an uninterrupted succession of new plays ( Anatomy Lesson , Ogre , The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi , The Genie of Drolet Street , Blue Hands , Soap , Bagpipes , Panda Panda… ) Tremblay’s work continues to achieve international recognition. A Chair in Love was the fourth of his works presented in Montreal in 2006, following Three Seconds when the Seine Stopped Flowing , The Story of a Heart , and The Axe which he also directed. In 2006 he was awarded the Canada Council Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Staunton Prize for his contribution to the theatre and Gallimard Press recently published (Piercing) , a collection of three of his short stories. He is a professor in the theatre department at l’Université du Québec à Montréal. |
 |
Aladdin Ullah was one of the first South Asian comedians to perform on national television on shows such as Showtime at the Apollo, Bet's Comicview, MTV and was featured in the popular PBS documentary DESIS: SOUTHASAINS IN NEW YORK. He is currently in Uncle Morty's Dub Shack on Imaginanasiantv. He was the hilarious Professor Gautam in the film AMERICAN DESI. Theater credits include his one man show INDIO directed by Loretta Greco at New Works Now! festival the Public Theater and Mike Batistic's PORT AUTHORITY THROWDOWN at the Culture Project. He was a finalist this past year in the Julliard playwrighting fellowship. |
| *Kay Matshullat's headshot by Guy Sherman |