R&D GROUP /
The Civilians' Research & Development Group
The Civilians' R&D Group is comprised of theater artists from various disciplines (writers, directors, composers, etc.) interested in exploring diferent strategies for making investigative theater and being a part of The Civilians' community of artists. We define "investigative thetaer" broadly, meaning any creative process of inquiry that feeds the creation of a work of theater. Methods may include research, a community-based focus, interviews, company-devised strategies, or other experimental strategies of the artist's design. The artists meet biweekly for nine months to share and discuss their methodologies and the resulting work with the group, R&D Coordinator EllaRose Chary, and Artistic Director Steve Cosson. The generative artists in the group (writers, composers writer/actor, writer/director, etc.) are expected to attend the majority of sessions; regular attendance is critical andshould be considered when applying. Additionally, a group of directors are chosen to complete the group. Directors are invited to meetings, but not expected to attend at all; the directors become more active at the end of the season, with the direction of the public readings. The intention of the group is that each writer will finish a draft for public presentation by May, 2014. Given the nature of the process, it is understood that these drafts will be in various stages of development when they are presented. Please visit the above links to learn more about past participants and their projects.
To apply for the 2013-2014 R&D Group, writers should submit their contact information, a one paragraph bio, and a one to two paragraph proposal for an investigative project to be developed in the group that includes some thoughts as to why you are interested in working on this project in this particular group. The project may already be in process or be completely new; however, it is important that the artist has the intention to be actively developing the work during the period of the group. A collaborative team of two people may apply together (writer and composer, for example), but in such cases, both artists must commit to full participation.
Directors should submit their contact information, a resume, and one paragraph discussing what they hope to get out of being a member of the Group and outlining their expected availability from September to May. Deadline for applications is July 14, 2013.
Please send applications to EllaRose Chary at rdgroup@thecivilians.org.
Click HERE for blog posts by our artists about working with the investigative method and their projects!
Current participants in the 2012-13 Group are:
Emily Ackerman
César Alvarez
Jess Chayes
Matt Dellapina
Snehal Desai
Madeleine George
David Mendizábal
Carly Mensch
Gina Rattan
Mia Rovegno
Mei Ann Teo
A. Zell Williams
Emily Ackerman is a playwright and actress based in NYC. Her first play, ReEntry (co-authored with KJ Sanchez), is based on interviews with members of the Marine Corps and is published by Playscripts. ReEntry has received critical acclaim at Two River Theater Company, Urban Stages, Baltimore Center Stage, Roundhouse Theatre, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, the Segerstrom Center, and at numerous military bases around the US and Europe (tour produced through a Department of Defense contract with American Records). Ms. Ackerman has been a member of The Civilians since 2006. With The Civilians: This Beautiful City (Original Collaborator/Performer; Colorado Springs, ATL/Humana Festival 2008, Studio Theatre, Center Theater Group, Vineyard Theatre), Gone Missing (Barrow Street Theatre, Off-Broadway Cast Album, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville), developmental workshops of The Great Immensity and Shadow of Himself, multiple cabarets at Joe’s Pub, and at the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA. Additional performance credits include: Arena Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, California Shakespeare Theater, Seattle Repertory Theater, and Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. Ms. Ackerman also volunteers with the Writer’s Guild Foundation and Wounded Warriors, teaching writing workshops to veterans, their families, and caregivers. She has also taught workshops in writing and acting at Emerson, Colorado College, Connecticut College, and for international artists through The Kennedy Center.
PROJECT: Is forgiveness real? Does revenge ever really work? An exploration of personal and political relationships that have a lasting effect on our lives, and how we move on when it all falls apart.
César Alvarez is a composer, lyricist, performer and writer. His Civil War sci-fi musical Futurity premiered at American Repertory Theater in 2012 and was a co-commission of Walker Art Center. César's band, The Lisps, has released 4 albums and played hundreds of shows around the country since 2005. César is co-founder and resident composer of LA-based dance theater company Contra-Tiempo. He has presented work at Lincoln Center, The Stone, Roulette, Dixon Place, The Tank, Joe’s Pub, HERE, The Zipper Factory, Dance New Amsterdam, Ars Nova, Walker Art Center, ASU Gammage, UCLA Royce Hall, Ford Amphitheater, RedCat, and CounterPulse, among others. Recent composition credits: 3 2's; or AFAR by Mac Wellman (Dixon Place), Full Still Hungry for Contra-Tiempo (Ford Amphitheater); Damned Beautiful for Helix Dance (Edinburgh Fringe). César was a Meet The Composer/Van Lier Fellow in 2004. He received a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory and Master of Fine Arts from Bard College. He teaches record production, songwriting, and world music at Bloomfield College, and is a visiting artist in the Sarah Lawrence College Theater Program. César writes about music and theater at www.MusicIsFreeNow.org.
PROJECT: The Universe is a Small Hat is a musical about quantum physics, space, and the sheer improbability of existing at all.
Jess Chayes is a Brooklyn-based director and co-artistic director of The Assembly. Recent directing includes: Seized Up (Studio Tisch), Salamander Leviathan (Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub), HOME/SICK (The Assembly, NY Times and Backstage Critic’s Pick), The Sister (The Brick Theater), and #serials@theflea. She has developed work with The Culture Project, Mixed Phoenix, Extant Arts, The Shelby Company, P73, The Public Theater, The Working Theater, Old Vic/New Voices and Woodshed Collective. Jess is a member of the New Georges Kitchen Cabinet and a founding member of the Jam artists lab. She is currently the AD on Peter and the Starcatcher.
Matt Dellapina: As an actor, Off-Broadway credits include Outside People (Vineyard Theatre, Naked Angels); The Dream Of The Burning Boy (Roundabout), In The Footprint (Irondale Center), underneathmybed (Rattlestick), Telephone (Cherry Lane Theatre, Foundry), Tender (Public Theater, SPF), #9 (59E59, Waterwell), Gone Missing (Barrow Street Theatre), (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch (59E59), The Parrot (Flea Theater), The Angel Project (Lincoln Center Festival). Regional: New York Stage & Film, Humana Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Playhouse, City Theatre, Studio Theatre (Helen Hayes Award nom.), Sundance Institute, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Chautauqua Theater Company, London’s Soho Theatre. Associate Artist of The Civilians. Member of The People’s Improv Theater and Packawallop’s The Pack. Film/TV: Safe (dir. by Boaz Yakin), Proud Iza, Casual Encounters, “CSI:NY” (CBS), “Onion SportsDome” (Comedy Central), “Law & Order” (NBC). As a writer, his work includes No No No Yes, which premiered at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest this fall, followed by a month-long run at The PIT. In addition, he’s written the play The Great Pretenders, the screenplay Sunday Morning and the television pilot "My New Old Roommate."
PROJECT: Barabbas was the criminal spared for Jesus in a violent public vote. This faithless man walked away from the pages of history to live a life racked with the personal cost of his freedom. Here's what might have happened, with songs.
Snehal Desai is a NYC based freelance director. He has worked at theaters across the country including: the Old Globe, the Public, Ars Nova, the Lark, Dad’s Garage, the Alliance, Theatre Rhinoceros, and the Old Vic in London. Snehal is a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and was a literary fellow with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has also been a resident director at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and Theater Emory and was the inaugural recipient of the Drama League’s Classical Directing Fellowship. A playwright as well as a director, Snehal is the author of Finding Ways to Prove You’re NOT an Al-Qaeda Terrorist When You’re Brown and the Sita/Sati trilogy. Snehal has a MFA in Directing from Yale University.
Madeleine George's plays include The Zero Hour, Precious Little, and Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England. Her work has been produced and developed by 13P, Clubbed Thumb, Soho Rep, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, City Theatre in Pittsburgh, About Face Theatre in Chicago, The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, Two River Theater Company in New Jersey, Shotgun Players and Berkeley Rep in Berkeley, and the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, among other places. She has received a MacDowell Fellowship, the Princess Grace Playwriting Award, and the Jane Chambers Award, as well as commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club and Playwrights Horizons. Seven Homeless Mammoths... was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award; The Zero Hour was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Madeleine is a resident playwright at New Dramatists, an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and the Lark Playwrights' Workshop, and a founding member of the Obie-Award-winning playwrights collective 13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.: www.13p.org).
PROJECT: A play with music about the Nun Study, a decades-long research project in which an epidemiologist tracking the onset of dementia in a group of schoolteacher nuns in Minnesota is ultimately changed by his subjects. A play that wonders about the distance between critical thinking and the mystery of the infinite, between trying to save the world through service and trying to heal it through science.
David Mendizábal (Director) is one of the Producing Artistic Leaders of The Movement Theatre Company [TMTC], based in Harlem, NY. At TMTC he directed the North-American premiere of Bintou by Koffi Kwahulé, translated by Chantal Bilodeau, which was nominated for three AUDELCO Awards. He is currently developing a new play entitled look upon our lowliness, a spoken word elegy for a chorus of male voices by Harrison David Rivers. Other directing credits include: The Reel Ari Gold Written and Performed by Sir Ari Gold, ¡Matador! by Luis Vega, Naomi Iizuka’s Polaroid Stories, Migdalia Cruz’s Fur, and Regina Taylor’s Inside the Belly of the Beast. He was a 2011 Directing Intern at Williamstown where he directed And She Would Stand Like This by Harrison David Rivers, The Power of Hypnotism by A. Chekhov/I. Schleglov, and Two Hundred Feet and Counting by Marco Ramirez. Assistant directing credits: Wild With Happy (Public), Wild Animals You Should Know (MCC), Touch(ed) (Williamstown), and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Second Stage). B.F.A. New York University/Tisch School of the Arts. 2012 Fall Drama League Directing Fellow.
Carly Mensch first met The Civilians as an over-eager undergrad research assistant at Dartmouth College. Since then she has written the plays Oblivion (Steppenwolf’s First Look Festival, Westport Playhouse), Now Circa Then (Ars Nova, TheatreWorks), All Hail Hurricane Gordo (Humana Festival, Cleveland Play House) and Len, Asleep in Vinyl (2nd Stage/Uptown Series). Her work has been read/workshopped at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Center Theatre Group, The Kennedy Center, Marin Theatre Company, New York Stage & Film and Ars Nova, where she was the 2008 Playwright-in-Residence and a founding member of Play Group. She volunteers with the 52nd Street Project, an organization that creates theater with inner city kids, and wrote for three seasons on the Showtime original series, Weeds. MFA-ish: Juilliard.
PROJECT: An investigation into the life of a Tanzanian former soccer star / teacher / soldier / Finnish N.G.O. worker / action hero / war photographer / street philosopher and self-described man of the bush. A man with many stories, many of which may not be true.
Gina Rattan Resident Director: Billy Elliot (Broadway). Associate Director: Cinderella (Broadway, Winter 2013) As Director: The Tin (Sam French Off-Off Broadway Play Fest 2012), SWEET TOOTH (FringeNYC + NYC workshop.), How Deep is the Ocean? (NYMF 2012), Twelfth Night (Old Globe, San Diego Intensive), Virtually Me! (tour Spring 2012), The Burning House (NY Workshop). As assoc/asst: Rated P…for Parenthood (Off-Broadway), Little House on the Prairie (Guthrie & First Nat’l Tour); Lorca in a Green Dress (Apostrof Fest., Prague); Show Boat (Royal Albert Hall, London); First Wives’ Club, King Lear, The Madness of George the Third, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Old Globe). Gina has directed several readings and workshops in New York, most notably several of NYU’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Thesis Projects. Graduate of the University of Michigan.
Mia Rovegno’s plays have been developed through the P73 Yale Summer Residency, Pataphysics retreat, The Civilians R&D Group, New Georges, Culture Project, Perishable Theater, and foolsFURY. A co-founder of Street Level TV (nationally syndicated on Dish Network/Free Speech TV), she has edited and produced documentary work with Democracy Now!, The Working Group, and Solday Productions. She has directed new work for Soho Rep, NYTW, The O’Neill, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, NYS&F/Powerhouse, The Lark, Atlantic Theater Company, New Dramatists, EST, Partial Comfort, A.R.T., Harvard Playwrights Festival, Hangar Theatre, Summer Playwrights Rep and others. Recipient of SDC Observership and MTC’s Jonathan Alper Fellowship; Nominee for Ockrent Directing Fellowship; Alum of The Drama League, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Women’s Project and Lincoln Center Directors Labs; New Georges Affiliated Artist and Partial Comfort company member. Former teaching fellow and guest lecturer at Brown and adjunct faculty at New College of California, she is currently an Assistant Professor at Hunter College. BS: Northwestern; MFA: Brown University. Recent directing: Ten Shades of Blue by Laura Marks (Partial Comfort), We Play for the Gods (Women’s Project), Good Goods by Christina Anderson (O’Neill), Edie and Alexander by Megan Mostyn-Brown (Rising Phoenix), The Tenant (Associate Director, Woodshed), The Civilians’ Let Me Ascertain You: Occupy #S17, OWS Cabaret, and Porn Part II (Joe’s Pub), The Divorce Tales: Live—A Conversation with The Civilians (Greene Space). Upcoming: Burnt Umber by Erik Ehn (LaMaMa).
PROJECT: The Afflicted A community comes together and falls apart when faced with a crisis they don't understand. A play about the human impulse to make sense of the unfathomable. Inspired by the mystery of the twitching girls of Le Roy, NY.
Mei Ann Teo is a Singaporean theatre/film maker based in New York and creates work by investigating lived reality to promote consciousness and social justice. As Resident Artist at Pacific Union College for seven years, she founded a drama program that developed original work through collage and documentary theatre techniques, and continues this work in Singapore and China. She has worked with The Public Theater, Berkeley Rep, Urban Stages, Theatre of Yugen, Crowded Fire, Cutting Ball, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her work has been seen throughout the U.S. and at international festivals, including Belgium's Festival de Liege, Edinburgh International Fringe, INFANT Experimental Theatre Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, Edmonton Fringe Festival, and the Montreal World Film Festival. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Theatre Directing at Columbia University.
A. Zell Williams was born and raised in California's San Joaquin Valley and started his career as an actor in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work as a writer explores themes of race, religion, class, and violence in contemporary America. Zell was the recipient of the David Calicchio/Marin Theatre Company Emerging American Playwright Prize (Mill Valley, CA), the National New Play Network's Smith Prize for Best Political Play, the Rita & Burton Goldberg Award (New York University,) and Reverie Productions' Next Generation Playwright's Award (New York City.) He was a finalist for the Yale Drama Series for Emerging Playwrights (Yale University,) the Kennedy Center's Lorraine Hansberry Award, Aurora Theatre's Global Age Project Award (Berkeley, CA,) Kitchen Dog Theatre's New Works Festival (Dallas, TX,) and the Van Lier Fellowship at the Lark Play Development Center, as well as a semifinalist for the Princess Grace Award, the Ashland New Play Festival (Ashland, OR,) Centre Stage Theatre's New Works Festival, (Greensville, SC,) and Victory Gardens Theatre's Ignition Festival (Chicago, IL.) He was one of two inaugural African American Fellows with Steppenwolf Theatre Company. His plays include BLOOD/MONEY, In A Daughter's Eyes, A Motherless Child, The Pledge Drive, and The Urban Retreat. Zell holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Santa Clara University, is an MFA candidate in Dramatic Writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and is a member of Ars Nova’s Play Group.
PROJECT: An investigation into how people's views on racial identity effect their actions in child rearing. The play will look behind the time-honored "White parents/Black parents" jokes of Cosby, Pryor, and Rock, to reveal the effects of spankings, groundings, and when accepted norms stray beyond punishment and into child abuse.
JASON GROTE is a playwright and television writer based in Brooklyn. His plays include 1001, Civilization (all you can eat), Maria/Stuart, Hamilton Township, Darwin's Challenge, Safe in Heaven Dead, Box Americana, and This Storm Is What We Call Progress. He is a staff writer for the NBC/Dreamworks show Smash, produced by Steven Spielberg, Theresa Rebeck, and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, premiering in January 2012. Current projects include a a commission from ACT/Seattle about Stalin and Shostakovich and a musical adaptation of1001 with composer Marisa Michelson. His work has been produced and developed at The Museum of Modern Art, The Sundance Theater Lab, Playwrights Horizons, The O'Neill, The Denver Center, New York Theater Workshop, Portland Center Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, Page 73, Ensemble Studio Theater, Voices of Change - Festival for New American Plays (Theater Bielefeld, Germany), Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, The Foundry, Mass MoCA, The Luminato Festival, Soho Rep, The Lark, The Glej Theater (Slovenia), Salvage Vanguard, HERE, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, Baltimore Centerstage, Collaboraction, Theater @ Boston Court, and elsewhere. He is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and was the 2006 P73 Playwriting Fellow. His plays have been published by Samuel French and Playscripts Inc., and in The Back Stage Book of New American Short Plays 2005 (edited by Craig Lucas), and his comics debut will take place in the upcoming Significant Objects anthology from Fantagraphics, edited by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. He occasionally blogs at Hilobrow.com, voted one of Time magazine's top blogs of 2010.
PROJECT: An investigation of Stalin and Shostakovich.
JON KERN's full-length works include Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them, Do Not Disturb: a hotel experience, Telefonesis: The Art of Mental Murder, and We in Silence Hear a Whisper. His short plays have been performed at Ensemble Studio Theater, The Brick, The Flea, City Theatre's Summer Shorts festival, and in the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival. Graduate: University of Chicago (BA), Columbia University (MFA). Member: the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, The Old Vic New Voices Network, and Ars Nova Play Group. Alumnus: EST/Youngblood. Awards & Grants: 2010-2011 Van Lier Fellowship in Playwriting from New Dramatists, 2010 Alfred P. Sloan Commission, 2010 Heideman Award finalist, 2010-2011 travel grant from the Netherlands-America Foundation.
PROJECT:An investigation into how people confront destructive compulsive behavior, specifically internet addiction, and work to accept that as part of their identity as they move forward. Or, using a completely different set of words, how to get to know yourself in an age of anonymity.
ALIX LAMBERT's feature length documentary "The Mark of Cain" was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and aired on Nightline. She went on to produce additional segments of Nightline as well as produce 7 segments for the PBS series LIFE 360. Lambert has written for a number of magazines including Stop Smiling, ArtForum, and The LA Weekly, among others, and is an editor at large for the literary journal OPEN CITY. She wrote Episode 6, season 3 of Deadwood: "A Rich Find" (for which she won a WGA award) and was a staff writer and associate producer on John From Cinicinnati. As an artist Lambert has exhibited her work to international critical acclaim, showing in The Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art, The Georges Pompidou Center, and the Kwangju Biennnale, to name a few. Her monograph: MASTERING THE MELON is available through D.A.P. Her book THE SILENCING is available through Perceval Press. Her book RUSSIAN PRISON TATTOOS is available through Schiffer Publishing, and her book CRIME is available through Fuel Publishing. CRIME, USA which she conceived and directed was recently staged at Joe's Pub. Lambert is an associate artist with the Obie award winning theater group The Civilians. She is currently in production on two feature length documentaries: He/She/He (about gender identity in Albania and Samoa) and Mentor (about teen suicide and bullying at Mentor High in Mentor Ohio). She just completed, in collaboration with David McMahon, a feature length documentary: Bayou Blue (about serial killer Ronald Dominique in Louisiana). She recently received an NEA consortium grant in order to produce 2 new works that will be presented at RealArtWays in Hartford Connecticut.
PROJECT: Return from Mars, inspired by a true-life crime mystery set in Brooklyn. Andre Carmichael is haunted by the voice and image of a little girl who he has never met. For health reasons he seeks out his biological mother after having spent most of his youth in foster care, and in so doing he learns the truth about his life.
BRANDON MILLER is an actor and Associate Artist of The Civilians. New York/Off-Broadway: Deathbed (Apparition), Armed and Naked in America (Naked Angels), The Attic and Arabian Night (The Play Company), Hannah and Martin (Epic Theatre Center). International: (I Am) Nobody's Lunch with The Civilians (Edinburgh Fringe/London's Soho Theatre), The Green Violin (SPBA, St. Petersburg, Russia). Regional: The Glass Menagerie, Blue and An Ideal Husband (Dallas Theater Center), Family Stories: Belgrade (Market Theater). Feature Film: Adam and Steve. Graduate of Yale Drama School.
PROJECT: An exploration of the American Rehabilitation System.
MIA ROVEGNO's plays have been developed by P73, Culture Project and New Georges, and produced by Perishable Theater and fools FURY. She has directed new work for Soho Rep, The Civilians, Ars Nova, The O'Neill, A.R.T., Clubbed Thumb, Partial Comfort, New Dramatists, Dixon Place, Hangar Theatre, Summer Playwrights Rep and others. A co-founder of Street Level TV (nationally syndicated on Dish Network/Free Speech TV), she has edited and produced documentary work with Democracy Now!, The Working Group, and Solday Productions. Mia has performed with Redmoon Theater, Shadowlight, Bread and Puppet, Intersection for the Arts, and others. She is a recipient of the P73 Yale Summer Residency, SDC Observership, and MTC's Jonathan Alper Fellowship; Alum of The Drama League, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and Lincoln Center Directors Lab; Member of Women's Project Directors Lab and The Jam/New Georges Affiliated Artist. Mia is a graduate of Northwestern and the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium, where she studied with Paula Vogel, Bonnie Metzgar, Chay Yew and Lisa D'Amour. Former teaching fellow and guest lecturer at Brown; Currently Assistant Professor in the Hunter College Theatre Dept. Recent collaborations: Good Goods by Christina Anderson (O'Neill), The Tenant (Associate Director, Woodshed Collective), The Civilians' Pretty Filthy II (Joe's Pub) and The Divorce Tales Live (WNYC Greene Space). Upcoming: Burnt Umber by Erik Ehn (LaMaMa), We Play For The Gods (Co-creator,Women's Project).
PROJECT:: nothin's gonna change my world, an exploration of the dislocated and relocated in search of that mythological place called home.
HEIDI SCHRECK's plays include There Are No More Big Secrets, which premiered at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in 2010, directed by Kip Fagan (Time Out New York and New York Magazine Critic's pick); and Creature, presented off-Broadway in 2009 by New Georges and Page 73, directed by Leigh Silverman. Creature is published by Samuel French and the New York Theatre Review. Her other work - including Stray, Backwards into China, and Mr. Universe - have been developed by Manhattan Theatre Club, Teatro de Facto, The Foundry, The Vineyard Theater, Soho Rep, Printer's Devil Theatre, On the Boards, and National Public Radio. She was the 2009 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow and a member of the Soho Rep Writer's Lab. As an actor, Heidi has worked at the Roundabout Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, Berkelely Repertory Theatre, Center Theatre Group, The Long Wharf, Sundance Theatre Lab, New York Stage and Film, Bay Street Theatre, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, Clubbed Thumb and Actors Theatre of Louisville. She has received two Obies, a Drama Desk, and the Theatre World Award. Television/Film: Hedda Gabler, Perfidia, The Good Wife.
PROJECT: The Forum. After a series of brutal layoffs at Sutton, McGrath and Feingold, June Se's colleagues intervene to help him save his job and fulfill his human potential through group awareness training.
JACKIE SIBBLIES DRURY is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation... will have its world premiere at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater in 2012. Her work has been featured in Victory Gardens' 2010 Ignition Festival as well as a new work festival at The Magic Theatre. She is a graduate of Brown's MFA playwriting program, where she received the David Wickham Prize in Playwriting. Jackie is a 2010-12 New York Theater Workshop playwriting fellow and a participant in a series of workshops creating performance-based collaborations between artists in New York and Tehran. This summer she was in residence at the MacDowell Colony and participated in The Bay Area Playwrights Festival.
PROJECT: The Archive Project, exploring the possibility, utility, and artistry of documenting one's own life.
CHURCH LAUGH by Quincy Long, directed by Kathleen Dimmick
SAFE IN HEAVEN DEAD by Jason Grote, directed by Jesse Jou
SOUND by Don Nguyen, directed by Donya K. Washington
PAGE NOT FOUND by Mia Chung, directed by Mia Rovegno
CRIME, USA by Alix Lambert, directed by Birgitta Victorson
THE FEW by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by David F. Chapman
UNTITLED PHOTO PROJECT by Jackie Sibblies Drury, directed by Lila Neugebauer
CHURCH LAUGH by Quincy Long, directed by Kathleen Dimmick
Church Laugh is about a priest, his wife, his bishop and his racehorse.
QUINCY LONG Productions include: People Be Heard, Playwrights Horizons; The Only Child, South Coast Rep, Costa Mesa, CA; Wedding Pictures, Ensemble Studio Theatre; The Lively Lad, New York Stage and Film and The Actors Theatre of Louisville; The Virgin Molly, The Atlantic Theatre Company and Berkeley Rep; The Joy of Going Somewhere Definite, the Atlantic Theatre Company (directed by William H. Macy and starring Felicity Huffman) and the Mark Taper Forum. Joy was optioned by Icon Films, and Joy, People Be Heard, and The Lively Lad were published by Dramatists Play Service. The Virgin Molly was published by Playscripts, Inc. Current projects: Quincy Long's new play, The Huntsmen, recently won a Sundance Time Warner Storyteller's Award, and was workshopped at Playwrights Horizons and read at New York Theatre Workshop. A musical, Loulou, is in development with Ginger Cat Productions in Toronto, and an opera, The Embalmer's Daughter, is in development with American Lyric Theatre. The Gospel According to Trains, a new play, was recently awarded a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts. Quincy is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and a member of New Dramatists and Ensemble Studio Theater. He is from Warren, Ohio and lives in New York City.
SAFE IN HEAVEN DEAD by Jason Grote, directed by Jesse Jou
Safe in Heaven Dead: a play about the Beat writers in 21st-century America.
JASON GROTE's plays include 1001, Maria/Stuart, Hamilton Township, This Storm is What We Call Progress, Box Americana, Darwin's Challenge, and Civilization (All You Can Eat). He has been commissioned by ACT, The Denver Center, Clubbed Thumb, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Working Theater, and The Keen Company, and his writing has been published by Samuel French and Playscripts, Inc., and in American Theater and The Back Stage Book of New American Short Plays 2005, edited by Craig Lucas. His work has been produced or developed at The Museum of Modern Art, Playwrights' Horizons, The O'Neill, The Denver Center, New York Theater Workshop, Portland Center Stage, The Atlantic, Woolly Mammoth, Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, P73, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Bielefeld Festival (Germany), Soho Rep, The Lark, The Flea, The Glej Theatr (Slovenia), Salvage Vanguard, HERE, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, Baltimore Centerstage, Rorschach Theater, Collaboraction, Theater @ Boston Court, Mixed Blood, REDEYE, and elsewhere. He was co-host for The Acousmatic Theater hour on WFMU in Jersey City, and was the screenwriter for What We Got: DJ Spooky's Quest for the Commons. He is a resident playwright at New Dramatists. Visit him at www.jasongrote.com.
JESSE JOU recently graduated from Yale School of Drama, where his credits include La Ronde, 99 Ways to Fuck a Swan, and the things are against us [les choses sont contre nous]. His other credits include Take on Me: Adoption, Addiction, and a-ha (New York International Fringe Festival); My Mom Across America (The Kitchen Theatre Co., Ithaca, NY); Estrella Cruz [The Junkyard Queen], Mask Ritual: Electra,Flowers and Other Stories, Language of Angels, and Passing (Yale Cabaret). At Yale, he was the recipient of the Edgar and Louise Cullman Scholarship. Currently, he serves as staff repertory director for the Acting Company, going on tour with their productions of Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors.
SOUND by Don Nguyen, directed by Donya K. Washington
George and Barbara are getting married soon. They are both deaf. Barbara wants to get a cochlear implant in order to hear. George, being a proud member of the Deaf community, will have none of that. Meanwhile, a hundred thirty years earlier, Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, is observing the deaf population on Martha's Vineyard, in hopes of finding a cure for deafness. SOUND culls information from interviews and existing research materials in order to build a theatrical exploration into the worlds of both hearing and deaf cultures and the ongoing struggle for one's identity in both worlds. **This reading will be American Sign Language interpreted.
DON NGUYEN was born in Saigon, Vietnam, grew up in Lincoln Nebraska, and currently resides in New York City. Don studied theatre at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and he served as the Artistic Director of the Shelterbelt Theatre in Omaha from 1999-2003. As a writer, Don's full-length plays include Red Flamboyant (finalist O'Neill National Playwrights Conference), The Man From Saigon, and Three to Beam Up (The Shelterbelt Theatre, Nebraska Arts Grant recipient). His one-act play The Harlequin Maneuvre was published in The Best of the Strawberry One-Act Festival, Volume 1. It has subsequently been produced in New York and Canada. Other one act plays include Fat Ugly Vampire (Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NY), The Imaginary Association of Flight Attendants (Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NY), Love 160 (The Pack Lounge Series 3, Robert Moss Theater, NY), Sexual Chocolate (The Secret Theatre, Long Island City), Girl Reflected, Look A Lion, The Dragon Lord and the Fairy Queen (commissioned by The Lincoln Community Playhouse), A Decision of Extraordinary Magnitude, and a collection of eight Halloween plays produced by The Shelterbelt Theatre. Don writes for The Living Newspaper and is a member of the New York Public Theater's 2008 Inaugural Emerging Writers Group.
DONYA K. WASHINGTON: Come Back to Me by Jesse Cameron Alick and Manikato adapted by Jesse Cameron Alick (Shakespeare in Paradise, Bahamas), Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws(Target Margin Theatre), Spunk (Penobscot Theatre, Bangor, ME), Jump Jim Crow by Jesse Cameron Alick, music and lyrics by Justin Levine (Subjective Theater Company), Penang by Jim Larocca (Boo Arts and NY Midtown Int'l Theatre Festival), Dear Diary by Alicia Ramsay (MCC Youth Company FreshPlay), Bear Market by Kara Manning (Women's Project Lab), Cold Keener (Target Margin), The Minstrel Show of Minstrel Shows! (Brown/Trinity Consortium), Poof by Apples Vargas (MCC Youth Company FreshPlay), 30 Patriot Actors by Erin Browne (Columbia), a reading of Menders by Erin Browne (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre), Forever Never Comes by Enrique Urueta, Cipher by Cory Hinkle (Brown New Plays Festival). Williamstown. Training: MFA, Directing - Brown University/Trinity Rep; BFA, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Member of the 2008/2010 Women's Project Lab. Van Lier Directing Fellow 2009, Second Stage Theatre.
PAGE NOT FOUND by Mia Chung, directed by Mia Rovegno
Three of "the best and the brightest" prepare to take their places in life after school.
MIA CHUNG's plays include You for Me for You, Exquisite Corpse, and Can I Help You? Her work has been developed by the Magic Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Mu Performing Arts, the Brandeis Theatre Company, Rites and Reason Theatre, and PlayGround in San Francisco. She received a Creative Arts Council grant for a video project on Aristotle's Poetics, a Sloan commission for a play about science fraud, and had a residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts. Her play about Cape Verde will be produced in Spring 2011 at Rites and Reason Theatre. She recently graduated from Brown's MFA playwriting program, where she studied with Paula Vogel, Bonnie Metzgar, Erik Ehn and Lisa D'Amour.
MIA ROVEGNO is a Brooklyn-based director, playwright, and puppeteer who devises, adapts and collaborates with living playwrights. Her plays Kill The Keepers (co-written with Dan LeFranc) and Apartment have been developed by P73, Empire Street Lab at Perishable Theater, and foolsFURY. Mia has directed and developed new work for Soho Rep, A.R.T. New Voices Series, New Dramatists, The Flea, Dixon Place, Brown/A.R.T. Institute Bakeoff, Harvard Playwrights Festival, Hangar Theatre, Brown New Plays Festivals and Summer Playwrights Rep. Founding artistic director of HummingbirdWORKS and company member with foolsFURY, she has performed with Redmoon Theater, Shadowlight, Bread and Puppet, and Intersection for the Arts, among others. Recent directing: You Better Sit Down: A Conversation with The Civilians (WNYC Greene Space), Science Is Close by Kate E. Ryan (reading, Soho Rep), Origin Story by Dan LeFranc (Hangar Theatre), Love in the Time of Channukah by Joshua Elias Harmon (Ars Nova ANT FEST and Hangar Theatre), The Blind (Lincoln Center Directors Lab), and Tartuffe (Brown Dept. of TAPS). Selected assistant directing: AD/Choreographer with Anne Kauffman (Dot, Clubbed Thumb), Daniel Sullivan (Time Stands Still, MTC/Broadway), Ken Rus Schmoll (What Once We Felt, LCT3), Chris Bayes (The Servant of Two Masters, Yale Rep). A co-founder of Street Level TV (nationally syndicated on Dish Network/Free Speech TV), she has edited and produced documentary work with Democracy Now!, The Working Group, Solday Productions, and others. Mia received her BS in Performance Studies from Northwestern and MFA in Directing from the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. Former teaching fellow and guest lecturer at Brown, and adjunct faculty at New College of California, she is currently an assistant professor in the Hunter College department of theatre. Mia is a recipient of MTC's Jonathan Alper Directing Fellowship and SDC Directing Observership, and a 2010 Ockrent Directing Fellowship nominee. She is a member of the Women's Project Directors Lab and an alum of the Drama League, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and Lincoln Center Directors Lab. Upcoming: Romeo and Juliet (Hunter College); Burnt Umber by Erik Ehn (Soulographie).
CRIME, USA by Alix Lambert, directed by Birgitta Victorson
Crime, USA is an investigation into the world of crime in the United States, which began one year ago in residency at The Studios of Key West, in Key West, Florida - Mile Zero, and will continue in cities throughout America. Through a series of interviews with criminals, cops, crime writers, pawnshop owners, the FBI, the DOJ, experts on serial killers, former gang members, and one man named Monkey Tom, a portrait of America and its crime comes into focus. The differences and similarities between the cities create an intricate topography of American crime.
ALIX LAMBERT's feature length documentary The Mark of Cain was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and aired on Nightline. She went on to produce additional segments of Nightline as well as produce 7 segments for the PBS series LIFE 360. Lambert has written for a number of magazines including Stop Smiling, ArtForum, and The LA Weekly, among others, and is an editor at large for the literary journal OPEN CITY. She wrote Episode 6, season 3 of Deadwood: "A Rich Find" and was a staff writer and associate producer on John From Cincinnati. As an artists, Lambert has exhibited her work to international critical acclaim, showing in The Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art, The Georges Pompidou Center, and the Kwangju Biennale, to name a few. Her monograph: MASTERING THE MELON is available through D.A.P. Her book The Silencing is available through Perceval Press. Her book Russian Prison Tattoos is available through Schiffer Publishing. and her book Crime is available through Fuel Publishing. She was recently Executive Producer for an hour-long segment on criminal tattoos for a series called Marked that aired on The History Channel.
BIRGITTA VICTORSON: Directing credits include In Quietness, by Anna Moench for Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater, Complete, by Andrea Kuchlewska at the SoHo Playhouse as part of the Fringe NYC Encore Series, A Christmas Carol and Paris by Night (Trinity Rep), The Book of Liz (Roadworks, Chicago), Iggy Woo (Brown/Trinity Summer Playwrights Rep, Providence) and co-directing Fatty Arbuckle's Spectacular Musical Review (Second City Theatricals, Chicago), which she also choreographed. She has also directed new works by Molly Rice, Cory Hinkle, Andy Bragen, Enrique Urueta and Elyzabeth Wilder. Birgitta recently assisted Steve Cosson on The Civilians' In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards. Choreography credits include The Encyclopedia of the Dead (Miloco Theatre, Prague, CZ) The Ghost's Bargain (Two River Theater, NJ), Among the Thugs (Goodman Theatre, Chicago), and Stupid Kids (Roadworks, Chicago) for which she received a Joseph Jefferson Nomination for Best Choreography. Birgitta is a graduate of Northwestern University, and she received her MFA in Directing from the Brown/Trinity Consortium. She is a member of SDC.
THE FEW by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by David F. Chapman
Inside a double-wide off some random interstate exit, a man named Bryan founded a newspaper for truckers, striving to bring meaningful news and insight to people "who have homes but are homeless, who are citizens of a place but who never stop moving." Vanishing shortly after he started it, Bryan returns years later and finds a very different paper than the one he started, and begins to wonder if true meaning and insight even exist anymore. The Few is an examination of how the isolated residents of rural America relate to the rest of the country and to one another.
SAMUEL D. HUNTER is a graduate of NYU, the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Julliard. Recent productions include Jack's Precious Moment (Page 73 Productions at 59E59), Five Genocides (Clubbed Thumb), I Am Montana (Arcola Theatre in London). His new play A Bright New Boise will be produced by Partial Comfort Productions at the Wild Project in September 2010, and his new play Norway will be produced regionally at the Phoenix Theater of Indianapolis and Boise Contemporary Theater in Winter 2011. His plays have been developed at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, PlayPenn, Ojai Playwrights Conference, the Lark's Playwrights Workshop, Julliard, LAByrinth Theater Company, Rattlestick, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and elsewhere. Awards: 2008-2009 PONY Fellowship from the Lark Theater, two Lincoln Center Lecompte du Nouy Awards, others. Internationally, his work has been translated into Spanish and presented in Mexico City, and he has worked in the West Bank with Ashtar Theatre Ramallah and Ayyam al-Masrah of Hebron. At Ashtar, he co-wrote The Era of Whales, which was performed in Ramallah and Istanbul. A native of northern Idaho, Sam lives in New York with his partner, dramaturg John Baker.
DAVID F. CHAPMAN: A proud Chicago native, David worked in theatre in many places. Highlights include performing his solo shows in Edinburgh, Montreal, Budapest, and London, directing Tennessee Williams in Ho Chi Minh City, leading a devised theatre workshop in Cambodia, and interning for the International Theatre Institute in Paris and NYC. David has directed for Ars Nova's ANT Fest, FringeNYC, Studio 42, Metropolis Opera Project, NYU Grad Acting, NYMF, New Leaf (Chicago), The Old Vic / New Voices TS Eliot Exchange (London), Millbrook Playhouse (PA), and Northwestern's Cherubs program. He has also directed readings/workshops for Reverie Productions, EST/Youngbloods, and the Lark, and has worked many talented playwrights including Matthew-Lee Erlbach, Anna Moench, A. Zell Williams, Bekah Brunstetter, Jason Grote, Andrew Muir, Joe Tracz and Philip Dawkins. Assisting includes The Pitmen Painters (MTC/Broadway), That Hopey Changey Thing (The Public), The Addams Family (Chicago & Broadway), plus Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, Encores!, and four productions at Chicago Shakespeare.. Awards: Fulbright to Hungary, Luce Scholarship to Vietnam, Chicago Artists Grant, Drama League Fall Fellowship. Training: BA with Highest Honors (UNC-Chapel Hill), DirectorsLabChicago.
UNTITLED PHOTO PROJECT by Jackie Sibblies Drury, directed by Lila Neugebauer
Untitled Photo Project is a fast-moving absurdist revue centering on the connections between the rise of photography in 20th century America with mortality, violence, the creation of popular culture.
JACKIE SIBBLIES DRURY recently graduated from the M.F.A. playwriting program at Brown, where she studied with Erik Ehn, Lisa D'Amour, Tracy Scott Wilson, and Chay Yew. While at Brown, she received a 2010 Weston Award for her play Jenny and Tommy are Very Much in Love, the David Wickham Prize in Playwriting, and was a 2009 Weissberger Award nominee. Her play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation... is being presented at Victory Gardens' 2010 Ignition Festival. Currently, Jackie is working on a play for Trinity Repertory Theater's resident acting company, and she is happy to be a 2010 New York Theater Workshop playwriting fellow.
LILA NEUGEBAUER is a freelance director based in New York City. Her recent directing work has been seen at Ars Nova, Cherry Lane Studio, The Brick, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, NYU Tisch/Atlantic Acting School, and Theater of the American South. Workshops/Readings: Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Dramatists Guild, EST/Youngblood, NYU Tisch Graduate Playwriting, and the Yale Playwrights Festival. New Georges Affiliated Artist, Drama League Fall Directing Fellow, EST Resident Director (2009-2010), member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab (2010-2011) and the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab.