Lark Play Development Center

MAY 2006 – Lark Play Development Center Producing Director John Clinton Eisner led a delegation of playwrights and artistic leaders to Romania last month as part of a pilot artist exchange program in partnership with the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, Romania. This program is funded in part by Theatre Communications Group, the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, the US Department of State, the Odeon Theatre and the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York through its New Drama program. The Lark group includes: playwrights Tanya Barfield (THE BLUE DOOR); Saviana Stanescu (a TCG fellow and an award-winning Romanian playwright who has been coordinating the ARTE project)
Kelly Stuart (THE LIFE OF SPIDERS); and Doug Wright (Pulitzer Prize/Tony Award, I AM MY OWN WIFE); as well as Gordon Edelstein, Artistic Director of Long Wharf Theatre and Randy Gener, senior editor for American Theatre Magazine. After returning from Romania the delegates will share their experiences in a special event at the Romanian Cultural Institute in NY on June 21st.

While in Romania, the Lark artists will participate in workshops at Odeon, work on the translations of their plays and attend events at the Romanian Writers' Guild, the American Cultural Center and UNITER (the Romanian equivalent to the Theater Communications Group). In addition, the delegates will attend shows at nearby theaters, including a performance of Quills by delegation member Doug Wright (Pulitzer Prize/Tony Award, I Am My Own Wife), directed by Beatrice Rancea, which has been running in Odeon's repertory for more than a year. Each U.S. playwright will be paired with a Romanian playwright to create, develop and refine a translation of one of his or her plays. Romanian playwrights involved in the program include: Ioana Ieronim, Alina Nelega and Peca Stefan. Excerpts of the resulting translations will then be presented in a public reading at the Odeon on Saturday, May 27th.

“The overall goals of the project are to explore translation methods that work for the unique demands of theater, to share and explore methods for developing new plays and theater works and to raise public consciousness about the role of theater in international diplomacy and the exchange of ideas,” explains Eisner “The hope is that we will create a network among US and Romanian theaters to encourage the production of plays and productions in translation in both countries.” To foster this exchange the next phase of the ARTE program will take place in 2007 when the Romanian writers will travel to NY to be in residence with the Lark where they will attend rehearsals of their plays and observe their work performed in the U.S. for U.S. audiences, attend shows at theaters and meet with U.S. artists to gain a better understanding of the U.S. theatre scene, and develop potential partnerships with playwrights and theaters for future creative collaboration.

The ARTE program is a part of the Lark's larger International Program, which encompasses collaborations and exchanges with artists and cultural institutions from around the world. The program employs the Lark’s play development strategies to help artists of different cultures communicate and create strong work that is accessible to diverse audiences. Like its domestic program, the Lark’s International Program is focused on supporting each playwright’s intention and helping him/her to create the play he/she wants to write. Because language and cultural barriers can make this process more difficult, the help of translators, interpreters and members of the community are enlisted to make sure the artist has all necessary resources to work on his or her play. The Lark has active exchanges with artists and cultural institutions from Romania, Mexico, Wales, the Netherlands, France, Ivory Coast, India and Japan. Saviana Stanescu is Director of International Exchange at the Lark, where she supports international resident writers in New York City and leads our initiatives in Eastern and Central Europe, including the American-Romanian Theatre Exchange (ARTE). Stanescu’s work at the Lark has been supported by a Fulbright Grant and a grant from the New Generations Program at Theatre Communications Group.

Saviana Stanescu and Lark Play Development Center are participants in the New Generations Program, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the American theatre.

DELEGATE BIOS:

TANYA BARFIELD’s plays include: BLUE DOOR, DENT, THE QUICK, THE HOUDINI ACT, 121º WEST and PECAN TAN. She has workshopped her plays at the Sundance Theatre Lab, New York Stage & Film, New York Theatre Workshop & Seattle Rep’s Women’s Playwright Festival. Short plays produced: MEDALLION (Women’s Project/Antigone Project), FOUL PLAY (Royal Court Theatre, Cultural Center Bank of Brazil), OF GIRL & WOLF and WANTING NORTH (Guthrie Theatre Lab, published in: Best 10-Minute Plays of 2003. She wrote the book for the Theatreworks/USA children’s musical, CIVIL WAR: THE FIRST BLACK REGIMENT. She was a recipient of the 2003 Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, 2005 Honorable Mention for the Kesselring Prize for Drama, a 2006 Lark Play Development/NYSCA grant and she has been twice been a Finalist for the Princess Grace Award. Tanya has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, the Mark Taper Forum and South Coast Repertory. Her play, BLUE DOOR, received a world-premiere at South Coast Repertory and will appear at Playwrights Horizons, Seattle Repertory and Berkeley Repertory in the 2006/2007 season.

GORDON EDELSTEIN is in his fourth season as Long Wharf Theatre’s Artistic Director. Under his artistic leadership, Long Wharf Theatre has received 10 Connecticut Critics Circle Awards. Mr. Edelstein has directed the world premieres of BFE (transfer to Playwrights Horizons), The Day the Bronx Died, A Dance Lesson, and The Times. He also directed We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!; A New War; and A Moon for the Misbegotten which transferred to Hartford Stage. With his direction, Long Wharf Theatre has commissioned new works like Craig Lucas’ Singing Forest, which subsequently became an AT&T OnStage Award winner, and next season’s David Cale and Dael Orlandersmith project. Prior to assuming artistic leadership of Long Wharf Theatre, Mr. Edelstein helmed Seattle’s ACT Theatre. Under his leadership, ACT was named “Best Theatre” three years in a row by readers of “Seattle Weekly.” Mr. Edelstein directed the Broadway revival of The Homecoming as well as A Skull in Connemara. His other New York credits include The Day the Bronx Died, The Last Yankee, and Tales of the Lost Formicans. He has consistently commissioned and produced award winning new works like Mac Wellman’s Sincerity Forever (Obie Award), Paul Zaloom’s House of Horrors (Obie Award), Pamela Gien’s The Syringa Tree (Obie Award), and Philip Glass’ The Penal Colony. Mr. Edelstein received an Emmy Award nomination for is work on Abby My Love (CBS). Mr. Edelstein has served on the Boards of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation and the Seattle Fringe Company, House of Dames. He has taught and guest lectured at NYU, University of Iowa, Grinnell College and Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. He received a BA in History and Religious Studies from Grinnell College in 1976 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Grinnell College in 2003.

RANDY GENER is an award-winning writer, critic, editor and the author of the plays Love Seats for Virginia Woolf and What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn into Four Pieces, among others. His multimedia-theatre productions, I Look Divine and Wait for Me at the Bottom of the Pool, premiered at La MaMa E.T.C., HERE Arts Center, Theater for a New City, Dixon Place, Asian American Writers Workshop and other venues. A founding critic of the online theatre magazine, The New York Theatre Wire (www.nytheatre-wire.com), Gener was a drama critic for The Village Voice in the 1990s. He has worked as a dramaturge for the Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, Laguna Playhouse in California, Pan Asian Repertory Company in New York City and is presently associated with Roundabout Theatre Company and Denver Center Theatre Company. His writings have appeared in the several anthologies, the Cambridge Guide to the American Theatre, and in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Star Ledger, The Daily News, Time Out New York, Applause, New York, Filipinas Magazine, Norsk Shakespeare og teatertidsskrift , and other major publications. He is presently the senior editor of American Theatre magazine, based in New York City.

SAVIANA STANESCU has published four books of poetry and three of drama including: The Inflatable Apocalypse (Best Romanian Play of the year 2000 UNITER Award), Black Milk and Final Countdown (Antoine Vitez Center Award, Paris). Her plays have been presented in the U.S., the U.K., France, Austria, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro and Romania. New York productions include Yokastas (directed by Richard Schechner) at La MaMa Theater, Balkan Blues at the New York Fringe Festival, Waxing West and Lenin's Shoe at The Lark Theatre, Jelly-Love and Peanut-Butter at Manhattan Theatre Source, and Aurolac Blues (published in "Plays and Playwrights 2006") at Metropolitan Playhouse and Here Arts Center. She had readings and workshops at The Lark, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Foundation, Immigrants Theatre Project, Julia Miles Theatre, Voice&Vision, Actors' Studio, Traveling Jewish Theatre, Martin Segal Theatre etc. Saviana holds an MA in Performance Studies (2001-2002 Fulbright fellow) and an MFA in Dramatic Writing (John Golden Award in Playwriting), both from Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. She is currently a TCG fellow with The Lark Theatre Company, playwright-in-residence of East Coast Artists (director Richard Schechner), a member of Women's Project lab, and adjunct faculty at NYU, Drama Department.

KELLY STUART received a Guthrie New Play grant and commission which enabled her to spend extensive time in Eastern Turkey to research and write SHADOW LANGUAGE dealing with the Kurdish “problem”, American idealism, and political asylum issues in the US. SHADOW LANGUAGE was presented in workshop performance by the Guthrie in January. Other plays include: MAYHEM (Royal Exchange, Manchester), HOMEWRECKER (The Evidence Room in LA and the Schaubhuene in Berlin), THE LIFE OF SPIDERS (Culture Project downstairs), DEMONOLOGY at Playwrights Horizons and the Mark Taper Theatre, and THE SQUARE ROOT OF TERRIBLE (a children's musical) MARK TAPER FORUM P.L.A.Y. PROJECT. She has been New Dramatists writer in residence at The Royal National Theatre’s Studio in London, and has had her work presented in readings at The Royal Court. Ms. Stuart is a recipient of a NYFA Fellowship, the Whiting Fellowship. She is a lecturer in the Theatre Department at Columbia University.

DOUG WRIGHT received the Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award for Best Play, the Drama Desk Award, a GLAAD Media Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama League Award, and a Lucille Lortel Award for his play I AM MY OWN WIFE, which premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2003. Earlier in his career, Mr. Wright won an Obie Award for outstanding achievement in playwriting and the Kesselring Award for Best New American Play from the National Arts Club for his play QUILLS. He went on to write the screenplay adaptation, making his motion picture debut. The film was named Best Picture by the National Board of Review and nominated for three Academy Awards. His screenplay was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and received the Paul Selvin Award from the Writer’s Guild of America. His stage work has been produced in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, London, Stockholm, Bucharest, Krakow, Dublin, Budapest, Brasov and Viterbo, among other cities. Titles include: THE STONEWATER RAPTURE, INTERROGATING THE NUDE, WATBANALAND, BUZZSAW BERKELEY and UNWRAP YOUR CANDY. For career achievement, Mr. Wright was recently cited with an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writer’s Guild of America, East and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. Currently, he serves on the board of the New York Theater Workshop. He lives in New York with his partner, singer/songwriter David Clement.

LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER provides American and international playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work. The Lark nurtures artists at all stages in their careers, inviting them to express themselves freely in a supportive and rigorous environment. It is a home for an emerging artistic community committed to reshaping how we see and experience the world. Leading the organization are Producing Director John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director Daniella Topol. To learn more about the Lark please visit us on the web at www.larktheatre.org .

Plays developed at the Lark regularly go on to full productions at theaters across the country. Last year Sarah Ruhl's THE CLEAN HOUSE was featured at the Yale Rep, South Coast Rep and The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia and it will be performed this year at Lincoln Center, THE SCENE by Theresa Rebeck was performed at this year’s Humana Festival and DEAD CITY by Sheila Callaghan was presented as part of the Public Theater's New Works Now Series and New Georges will produce its world premiere at 3LD Art and Technology Center in June, 2006.

THE ROMANIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK aims to promote Romanian culture for an American and international public and to build sustainable connections and collaborations between American and Romanian cultural organizations. The institute acts as catalyst in the all the artistic fields, but also towards the strengthening of academic links and the enhancement of a new perspective about Romania and its present cultural dynamics. The NEW DRAMA PROGRAM launched this year will stimulate the development of long-term exchange between Romanian and American playwrights.