Meet The 2009-10 Featured Writers...

Richard Abrons Rob Ackerman Michi Barall Chantal Bilodeau
     
Madeleine George
Katori Hall
Stuart Hample David Henry Hwang
     

Aditi Brennan Kapil Carson Kreitzer Koffi Kwahulé Rehana Mirza
       
Adriana Sevahn
Nichols 		Betty Shamieh Tommy Smith Sarah Treem
       
 
Sinan Unel Andreea Valean David Wiener  

 














Richard Abrons (BODY POLITIC) has had four plays produced Off Broadway. After resigning as a partner at First Manhattan Company in 1980 he began writing seriously. He received his MA in creative writing from NYU and began writing short stories. Approximately twenty were published, including one for which he received a National Magazine Fiction Award, and another which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 1996, a compilation of his short stories was published by the Nightshade Press. Richard is also actively involved in the non-profit world: Vice Chairman of the Henry Street Settlement, President of the Louis and Anne Abrons Foundation, and Director at the Council on the Environment of NYC. At the Council in 1978, he started a program of developing community gardens in poor neighborhoods. This program, (Plant-A-Lot) continues today, with three new park/gardens slated to be completed this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 Rob Ackerman (WALDO) credits include Tabletop (The Working Theater, Drama Desk Award winner for Best Ensemble Performance),  Disconnect (The Working Theater at Classic Stage Company ), and Icarus of Ohio (hotINK 2007, Tisch School of the Arts Mainstage, 2008). His latest play, Volleygirls, was commissioned by ACT in San Francisco and premiered there in March 2009. His first play, Origin of the Species, became an award-winning feature film starring Amanda Peet. Rob has had residencies at Yaddo, the Lark Play Development Center, and Flux Theatre Ensemble. He also works as a prop master on commercials, films, and Saturday Night Live, for which he recently helped to make "Whopper Virgins," "Chewable Pampers," and "Mostly Garbage Dog Food." Rob was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, majored in theater and Spanish at Middlebury College, and earned an M.F.A. in directing from Northwestern University. He and his wife, author Carol Weston, live in Manhattan with their two daughters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Michi Barall (Playwrights' Workshop Fellow) is a Brooklyn based actor, playwright and scholar-in-training. As an actor, she has worked predominantly on new plays by American writers --including Julia Cho, Philip Kan Gotanda, A.R. Gurney, John Guare, Naomi Iizuka, Han Ong, Jose Rivera, Sung Rno, Paul Rudnick, Charles Mee, Sarah Schulman, Anna Deavere Smith, Diana Son, Doug Wright, and Chay Yew. The author of three plays, she has had readings with Ma Yi and 2g. She is currently under commission from Fluid Motion Theater & Film to develop Howe we Became Nomads, a multi-media puppet extravaganza about the life and times of Genghis Khan. Her dance-theare piece, if, then, will be produced by Ma-Yi in their 2009-2010. In addition to being a member of the Ma-Yi writer's lab, she is an NYTW Usual Suspect and a 2009-2010 Lark Playwriting Fellow. She has been awarded two John Golden Incentive grants administered by Hunter College. Agraduate of Stanford University and NYU's Grad Acting, Michi is now a second year student in the doctoral program in Theatre at Columbia University. She secretly dreams of being a circus clown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Chantal Bilodeau (translating playwright w. Koffi Kwahulé) 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; NY International Fringe Festival), Tagged (Ohio University; Alleyway Theatre), as well as several shorts which have been presented by theatres across the country. She has been a member of the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab, the Lark Playwrights Workshop and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship Program, has received grants from NYSCA, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Quebec Government House, Étant Donnés: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts and Association Beaumarchais (France), and was recently awarded an NEA Translation Fellowship. Her translations include plays by Quebec playwrights Larry Tremblay and Catherine Léger, French-African playwright Koffi Kwahulé and Jean Cocteau. Among her current projects are: the book for the musical The Quantum Fairies in collaboration with composer Lisa DeSpain and lyricist Mindi Dickstein, a new play about the effects of climate change on the Canadian Arctic and the Inuit population commissioned by Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company, the translation of a play by Algerian playwright Mohamed Kacimi commissioned by the Play Company, and the translation of four more plays by Koffi Kwahulé to be published in an anthology in 2010.

 

 

 

 

 

 Madeleine George (Playwrights' Workshop Fellow) Her plays have been produced or developed at Clubbed Thumb, Soho Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, The Playwrights' Center/Guthrie Theater, Rude Mechanicals, and Playwrights Horizons, among other places. She collaborated with LightBox on the multimedia play MILK-N-HONEY, about democracy and appetite in America, which ran at 3LD in the fall of 2007. Support includes a MacDowell Fellowship, the Princess Grace Playwriting Award, a Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship, and the Jane Chambers Award. Madeleine was a member of the 2007-2008 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, is a founding member of the Obie-Award-winning playwrights’ collective 13P, and holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Katori Hall (2009-10 PONY Fellow) is a playwright-performer hailing from Memphis, Tennessee. Her plays include Hoodoo Love ( Cherry Lane), The Mountaintop (2009 Olivier Award for Best New Play, Theatre 503 and Trafalgar Studios—West End), Remembrance (Women’s Project), Hurt Village, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, The Hope Well, WHADDABLOODCLOT!?!?, GONE, On the Chitlin’ Circuit, Oreogirl (published by the Ninth Letter) and Freedom Train. Her work has been developed and presented at the following venues: Theatre 503 ( London) Cherry Lane Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, BRICLab, Women’s Project, World Financial Center, Lark Play Development Center, New Professional Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, the American Repertory Theatre, Kennedy Center, Stanford University, and Columbia University. Hall has been published as a book reviewer, journalist, and essayist in publications such as The Boston Globe, Essence, and Newsweek. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2009-2010 Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York Fellowship, the Van Lier Fellowship from the Public Theatre, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, NYSCA Grant, New Professional Theatre Writers’ Festival award, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA Fellowship, Royal Court Theatre NYC Residency, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. She 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 and the Old Vic New Voices program. 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 Jeune 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 recently graduated from the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program. Check out www.katorihall.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stuart Hample (ALL THE SINCERITY IN HOLLYWOOD) began drawing before kindergarten. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served for two years in the Submarine Service in World War II. He attended Williams College and graduated from the University of Buffalo in 1950 with a B.A. in English and Drama.

Starting in 1946, while working in advertising, he began performing as a musical cartoonist with symphony orchestras at children’s and pops concerts, drawing in strict rhythm with the music. In 1948 he was the writer and star of the evening comedy show Cartoon Capers on WBEN-TV in Buffalo, NY and also of a children's show called Junior Jamboree on the same station. He was sometimes a guest host on the NBC Children's show Birthday House when the regular host, Paul Tripp, was unavailable. In the 1950’s he appeared regularly on the CBS-TV children’s program Captain Kangaroo as "Mister Artist".

In 1955-1956 he was an assistant to Al Capp, creator of the comic strip Li'l Abner. A subsequent stint in advertising ended when he created the internationally syndicated comic strip, Inside Woody Allen. Because he simultaneously had another comic strip, Rich & Famous, running with a different syndicate, he briefly employed the pseudonym Joe Marthen.

During this period his first play, Alms For The Middle Class, had a simultaneous world premier at the Pittsburgh Public Theater and Geva Theater in Rochester, NY and was produced on Earplay, the dramatic workshop of National Public Radio. After having three short plays produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville, he was commissioned to write a full-length play, The Ark Has A Leak. His latest stage work, All The Sincerity In Hollywood, a one-character play based on the life of the celebrated mid-20th Century radio comedian Fred Allen, will star former talk show host Dick Cavett.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 David Henry Hwang (CHINGLISH) A playwright, librettist and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of M. Butterfly, which won the 1988 Tony©, Drama Desk, John Gassner, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and was also a finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize. Golden Child premiered Off-Broadway at New York’s Public Theater, received a 1997 OBIE Award for playwriting and subsequently moved to Broadway, where it received three 1998 Tony© nominations, including Best New Play. His most recent play, Yellow Face, which premiered at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum and New York’s Public Theater, received a 2008 OBIE Award for playwriting and was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Hwang has written libretti for several Broadway musicals. His revision of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song earned him his third Tony© nomination in 2003.  He co-wrote Disney’s international hit Aida, with music and lyrics by Elton John and Tim Rice, which won four 2000 Tony© Awards, as well as the Broadway adaptation of Disney’s Tarzan, with songs by Phil Collins, currently a long-running hit in Europe. His other plays include FOB (1981 OBIE Award), The Dance & the Railroad (1982 Drama Desk Nomination), Family Devotions (1982 Drama Desk Nomination), The House of Sleeping Beauties (1983), The Sound of a Voice (1983), Bondage (1992), Face Value (1993) and  Trying to Find Chinatown (1996).  He adapted Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt with Swiss director Stephan Müller for Trinity Repertory Company (1998) and Peter Sis’ Tibet Through the Red Box for the Seattle Children’s Theatre (2004). 

As an opera librettist, he has written three works with composer Philip Glass: 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1988), The Voyage, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1992, and The Sound of a Voice (2003). Ainadamar, with music by Osvaldo Golijov, won two 2007 Grammy Awards, for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Composition, and has become the most-produced new opera of the new century. Other operas include The Silver River (1997), with music by Bright Sheng; Alice in Wonderland, with music by Unsuk Chin, which was named 2007 “World Premiere of the Year” by Opernwelt Magazine; and The Fly (2008), based on David Cronenberg’s movie, with music by Howard Shore (“Lord of the Rings”).

Hwang penned the screenplays for M. Butterfly (1993), starring Jeremy Irons and John Lone, directed by David Cronenberg; Golden Gate (1994), starring Matt Dillon and Joan Chen, directed by John Madden; and Possession (co-writer, 2002), starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart, directed by Neil LaBute. He has also done screenwriting work for Martin Scorsese, the late Sydney Pollack, Tim Burton, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Jessica Lange, Bette Midler, Michael Douglas and Robin Williams, among others.  Upcoming projects include a new play, Chinglish, as well as two original musicals: Bruce Lee: Journey to the West, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek, directed by Bartlett Sher; and Pretty Dead Girl, with songs by Ann Marie Milazzo, directed by Leigh Silverman.  Hwang’s latest collaboration with Mr. Glass, an adaptation of theoretical physicist Brian Greene’s Icarus at the Edge of Time, directed by Jude Kelly with visuals by British video artists Al and Al, will premiere this summer at NY’s Lincoln Center and London’s Southbank Centre, prior to an international tour. 

Hwang attended Stanford University and the Yale School of Drama, and holds honorary degrees from Columbia College and the American Conservatory Theatre.  He has been awarded numerous grants, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the PEW Charitable Trust.  He sits on the boards of the Dramatists Guild, the Lark Play Development Center, the Museum of Chinese in America and the American Theatre Wing.  From 1994-2001, he served by appointment of President Clinton on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.  In 1993, the nation’s oldest Asian American theatre, East-West Players in Los Angeles, christened their new mainstage the David Henry Hwang Theatre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Samuel D. Hunter (TBA) 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/AGNES UNDER THE BIG TOP) 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 Under 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Koffi Kwahulé (TBA) most recently worked with the Lark and translator Chantal Bilodeau on the translation of his plays Bintou and That Old Black Magic. Other play translations he and Bilodeau have developed at the Lark include Jaz, Big Shoot and Misterioso-119, which was presented as part of the Act French Festival. Born in the Ivory Coast, Kwahule is a playwright, novelist, essayist, actor and director. A graduate from the Institut National des Arts in Abidjan, he completes his training at l’École supérieure des arts et des techniques du Théâtre de Paris while finishing a Doctorate in Theatre Studies at the Université Paris III-Sorbonne. He has written more than twenty plays, translated in many languages, including Cette vieille magie noire (recipient of Grand prix Tchicaya U Tam’si, RFI/ACCT 92); La dame du café d’en face (recipient of Prix SACD-RFI 94; Theater Zuidpool, Anvers, 2004); Bintou (TILF, 1997); Fama (Francophonies de Limoges, 1998); Les créanciers (Théâtre forain, 1998); Village fou ou Les déconnards (Avignon Off, 1998; recipient of Prix UNESCO du MASA 99 in Abidjan); Jaz (Teatro del Fontanone, Rome, 2000); P’tite-Souillure (recipient of Lauréat des Journées d’Auteurs de Lyon, Festival Frictions, Dijon, 2002); Histoire de soldats (Glob’Théâtre, Bordeaux, 2002); Big Shoot (Festival Verse Waar, Chassé Theatre, Breda, 2005 and Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, Montréal, 2005 ); and Il nous faut l’amérique (Palais de la Culture, Abidjan, 2005). He recently published his fist novel, Babyface, for which he was awarded the Grand Prix Ahmadou Kourouma and since 2006, he is part of the Comité des artistes at the Comédie-Française.

 

 

Rehana Mirza (South Asian Playwright-in-Residence): MFA: Playwriting, Columbia University; BFA: Dramatic Writing, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.  Rehana’s full-length plays have been produced/developed at: Asian American Theater Company ( San Francisco), Arena Stages ( Los Angeles), Studio Space @ Theater Row, HERE Arts Center, Rasik Arts ( Toronto), and Asian American Arts Centre ( Philadelphia). Her short plays have been presented at the Culture Project, EST, The Flea, Center Stage NY, The Tenement Museum, Richmond Shepard Theater, Artwallah (Los Angeles), CSV Center (2G), and Abrons Arts Center. Her play, Barriers, was published with the Alexander Street Press, and was on the theater curriculum at Berkeley, West Virginia University, and Yale University. Her short plays have also been published with the Alexander Street Press as well as in The New York Theater Review, with Blue Box Productions Best of Sticky Series. She is a Leopold Schepp Scholar, a resident member of Ma-Yi Theater’s Writer’s Lab, as well as the recipient of an EST/Sloan Commission, LMCC artist grant, John Golden Award, and TCG Future Leaders mentorship with New Georges/Susan Bernfield. Rehana is the founder and Artistic Director of Desipina Productions. She is also the filmmaker of the award winning short film, Modern Day Arranged Marriage, which has played in over 40 festivals and the feature film, Hiding Divya, with Madhur Jaffrey, Pooja Kumar and Deep Katdare.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Adriana Sevahn Nichols (NIGHT OVER ERZINGA, Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Awardee) An award winning actress and playwright, is the recipient of the 2008 Middle East America Distinguished Playwright award, that includes a three theatre commission from (The Lark Theatre/NY, Silk Road Theatre/Chicago, Golden Thread Theatre/San Francisco.) to write a play about her Armenian grandparent’s survival during the Genocide of 1915. As a playwright, her work has been developed and/or produced at the Sundance Theater Lab, South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, Kirk Douglas Theatre, San Diego Rep, Goodman Theatre, LA Theatre Works, Lark Play Theatre, and Intar. Taking Flight has garnered a San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award, Los Angeles Woman’s Theatre Festival Award, and the audio CD was a finalist for a 2008 Audie Award. The play is currently being published by Samuel French.

As an actress, she recently completed a film called, Harvest, with Barbara Barrie and Robert Loggia. She has appeared in multiple guest-starring roles on TV, including The Unit, Law & Order, Sex & the City, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Onstage, her theatre credits include work at South Coast Repertory, Yale Rep, Public Theater, Goodman Theatre, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Classic Stage Company, ACT and Shakespeare & Company.

Sevan guest teaches at CalArts, University of Santa Barbara, Goodman Theatre, and mentors at risk teenage girls living in group homes, through creative writing, improvisation, and personal myth-making. She recently taught at ORRAN, a center for street kids in Armenia, while there researching her new play, Night Over Erzinga. She believes that the making and receiving of live theatre, mends our souls, and it is her intention to share that message through her work and all she does. Upcoming, Taking Flight at Teatro Vision, in San Jose, January 2010.

Betty Shamieh (FREE RADICALS) Plays include The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop, Theatre Fournos of Athens), Chocolate in Heat (New York International Fringe Festival), The Machine (Naked Angels), Roar (The New Group), and Territories (The Magic Theatre). In 2008, her play Again and Against had its Swedish premiere at Playhouse Teater in Stockholm. A German translation of Territories ran for six months at the European Union’s Capital of Culture Festival in 2009. A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, she was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and was a Clifton Visiting Artist at Harvard in 2004. She is one of the youngest artists to be named a fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 Tommy Smith (THE WIFE) a New York based playwright and director.  His plays include Firemen, Beautiful Night, The Wife, White Hot, Sextet, Air Conditioning, Caravan Man (with Gabriel Kahane and directed by Kip Fagan) and A Day In Dig Nation (with Michael McQuilken).  His work has been seen at The Public Theatre, The Flea Theatre, PS 122, Ars Nova, HERE Arts Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Ontological Theatre, 78th Street Theatre, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Huntington Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, among others; his work has been produced internationally in Prague, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Montreal and Athens.

He is a two-time winner of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for emerging writers (2005 and 2006), a graduate of The Juilliard School’s Playwriting Program, a recipient of the 2008 E.S.T. Sloan Grant, the 2008 Page73 Playwriting fellow and a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer’s Group at Primary Stages.

Publications include White Hot in the 2008 New York Theatre Review and Streak in “Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays”, printed by Vintage.

As a director, Tommy co-created (with Reggie Watts) the theatre piece Disinformation, which has been seen at the 2008 Under The Radar Theatre Festival at The Public Theatre, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s 2007 Time-Based Art Festival, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) and The Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh). With Reggie, Tommy won the 2008 MAP Fund Award and 2009 Creative Capital award for their follow-up show, Transition, which played at the 2008 PICA TBA Festival, the 2009 Under The Radar Festival and On The Boards (Seattle, October 2009).  Other collaborations include Radio Play (Ars Nova) and Occurrence (Galapagos, PICA: TBA 08, The Tank, Ars Nova).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah Treem (Playwrights' Workshop Fellow) Full length plays include Empty Sky, Against The Wall, Mirror, A Feminine Ending, Human Voices, and Vienna's Amazing. A Feminine Ending received its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in fall 2007, was subsequently produced at South Coast Repertory and Portland Center Stage in 2008, and is published by Samuel French. Human Voices was part of Manhattan Theatre Club’s Springboard’s New Play Series and New York Stage & Film’s Powerhouse Reading Season in 2007. Sarah has been in residence at The Sundance Institute and The Ojai Playwriting Conference. She has been commissioned by South Coat Repertory and Playwrights Horizons, and she is a current fellow at the Lark Playwrights’ Workshop. Sarah is a writer/producer on the acclaimed HBO series, "In Treatment"; as well as the upcoming Mark Whalberg produced HBO series "How to Make it in America." She is currently adapting Tom Wolfe’s novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons" for Bill Haber and Tina Brown at HBO. Sarah graduated from Yale University and the Yale School of Drama.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Sinan Unel ( NEW LIFE) Sinan’s relationship with The Lark began in 1998 when his play Pera Palas was selected for that year’s Playwrights’ Week. After a BareBones® presentation followed by the Lark’s acclaimed Off-Broadway production, Pera Palas went on to productions in New Haven (Long Wharf), London (The Gate and Arcola), Philadelphia, Pasadena (The Boston Court), Austria and Germany. Sinan has had the good fortune to collaborate with the Lark on a number of plays: Tolstoy’s Den, Pathetique, Cry of the Reed, and, most recently, New Life.  He was a Calderwood fellow at the Huntington Theater  (2007-08) where his play Cry of the Reed received its premiere. Other awards include the John Gassner Memorial Award, The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, and The Ridgelea Award. His script Race Point was the winner of the 2001 New Century Writer Award for best screenplay. Sinan currently lives in New York and Cape Cod, and teaches at Lesley University in Boston.









 

 


 Andreea Valean (DON'T CRY, WE'LL ALL MEET ON THE OTHER SIDE) is an award-winning playwright, producer and scriptwriter, and an established theater director. She is a graduate of the Theatre Directing Department at The Academy of Theatre in Bucharest and the current Project Manager for dramAcuma contemporary theater project-a leading group of young directors working on contemporary plays. In 2007, she directed the baroque opera Pyram and Tysbe at the National Theatre of Operetta. Her film The Way I Spent the End of The World, which she wrote and produced, was selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. Two years earlier, the short film she scripted entitled Traffic was awarded the prestigious Palm d'Or at Cannes Film Festival. During this time period, she has had a vibrant career as a theater director with productions such as Norway. Today by Igor Bauersima presented at Odeon Theatre and her own play The Last Game of Taroc presented at the Jewish Theatre in Bucharest. The film based on her play When I Want To Whistle, I Whistle was selected in the Berlin Film Festival's official competition. Currently, she is developing the script for Dracula Deadly Dangerous and directing rehearsals at Teatrul Foarte Mic in Bucharest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Wiener ( Playwrights' Workshop Fellow) playwriting credits include, Guts, La Arana, Love Song of the Apocalypse, Blood Orange, in vitro, Huera, Cassiopeia, Baltimore Star, System Wonderland and Extraordinary Chambers. His work has been developed and produced in the United States and the United Kingdom at theaters including: The Cherry Lane, The Blue Heron Arts Center, The Etcetera Theater (UK), HB Studios, The Atlantic Theater, The Almeida Theater (UK), The New Group, A Contemporary Theater, South Coast Repertory, The Berkshire Theater Festival, The Pacific Playwrights Festival, The Ojai Playwrights’ Conference and Soho Rep. Mr. Wiener is a graduate of Duke University and Columbia University’s MFA Dramatic Writing Program. He is the recipient of the Cherry Lane Fellowship, The Rossetti Fellowship, The Lark Fellowship, and The Reynolds Price Award for Drama as well as commissions from Atlantic Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, SoHo Rep, and A Contemporary Theater. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Smith & Krauss. He is a Core Writer of the Playwrights’ Center. He lives in New York City.

 

 
 
 

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