Lark Play Development Center

PLAYWRIGHTS'WEEK 2010


Joshua Allen	Dan Dietz	Laura Jacqmin


Kate Kerrigan	Laura Marks	Gabe McKinley


Mark Mitnick		Stacy O'Neill

	Joshua Allen (THE LAST PAIR OF EARLIES) Joshua Allen, a native of Chicago, has just completed his first year at The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Fellowship and is returning this fall as a Playwright-in-Residence. His play The Last Pair of Earlies has been developed at Juilliard and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. His other plays include Goodbye, Heathcliff, which appeared at the Actor’s Playpen in Hollywood, and God Is a Woman, which appeared at the Space Theatre in Hollywood. In 2007, he was a finalist for the inaugural Emerging Writers Fellowship at the Public Theater in New York City. Additionally, he was a contributing playwright for several installments of the 24-Hour Plays in Los Angeles. He has also worked as a teaching artist at various schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District and at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah. Joshua is a proud graduate of the University of Southern California.
	Dan Dietz (CLEMENTINE IN THE LOWER NINE) plays include tempOdyssey, Americamisfit, The Sandreckoner, and Clementine in the Lower Nine, and have been seen in New York, Los Angeles, and points in between. tempOdyssey received a rolling world premiere from the National New Play Network, premiering at Curious Theatre (Denver, CO), Studio Theatre (Washington, DC), Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis, IN) and New Jersey Rep (Long Branch, NJ). The play was also named a finalist for the 2007 PEN USA Literary Award in Drama. Dietz has been honored with an NEA/TCG Theatre Residency, a James A. Michener Fellowship, a Josephine Bay Paul Fellowship, and the Austin Critics Table Award for Best New Play. He received the Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2003 for his play Trash Anthem, and again in 2010 for his play Lobster Boy. Dietz’s work has been developed and presented at the Kennedy Center, the Public Theater, the Guthrie Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, CenterStage, and the Summer Play Festival, among others. He is a two-time finalist for the Princess Grace Award, a two-time nominee for the Weissberger Award, a nominee for the ACTF/Steinberg Award, a nominee for the Oppenheimer/Newsday Award, and a four-time finalist for the Humana Festival of New American Plays. His work has been published by Dramatists Play Service, Heinemann, Playscripts, Samuel French, Smith & Krauss, and Stage & Screen. He is currently a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.
	Laura Jacqmin (MILVOTCHKEE, VISCONSIN ) was the winner of the 2008 Wasserstein Prize, a $25,000 award to recognize an emerging female playwright. Her plays include Look, We Are Breathing (2010 Sundance Theatre Lab on Governors Island, dir. Mark Brokaw), January Joiner (P73’s 2010 summer Yale residency, dir. May Adrales) and Ski Dubai (Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s 5th Annual First Look Repertory of New Work). Her play I Am Frightened of My Body will premiere in Ars Nova’s ANT Fest this fall. Other plays include Folk Song, Dental Society Midwinter Meeting (which enjoyed a sold-out run in Chicago this summer), And when we awoke there was light and light, and Do-Gooder (nominated for the 2011 Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project). Her work has been produced and developed by the Goodman Theatre, Ars Nova, Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, Joe’s Pub, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago Dramatists, The 24 Hour Plays Off-Broadway, Contemporary American Theatre Festival and more. She lives in Chicago where she is currently working on commissions from the Goodman Theatre, Arden Theatre Company, InterAct Theatre and Ensemble Studio Theatre. She is a member of the Goodman Theatre’s 2010-2011 playwrights unit. BA Yale University; MFA Ohio University. www.laurajacqmin.com
	Kait Kerrigan (TRANSIT) is a playwright, lyricist, and bookwriter. Her plays include Disaster Relief, Imaginary Love, and Transit. Imaginary Love will receive a world-premiere production at the Hapgood Theatre (Antioch, CA) in 2011. Her musicals, all written with composer Brian Lowdermilk, include The Freshman Experiment, Tales from the Bad Years, The Woman Upstairs, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown, and Henry and Mudge. The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown is currently under option with Beth Williams and Broadway Across America and received a developmental production at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in 2009. Henry and Mudge was produced by TheatreworksUSA and premiered Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2006. Kerrigan’s work has been developed by the La Jolla Playhouse, Primary Stages, Lark Play Development Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Perry Mansfield New Works Festival, ASCAP/Disney Workshop, New York Musical Theatre Festival, National Alliance of Musical Theatre, CAP21, Goodspeed, the Orchard Project, and others. She was the recipient of the 2009 Kleban Award for Most Promising Librettist and the 2006 Larson Award for her lyric writing. Kerrigan is an alumna of Barnard College, and a member of ASCAP, the Dramatists Guild, and NewMusicalTheatre.com. For more information, visit www.kerrigan-lowdermilk.com.
	Laura Marks (BETHANY) is a student in Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program and a member of the Public Theater’s 2010 Emerging Writers Group. She is currently developing a new play for the Public’s Spotlight Series of readings in early 2011. Her play about the foreclosure crisis, Bethany, will receive a staged reading in Steppenwolf’s First Look Festival this November. Bethany was a winner of the SheWrites competition and received prior readings with Reverie Productions, APAC, Partial Comfort and Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta. Previously produced works include Unbound with director Davis McCallum (Prospect Theater Company; also performed by the apprentice company at New York Stage & Film) and Hypothesis, a commissioned one-act about Voltaire (Prospect Theater Company). As an actor, Laura has appeared in premieres of new work by Herman D. Farrell, Christina Gorman, Noah Haidle, Carson Kreitzer, and Christopher Shinn.
	Gabe McKinley (FLOODPLAINS) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and was raised both there and in Europe. He attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts on an acting scholarship. After completing his studies at the NYU Classical Studio, Gabe set a goal of performing in all the smallest and dirtiest theaters in Manhattan – he achieved this goal easily. Later, in an attempt to supplement his acting career, Gabe started performing stand-up and sketch comedy throughout New York, including performing at Carnegie Hall and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, among others. Gabe spent six years hosting and producing The Shark Show, a well-known and critically successful comedy show. In an attempt to find a career less stable than acting, Gabe started writing his own plays in earnest in 2001. It is as a playwright that Gabe has found his true passion and voice. Gabe’s plays include The Kitchen Sink Play, Welcome Home Rock Rogers, Funny, Flannel, Extinction and the upcoming Corrections. His plays have been performed nationally and overseas, while his short play, The Grave, was the winner of the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival. Gabe is a member of the Old Vic New Voices program hosted by London’s Old Vic Theater, and he can also be seen on numerous embarrassing national television commercials. He is published by Samuel French. BFA: NYU. MFA: The New School for Drama.
	Michael Mitnick (SPACEBAR: A BROADWAY PLAY BY KYLE SUGARMAN) recent works include: Babs the Dodo, a voyage through home shopping and loneliness (developed by The Blank in LA and opening in Seattle in 2011); Learning Russian, a story of identity theft (produced at Hangar Theatre; published in 2008 by BPPI.); and Fly By Night (developed at Ars Nova and TheatreWorks in Palo Alto). He received the 2004 Best Comedy Award for his film Winning Caroline at the Ivy Film Festival and the Robert Sherman Award for Best Comedy Songwriting from Broadcast Music Inc. His short comedy, Life Without Subtext, will be published in a new anthology by Vintage in 2011. MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama, where he studied with Paula Vogel and Richard Nelson. He is currently working on commissions from The Denver Center Theatre Company and The Manhattan Theatre Club.
	Stacy O'Neill (GIRLS IN THE EDDY) Stacy's plays include Check Engine; Saltie; “A” Double Snake; Before, Behind, Beside, Between; and Pretend You Are Me. Her work has been seen or developed at The Flea, Primary Stages, Abingdon Theater and The Movement Theater Company. She has been a finalist or semi-finalist for just about everything she's ever wanted to be a part of, including The O'Neill, SPF, Seven Devils, PlayPenn, New Georges-The Jam and The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. Born and raised in Florida, Stacy has been a waitress in California, a bartender in London, a chambermaid in rural Scotland and most recently an assistant in the office of the Mayor. She is the co-founder of TMTC Moving up/New Works and a member of both the Movement Theater Company and the Dramatist Guild.