Hwang, Lucas, Fuller set for Cherry Lane's 2010 Mentor Project

The award-winning playwrights David Henry Hwang, Charles Fuller and Craig Lucas will serve as mentors to three emerging playwrights as part of the Cherry Lane Theatre's 12th annual Mentor Project in 2010, it has been announced by Cherry Lane Theatre's artistic director, Angelina Fiordellisi.

The 2010 Mentor Project - which each year pairs three aspiring writers one-on-one with three master dramatists in writing, workshops, rehearsals, production and performance over the course of the theatre season - will develop and present new works by Ruth McKee (STRAY), mentored by Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang; Winter Miller (PATERNITY), mentored by Craig Lucas; and Nate Rufus Edelman (THE BELLE OF BELFAST), mentored by Charles Fuller, according to Ms. Fiordellisi, creator of the Mentor Project.

Chosen annually from scripts submitted by the Cherry Lane National Nominating Committee, and selected by the 2010 Mentor playwrights, the Mentor Project fellows will work one-on-one with their advisers, have private and public readings of their plays, attend workshops and receive 12 performance showcase runs at Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St. in NYC) in the spring.

The Cherry Lane's Mentor Project has become an important national launching pad for new writers and their work: in 2010, Mentor Project playwright Sheila Callaghan's play LASCIVIOUS SOMETHING will be presented Off-Broadway in a co-production between Cherry Lane Theatre and the Women's Project, and just last year Cherry Lane presented an Off-Broadway engagement of Deidre O'Connor's critically-acclaimed play JAILBAIT.

Previous Mentor Project playwrights whose work has been produced subsequent to their tenure at Cherry Lane: Rajiv Joseph, "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" (Center Theater Group); David Adjmi, "Stunning" (Lincoln Center Theater 3); Katori Hall, "The Mountaintop" (London's Battersea, West End); Jakob Holder, "Bedtime Solos" (Old Red Lion Theater, England); Colin McKenna, "The Secret Agenda of Trees" (Wild Project, NYC); Allison Moore, "Slasher" (Humana Festival); Christopher Shinn and Sam Forman.

Winner of the Village Voice Obie Award and the Dramatist Guild's James Kirkwood Award for fostering new work by contemporary playwrights, the Mentor Project continues Cherry Lane Theatre's long and rich history of presenting works by both emerging and seasoned playwrights that reveal the social consciousness of our ever-changing world. Now 83 years old, and New York's longest, continuously-running Off-Broadway theatre, Cherry Lane is known as "the birthplace of Off-Broadway," and since the 1920's has been home to such iconoclastic writers as O'Neill, Saryan, Auden, Albee, Odets, Orton, Mamet, Lanford Wilson, and many others.

Charles Fuller won the Pulitzer Prize for A SOLDIER'S PLAY, and is the author of the plays ZOOMAN AND THE SIGN and THE BROWNSVILLE RAID. He will mentor Nate Rufus Edelman's THE BELLE OF BELFAST, about a teenage girl who turns to the comforts of her local parish after her parents are killed by a terrorist's bomb.

2010 Mentor David Henry Hwang won the 1988 Tony Award for Best Play for M BUTTERFLY, and was a Tony nominee in 1998 for GOLDEN CHILD. He will mentor Ruth McKee, whose play STRAY concerns what happens to a well-educated, successful Caucasian couple when their adopted son from Uganda is threatened with expulsion from school.

Mentor Craig Lucas is the author of the plays PRELUDE TO A KISS, RECKLESS and THE DYING GAUL; he was a 2005 Tony nominee for his book of the musical A LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA. His play SMALL TRAGEDY won the 2004 Obie Award for Best Play. Mr. Lucas will mentor Winter Miller, whose play PATERNITY is about a woman who wants to have a baby and be a single mother, and the man who happens to love her madly and challenges her decision.

For information about the Mentor Project and the Cherry Lane Theatre, visit the Cherry Lane website at www.cherrylanetheatre.org or call 212 989 2020.

Photo credit: Walter McBride