@dramatistsguild  @robflorence_rob

For The Dramatist, I generally interview playwrights and write about theatre companies, but ArtSpot Productions is such an outside-the-box spiderweb of ambitious vision that I couldn’t begin to describe their work without writing a book. So let’s go straight to the horse’s mouth: Founding Artistic Director Kathy Randels.

           Q: How would you describe ArtSpot?

           A: Since our founding in 1995, we’ve been producing original works of performance and theater by professional, emerging, student and incarcerated artists, focused on the creation and touring of original multidisciplinary performances and the use of performance techniques and training to foster healing in all the communities we encounter. We use theater as a tool for self-empowerment, strengthening individuals, building communities and undoing racism, sexism and other oppressions by helping participants create and perform work that examines their own lives. In 1996, we founded a weekly dance and theatre workshop dedicated to the mental, emotional and spiritual rejuvenation of the inmates at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel, Louisiana. And for over fifteen years, we worked with Students at the Center — a writing program based in the New Orleans public schools — to help students create monologues, performances, videos and more, based on stories from their own lives and on research into the history of Louisiana’s civil rights movements. We believe that all stories and voices within a community need to be expressed, and that performance is an essential element of collective healing for all communities, especially those whose voices are not often heard. Our primary goal is serving the artists and audiences of the city of New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana, but our work has also been presented in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Colombia, Denmark, Mexico, Montenegro, New Zealand, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Slovenia, Wales, and the following U.S. states: AK, AZ, CA, CT, DC, FL, GA, HA, IL, IO, KY, MA, MD, MN, MS, NC, NH, NY, OK, OR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, VT, WA, and WY.

           Q: Describe your process.

           A: We use at least a year-long process to create each of our original works. We begin with an idea, usually brought forth by what we refer to as “the instigator.” The instigator begins to assemble the team. We first work with our ensemble members and then reach out to other artists to join the project.  It is a big commitment because the research and creation period takes so long.  Indeed, because we do not begin with a play that is already written, we need more time because we have to create “the play” (i.e. the book, text or even dramaturgy) of the piece as we go along.  Many of our works have been created with a consensus process and as you can imagine, that takes even longer.  Imagine how long it would take to write a piece with five-thirteen other people all fighting for their brilliant idea of where and how the piece should go! I have most often been the instigator, on the following projects: Rage Within/Without; How to be a Man in the 21st Century; Lower 9 Stories; The End and Back Again, My Friend; Rumours of War; To Flee, Flee This Sad Hotel; New Orleans Suite; Beneath the Strata/Disappearing; Spaces in Between; Go Ye Therefore… Other instigators and projects have included: J. Hammons: Chekhov’s Wild Ride; J. Hammons and me: Venus Vulcan Mars & The Dancing Dwarf; Anne-Liese Juge-Fox: The Maid of Orléans; Lisa D'Amour: Nita & Zita; Jan Gilbert: Lakeviews: A Sunset Bus Tour; Jeff Becker: Flight; Ashley Sparks: Kiss Kiss Julie; Nick Slie, Moose Jackson and me: Loup Garou; and Nick Slie: Cry You One. Our next big project, The Sea of Common Catastrophe, is being led by designer/director Jeff Becker.

           Q: What about your collaboration with DG member Lisa D’Amour?

           A: If we’ve had a resident playwright/muse it has been Lisa D'Amour. The first piece she wrote and directed with us was Nita & Zita (in development and on tour from 2000-2005.)  This has been our only OBIE Award-winning piece. She wrote this and we learned it, like a “normal play!” Although she did draw heavily on my fellow performer Katie Pearl and my actual personalities for the writing of this piece, she also wrote as a collaborator on two of our other pieces: Flight and Kiss Kiss Julie. Lisa is in an ensemble herself (PearlD'Amour) and grew up, like me, in a time when devised ensemble theatre was catching fire, so she felt pretty at home in our rehearsal rooms and is an amazing collaborator.

           [photo caption: Cry You One]

           [photo caption:  Kiss Kiss Julie]

           [photo caption:  Loup Garou]

           [photo caption:  Rumours of War]

rflorence@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild  @GwydionS

           Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably noticed that DC recently played host to the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival: more than 50 new plays, all written by women, produced by more than 50 theater companies in DC. Quite an achievement.

           The mission of the festival was to “highlight the scope of new plays being written by women, and the range of professional theater being produced in the nation’s capital.” Given the quality of the work that appeared our stages, it’s safe to say that the mission was, in fact, accomplished. But did the festival actually move the needle on gender parity… which was, it would seem safe to assume, its raison d’être? The unfortunate but honest answer: a bit, but only time will tell whether the changes will stick.

           According to the early results of this year’s DC Theater Demographic Study, which I conducted with my partner Olivia Haller, 36.7% of the plays being produced this season were written by women. (It’s a preliminary number—our final report will be issued this coming spring—but it’s at least 95% accurate.) That 36.7% seems like progress. It represents an increase over the previous three years, during which we saw numbers of 28.7% (2014-15), 25.9% (2013-14), and 21% (2012-13), after all. But a quick dig below the surface tells a more complicated story.

           The first number that gave us pause was 23, which represents the number of plays whose authorship would STILL have to change from male to female to achieve parity. Another 23 plays in a season that only includes 180 overall: it seems like a tall order, especially given the fact that the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival was a one-year phenomenon. We may, in fact, see a bit of a regression next year, rather than continued progress, though only time will tell.

           (On the other hand, 23 plays isn’t THAT huge a number. There are only 44 theaters in our study, after all, so if half of them take one more step forward, we might be there. Fingers crossed?)

           Here’s another data point that seems to be worth examining: 38.9%. That’s the percentage of new plays in the current season as well, a figure that’s bumped up quite a bit from the previous two seasons (32.6% and 30.2%, respectively, in 2014-15 and 2013-14).

           (For context, our analysis divided the season into three types of productions: new plays, which included first, second, and third productions; plays by living playwrights; and plays by dead playwrights.)

           During a season in which DC theaters produced a significantly larger number of world premieres than they ever have before, where did those production slots come from? They were largely taken from what we might call the entrenched power base of classical theater: the dead playwrights, whose share of the season fell from 22.1% to 18%. (Plays by other living playwrights fell, too, but less sharply: from 45.3% to 43.1%.) Seems like a victory for those of us living and writing in the 21st century, no? Let’s hope it holds, though it’s safe to assume a bit of a regression here, too, now that the Festival is over.

           And the final number to take a look at: 16.2%. That’s the number of plays in this year’s DC theater season that were written by playwrights who live in the DC metropolitan area. It represents a slight uptick from last season (15.6%), which was itself a big jump from two seasons ago (12.6%)… but the number three seasons ago was pretty much the same (16%) as it is now, so there’s no clear trend. Perhaps a DC Voices Theatre Festival might make sense somewhere down the road, too?

           And perhaps, at the end of the day, the only thing that will actually move the needle on gender parity is… well, gender parity: a commitment by theaters to maintain a five-year or seven-year rolling average of 50% plays by women. Then we won’t need any festivals at all. We’ll be able to celebrate Women’s Voices all the time…      

gsuilebhan@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguil @teresacwash

          The Bishop Arts Theatre Center will never be the same. On October 8, 2015, the Dramatists Guild Fund’s Traveling Masters Program made its way to the Dallas area and Terrence McNally graced our stage. It was a wonderful Dallas audience of thespians, playwrights, writers, reviewers and arts enthusiasts on hand to give Terrence McNally a standing ovation from the moment his foot stepped on stage. He held us all captivated with memories of how his third grade teacher brought Shakespeare to life, the rousing success of his first production and Broadway debut staged in New York, and his five decades as playwright. Terrence talked openly and candidly about his career—the fierce praise and vehement criticism of his work– and we were hanging on every word. He reminded us that theatre used to be a place where people talked about issues that were important to them, and he challenged us to write stories that provide an important bridge to understanding between cultures.

           Sixty years ago, fourteen-year old Emmett Louis Till was abducted, terrorized and brutally beaten for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi while vacationing with his family. Till lived in Chicago with his mother and grandparents and in August of 1955 he was invited to visit his relatives in Mississippi. On the fateful day he and his cousins stopped at a local convenient store, Till went in to buy bubble gum. The owners of the store were a white couple and the wife was working behind the counter. Emmett had a speech impediment and was taught to whistle to articulate his words. While inside, he began a conversation with the white woman behind the counter and got nervous then started to whistle. His actions were misconstrued and in the middle of the night, Emmett Till was taken at gunpoint from his uncle’s house by two white men who beat him mercilessly, shot him in the head and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. His face was disfigured beyond recognition. When her son’s body returned to Chicago, Mamie Till-Mobley decided to have an open casket funeral and invited the media for the entire world to see the magnitude of racism. It was the searing event that changed America and galvanized the civil rights movement. In 1999, Mamie Till-Mobley co-wrote The Face Of Emmett Till with David Barr III to capture all of the circumstances surrounding the death of her only child. It’s a painfully powerful script that reminds us that freedom is not free.

           Today, young black boys are still victims of unspeakable violent crimes at an accelerated alarming rate. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 87% of hate crime victims were targeted because of their race, sexual orientation and religion. History books are being re-written primarily in Texas, and the Emmett Till stories are being left out. Last season, 13.1 million people flocked to New York to see Broadway shows that generated $1.3 billion dollars in sales primarily to be entertained. In a recent interview with best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates, he commented, “It’s not the job of literature to make people feel great about themselves. It’s not even the job to inspire people. One of my favorite pieces of art is The Wire. I don’t read Joan Didion to feel better about the world.” (Full disclosure: For thirteen years, we only considered comedies during the submission process for our annual New Play Competition. Terrence McNally’s lecture forever changed the way I will plan our season at the Bishop Arts Theatre). What would happen if we placed high value on playwrights who were willing to hurtle themselves into the abyss and stretch their artistic muscles? What would happen if our elected officials valued the theatre as a catalyst for change? The harvest is ripe. If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.  

           [photo caption: Teresa Coleman Wash with Terrence McNally; photo credit: Scott Kirkham and the Dramatists Guild Fund]

twash@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild @cheryl_coons

            We surprised you, didn’t we? Perhaps when you read about The Count in the November/December issue of The Dramatist you were astonished to see Chicago leading the nation, both in productions of plays by female writers (36%) and productions of plays by writers of color (28.4%).

           Frankly, we surprised ourselves. We were surprised- or perhaps ‘chagrined’ is a better choice of words- that our percentages were not higher. We were especially shocked by that second statistic. We have a diverse and vibrant community of theatre artists, and we were saddened by the fact that only 28.4% of plays produced during the survey period, 2011 to 2014, were written by playwrights of color. (We’ll address that issue in a future report.)

           The Count surveyed the seasons of the following Chicago area theatres: Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Court Theatre, Drury Lane Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Marriott Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre and Victory Gardens Theatre. Many of these companies take their institutional citizenship seriously, and make extraordinary efforts in both outreach and inclusivity, but the Goodman Theatre deserves special recognition for its support of female writers.

           This year the Goodman announced that its Playwrights Unit, a special program designed to support and develop new work by Chicago playwrights, would have an entirely female slate of writers. (Kristiana Rae Colón, Sandra Delgado, Jenni Lamb, and Calamity West.)

Since its inception in 2010, the Playwrights Unit has tried to maintain gender parity, but Goodman Theatre Director of New Play Development Tanya Palmer said the choice of writers was based on genuine enthusiasm for their work and the particular projects they proposed, rather than the intention to select an entirely female cohort. “This year we had twice as many applicants as in the previous year,” said Palmer. “We narrowed the field to a group of 20 proposals for consideration, most of which happened to be written by women. We thought, it’s great that we have so many strong writers to consider, and it’s also great because they’re women.”

           Why is our community ahead of the national curve in producing the work of female playwrights? Palmer points out that a number of leaders of prominent Chicago theatres are female, and many highly visible directors coming out of Chicago are also female, including Anna D. Shapiro, who succeeded Martha Lavey as the Artistic Director of Steppenwolf Theatre this summer.

           Tara Mallen, Artistic Director of Rivendell Theatre, Chicago’s only professional theatre company dedicated to the work of women theatre artists, believes that key leaders in the Chicago theatre community go out of their way to provide opportunities for women. “Rivendell is here on the shoulders of many female artists: Martha Lavey from Steppenwolf, Sandy Shinner, formerly at Victory Gardens and now at Shattered Globe, Tanya Palmer at the Goodman.” Mallen values the mentorship Steppenwolf Theatre offered to Rivendell when they produced shows in Steppenwolf’s Garage Series. “We didn’t just have the use of the space- we were mentored by the Steppenwolf staff in all areas of production, box office, management. Our company grew exponentially every time we did a Garage show.”

           Rivendell now has its own space, and Mallen is dedicated to forming a network of Chicago theatres that produce new works by women. “It took me ten years to put the word ‘woman’ into our mission statement. Really, we look at universal challenges from a female perspective. Yes, there are a lot of Boys’ Clubs in Chicago, but even among them there is a realization that we are a community of artists first.”

           Perhaps this kind of “community first” thinking, as well as the Guild’s ongoing commitment to measure our progress with The Count, will move us toward the goal that Marsha Norman so beautifully articulated, “We want life in the arts to represent life as it is lived in the world. We want to hear the whole human chorus, not just the tenors, basses and baritones.”      

ccoons@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild @mkconroy 

            Happy New Year! Feliz Ano Novo! Sehe Bokmanee Bateuse! Gelukkig nieuwjaar! Language is beautiful, donchya think? For those of you (like me) without the capacity for multi-languages, in their respective order, all of the above wish you a Happy New Year in English, Portuguese, Korean, and German.

           This New Year offers an eclectic mix of theatre in and around Boston. At the Shubert Theatre, Love Letters by A.R. Gurney will be performed with Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal; at the Huntington, Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play; and at the Stoneham Theatre, the New England premiere of Sorry by Richard Nelson.

           If you are looking for something different and fun, put on your radar the New Works Festival at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, MA. The New Works Festival is an enjoyable festival consisting of two full-length plays and fourteen ten-minute short plays. The performances will occur on January 21 & 22 and January 29 & 30. For more information go to: www.firehouse.org

           And finally, February 4-28, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre presents Back the Night by Melinda Lopez, directed by Daniela Varon.

           Back the Night - With violence on campus rising to epidemic proportions, Em will have none of it. But when her best friend Cassie gets assaulted, Em makes some unexpected discoveries. Sometimes you do the wrong thing for the right reason.

           If you haven’t heard of Melinda Lopez, let me introduce you. Melinda is a prolific writer, actor and educator. She is also a generous mentor. I had the pleasure of asking Melinda a few questions about her journey in writing Back the Night.  

           MC: What was your process for writing Back the Night?  

           ML: Totally different that my usual process, which is obsess, research, sweat, dream, panic, write a few good scenes and then agonize. And repeat. Back the Night came all at once in a fury. I had been revisiting an experience from my past for several years now, and then one day, walking the dog, the play just arrived with a bang. I talked into my phone recorder so I wouldn’t forget and then I ran home and put it all down on flashcards. “This happens, then this happens– ” I wrote the actual text of the play over that week. Never has happened before– but it was pretty awesome.

           MC: Where did this story originate (a thought, a vision, a question)?

           ML: A memory. A question. An unanswered annoying question.

           I knew the play was really fast, really really intense, without rest or reflective moments. I knew it felt like a fist to the gut.

           MC: What have you learned from writing this play or any play in particular?

           ML: This play scares me. So did the last one. So did the one before that.

           MC: As an educator, what is the biggest lesson a student of the craft can learn?

           ML: The play reveals the form. Not the other way around. Every play is different and you have to listen and learn every single freaking time. All you can do as a student is practice feeling unprepared for the experience. That’s it. It never goes away. Although you do get used to it. A little bit. (a pause) I guess you can also see a lot of plays, read a lot of plays and talk to a lot of playwrights. That’s more proactive, right? And you build up a reserve of knowledge that can help you maintain your faith– that your voice matters. And that no one has ever written the play that you are working on right now.

           Melinda Lopez is a playwright, actress, and educator. She is the inaugural playwright-in-residence at the Huntington Theatre Company and a past Huntington Playwriting Fellow. She is among the first cohort to receive three-year-playwright-in-residency grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a “promising new voice in American Theatre.”

           Please feel free to contact me at mconroy@dramatistsguild.com or join the Dramatists Guild – Massachusetts page on Facebook where you can post up-to-date information about your work and/or organizations benefitting the playwriting community of New England.      

mconroy@dramatistsguild.com

The Language Issue of #TheDramatist is shipping now! @dramatistsguild members can preview it online at http://www.dramatistsguild.com/dramatistmagazine/

@dramatistsguild

This is a helicopter shot. I’m taking a look at what is accomplished by organizing playwrights in a community. Convening periodic meetings focused on some aspect of the craft is what the Dramatists Guild is doing through its network of regional representatives. What are the results? 

Ironically enough, increasing the membership rolls for the Dramatists Guild is not necessarily the result. And while that fact surprises me and to some extent disappoints me, I believe that this debt will at some point be paid.  

What the periodic meeting about our craft emphatically does do is to organize the theatre community itself, putting playwrights at the center of things. In Utah, the DG has convened meetings between playwrights and artistic directors, dramaturgs, independent directors, and will shortly organize actors interested in working on the development process with playwrights. Attendance at all these events has been excellent, energy high, ideas pumping. In other words, other members of the theatre community are delighted to participate when invited. Yet playwrights are the reason for these meetings; they remain the focus and the pivot.  

Such meetings also nudge other members of our community to appreciate the processes and needs of playwrights. For example, all six professional theatres in Salt Lake that were invited to a session about new play development have now put in place new programs focused not just on the occasional new play reading but on genuine new play development.  

Sessions organized by the DG also help to weave playwrights into the community. Because dramatists do so much of their work alone and experience most of their artistic highs without sharing, their colleagues can forget they’re even there. We might profitably remember, however, that those writers we admire most had continuous contact with other people in the theatre: Shakespeare, Moliere, Brecht, O’Neill, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, and yes, our first woman in this category, Lisa Kron. All of these playwrights had companies, worked consistently with people they knew, made something of a living close to the theatre. And in the meantime, they listened to the woes of others, watched processes evolve, and solved problems on the fly. Most contemporary playwrights lack that kind of experience. The typical process is to write the play and then send it out, even though fewer and fewer theatres produce plays written by people they don’t know. Most theatres, in fact, deal with the same playwrights or the same sources over and over. As a result, breaking into the business or augmenting one’s career has become entirely too difficult. Enhancing access for playwrights, therefore, has become critically important, and it’s something the DG is doing.  

Such periodic meetings also help focus local theatre artists on local theatre issues. It is now possible for playwrights and other theatre artists in this country to care about and contribute to the theatre in their own communities rather than to focus entirely on large regional theatres or theatres in New York City. Because the Guild is sponsoring these meetings, playwrights are gaining a bigger voice in the theatre where they live. 

Finally, the Guild is the only professional theatre organization to offer these kinds of meetings. And so playwriting comes downstage center, helping our colleagues and helping ourselves to create a network and enhance careers. What we’re doing is having genuine positive results on the lives and work of local writers and on the development of local theatres. No small task, no small result!   

 jjensen@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild @arpius 

The Cantilever Project started simply when three Dramatists Guild members, Ciji Guerin, Wayne Harrel and George Taylor, began a dialogue about their needs as playwrights. And it seems once they began talking, a lot of pieces fell into place. 

“Our first impulse was to produce a run of shows in a barn or something along those lines,” says Ciji Guerin, the group’s lead. “But then something happened.”  

As they presented their first scripts at Fertile Ground (Portland’s city-wide New Works Festival), a friendly theatre closed its doors and offered their non-profit status to the trio. Further discussions, plus an encouraging response from fellow playwrights, led the group to refine its goals.  

The current process begins with a rehearsed reading and talkback. Next comes an analysis of the play’s event chain, followed by individual work with qualified directors and dramaturgs until the scripts are production ready.

“I’d be happy just to get my own damn script production ready,” says George Taylor. “And if we create a process that helps others do that, too, all the better.”  

Ms. Guerin has something she likes to use when she directs which she calls an architectural breakdown. They all agreed they wanted that included as part of the process. 

An architectural breakdown involves taking a play that is not your own and breaking it down by listing the series of actions that take place in the play. It’s explained quite well on their website: http://www.thecantileverproject.com.  

The next step is finding the form (also explained by going to the web address above). 

Then it’s handed off to directors for a workshop that is designed to meet the needs of each play. 

The last step will be hiring dramaturgs, renting a space and putting the whole thing together in a fully staged reading.

 Mr. Harrel says, “We’re not trying to create an exclusive club. If you’re willing to do the work on your own script, on others’, and for the Project at large, we want to include you. The goal is to prove and improve your play by working hard and fast and frequently. Like a Chip Kelly football practice.” 

 The Cantilever Project hopes to create better plays through a process that challenges the work and supports the rewriting phase of development. “My play wasn’t good to start,” says Ms. Guerin, “But nothing works better for me than a working model like this. Through this process it gets honed and I figure out how to articulate its vision in a manner that gets the reader or audience response I’m striving for.” 

The Dramatists Guild has always encouraged innovative ways of getting new work developed. The Cantilever Project seems to be honing its own variation of similar goals here in the Pacific Northwest. 

fpiantadosi@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild 

Playwright and Guild member Catherine Rush has had readings and productions all over the country, but being descended directly from Founding Father Benjamin Rush, it is altogether proper that she makes her home in Philadelphia. 

 “Everything I write comes from some sort of personal experience. And my [family tree] is always in the background. Benjamin Rush was such a crazy, interesting character; I have ideas for plays that go way back.” And plays on the subject that are thirteen years old. So far, I just haven’t found the right approach…yet.” 

Three of Catherine’s plays began as commissioned works in Philadelphia. The most recent, The Loudest Man on Earth, received an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award in 2013 and was named one of the top ten plays of 2014 by the San Francisco Chronicle. The Philadelphia Theatre Workshop commissioned the play and asked Catherine for a piece that featured characters not typically portrayed on the American stage.   

“The kernel that sprouted that play was my relationship with and love for a man who happens to be deaf. My thought was ‘Deaf people are definitely not seen on stage often.’ However, The Loudest Man on Earth bears almost no resemblance to my life. There is an essential truth in every scene but all of them are embellished, fictionalized, twisted, sculpted and made strong for this medium.” 

As the Edgerton Foundation wrote, “The Loudest Man is unlike any play we have ever seen, let alone produced.” It is a deeply felt and a highly-imagined romantic comedy told in two languages, English and American Sign Language, and the dialogue is a mix of the two without subtitles or interpretation. Catherine succeeds in conveying the interior world of the deaf to a large theatre audience with a mix of comedy and heartbreak.   

Catherine has two other full-length plays that feature characters that are deaf and both incorporate American Sign Language and gesture as part of the dialogue: This Island Alone and A Nice Place to Live. Her approach to the subject matter mirrors the sentiments of Dramatists Guild in its stance on gender parity and diversity in the theatre.  

“I happen to have written three plays with deaf characters; I’ve written many other plays without them. However, I always ask how I might put characters with disabilities in my plays since there needs to be more representation on the stage. I see people that stand out as ‘different’ on the streets of Philadelphia all the time. Why don’t I see them on the stage? And not as some kind of ‘educational theater’, but just as people with friends and full lives. Wouldn’t it be great to have characters of all kinds and have that be just what is and not a play about ‘DIVERSITY’?” 

Asked about her ideas regarding her illustrious ancestor, Catherine confesses that she has two full length versions of a play about Benjamin Rush and the yellow fever outbreak of 1793.  

“This idea goes back fifteen years and so far, I just haven’t gotten it right…yet. Now that Hamilton is doing so well on Broadway, I should take another crack at it.”  Catherine’s newest play is set in an all-girls high school in 1978. MagPie follows the relationship of two girls in their senior year and their misinterpreted relationship by peers, teachers, and counselors. MagPie was chosen for the New American Voices series at the Landing Theatre in Houston, TX and for the workshop at the New Play Festival at Fullerton College in Los Angeles. More at www.catherinerush.com

[photo caption: Catherine Rush ] 

[photo caption: Loudest Man on Earth with Adrian Blue and Julie Fitzbatrick] 

[photo caption: Loudest Man on Earth with Cassidy Brown, Julie Fitzpatrick, Adrian Blue and Mia Tagano from left to right; at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley] 

ttirney@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild @kimstinson

What does the 2015-16 season hold for new works on North Carolina stages? Plenty. At various times throughout this upcoming season, professional theatres in North Carolina are offering unique works. There are new works scheduled for the stages of Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte, Burning Coal Theatre Company, the Stephen Hyers Theatre, North Carolina Stage Company and Triad Stage. 

The Patron Saint of Losing Sleep by Diana Grisanti was the winner of the NuVoices Festival in January 2015 under its previous title of Inc. Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte is producing this full production September 9 – 16. Grisanti’s piece explores insomnia from the perspective of a female protagonist. A work by a female playwright with a female protagonist is still a rarity (as we learned hearing the results of The Count at the Dramatists Guild’s National Conference in July); so, please, support this production if you are able to attend.  

Actors Theatre of Charlotte will again host their NuVoices Festival in January 2016. The deadline for submissions has passed; however, if you missed the deadline, you can submit next year. Also, attending the NuVoices Festival and supporting the playwrights whose work is in the festival is a good way to ensure that the project is sustained and is around to accept your future submissions. 

Being created by Koffee Dance Company, Burning Coal Theatre in Raleigh is offering a unique production on their second stage with Insomnia in June of 2016. According to Burning Coal, this piece is, “a presentation that explores the complex issues plaguing young African-Americans today. As this generation has adopted #staywoke, KDC performers explore relationships, trauma, and identity, forty years after the release of the battle cry song, ‘Wake Up Everybody.’” 

Seeking submissions of full-length plays through October 1, the North Carolina New Play Project is still living on after the passing of Stephen Hyers. See past North Carolina articles for more information on Hyers and past productions. The North Carolina New Play Project is typically produced in April. Watch for information on specific dates on their website where they also have information on other submission opportunities. http://www.greensboro-nc.gov/index.aspx?page=1474. 

Ask a Sex Abuse Survivor, written and performed by Michael Broussard, is slated for a September 15 performance at North Carolina Stage Company in Asheville. This original work intersperses Broussard’s personal experiences with audience discussion and is a work reflective of the current movement in theatre towards social, grass-roots activism.  

Janet Allard’s Vrooommm! is to be produced by Triad Stage in Greensboro, January 27 – February 14, 2016. About the first female NASCAR driver, this play sports an all-female cast playing both male and female roles. Another female written piece with a female protagonist, this production, like Grisanti’s, is one to support. 

Several (not all) of these companies offer discounts to Dramatists Guild members; so, be sure to ask when you contact the box offices for tickets. If there is a company that does not offer a discount, still be sure to mention to them that you would appreciate one and suggest that they contact me by e-mail.   

kstinson@dramatistsguild.com