Beber Replaces Wright At O'Neill Playwrights Conference

The National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center has made a change to the summer season.  Due to a scheduling conflict, Craig Wright's play MISTAKES WERE MADE will not appear in this summer's 2008 Playwrights Conference.

Wendy C. Goldberg, Artistic Director of the National Playwrights Conference has replaced the play with playwright Neena Beber's latest work ITALIAN SOJOURN.  Goldberg will direct.  Casting information will be released shortly.

Goldberg adds, "I am sorry to not have Craig with us this summer, but am delighted to be able to support the work of Neena Beber in the development of her inventive story."

ITALIAN SOJOURN By Neena Beber
Directed by Wendy C. Goldberg
Performances: Friday, July 18 at 8:15pm and Sunday, July 20 at 5:15pm in the Dina

An American exchange student goes on the lam in Italy after the murder of her roommate.  Escaping arrest, she traverses the Italian landscape, experiencing its beauty and its sorrows.  A chance encounter with the victim's brother causes her to reexamine her ideas about fate, free will, guilt and freedom.  Very loosely based on a current true crime case, ITALIAN SOJOURN explores the passions of youth and the seductions of foreign lands.

Neena Beber's plays include Jump/Cut, The Dew Point, Hard Feelings, Thirst, A Common Vision, Tomorrowland, The Brief but Exemplary Life of the Living Goddess, and Failure to Thrive.  Misreadings, a ten-minute play, was commissioned and produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival and published in The Best American Short Plays 1996-1997 (Applause).   A Body of Water and Help are included in The Back Stage Book of New American Short Plays 2005, edited by Craig Lucas.  She is an alumna of New Dramatists and current member of The New York Playwrights Lab and Primary Stages New American Writers Group.  Neena has contributed articles to American Theatre, Theatre, and Performing Arts Journal, and her fiction has been published in The Sun. She has written extensively for film and television; her writing for children's television has garnered several Emmy and Ace-Award nominations.