Hartford Stage Now Accepting Applications for PROJECT: TRANSFORM

Hartford Stage is now accepting applications from high school student writers, actors, rappers, dancers, musicians, poets and artists to create and perform an original theatre piece as part of Project: Transform. Project: Transform is a free program that will bring together approximately 15 high school students from districts throughout Connecticut to create and perform their own piece of theatre, under the guidance of renowned guest playwright and Aetna New Voices Fellow Janine Nabers and director Hunter Parker.

Project: Transform will give Connecticut high school students the opportunity to speak their minds about the changes they would like to see in their neighborhood, community and world. Students will rehearse on weekends from March 1 through April 4, to create their own performance incorporating theatre, music, dance, spoken word, and other art forms based on the interests of the group in order to represent themselves, their families, neighborhoods, and communities with the purpose of celebrating cultures and inspiring transformation and change. The work the students create will culminate in a performance at Hartford Stage on Saturday, April 5.

A native of Houston, Texas, Janine Nabers is a 2013 graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship at Julliard. Her play Annie Bosh is Missing premiered in August 2013 at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. A 2012-2013 New York Theatre Workshop Playwriting Fellow, she is also a member of the MCC Playwrights Coalition and the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages. She was Page 73's 2011 Playwriting Fellow and is an alumna of the Ars Nova Playgroup, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellowship, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the 2010 and 2011 Sundance Theatre Labs.

Presently, Janine is working on commissions from Playwrights Horizons and Berkeley Rep. Mrs. Hughes was developed as the 2012 Williamstown Theatre Festival fellowship musical and was part of the 2013 Yale Institute for Musical Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club's 7@7 series, and the Theatreworks New Works Now Festival.

Past teaching artists from Project: Transform includes Colman Domingo, Michael Elyanow, Justin Ellis, Will Power, Lee Edward Colston II, and Radha Blank.

Applications for Project: Transform are due by Friday, February 7, 2014. For more information, visit www.hartfordstage.org/project-transform, or contact Chelsea Caplan at ccaplan@hartfordstage.org or 860-520-7244.