Nashville Rep Announces 2015-16 Ingram New Works Lab Playwrights

Nashville Repertory Theatre is proud to announce its Ingram New Works Lab Playwrights for the 2015-16 season.

The Ingram New Works Lab is an artistic home for emerging playwrights to share and develop new work, hone craft, receive direction, and springboard themselves into the next phase of their writing career, providing a fertile environment for the emergence of great new plays. The Lab is a generative residency in which selected playwrights will create a new work for the theatre. Nashville Rep will serve and support selected playwrights as they work to develop their play from the idea stage to a muscular full draft.

Martha Ingram, Nashville Rep co-founder and strong supporter of the Ingram New Works Project, notes, "I am confident that the Ingram New Works Project will not only have positive contributions to the Nashville theatre community, but also the American theatre landscape as a whole."

In an article about the 2015 Ingram New Works Festival, American Theatre Magazine said, "Indeed, the Ingram lab and its culminating festival seem to have brewed up something of a special new-play sauce, and the playwrights who've come through it -- including not only the lab writers but the fellows -- have become its greatest advocates."

This season, Nashville Repertory Theatre welcomes Jonathan Alexandratos, Helen Banner, Edith Freni and Kyle John Schmidt as its Lab Playwrights, who will work under the direction of Nashville Rep's Playwright-in-Residence and Lab Director Nate Eppler. Complete bios for the lab playwrights and quotes from each about why they are ready to be an Ingram New Works Lab Playwright can be found below.

Each season, the Ingram New Works Project culminates in the Ingram New Works Festival, a celebration of new plays born and fostered in the Project that season. The festival features staged readings, performed by our talented Nashville actors, of each of the new plays created by our Lab Playwrights and Fellow. This season's festival is slated to run May 4-14, 2016.

Nashville Rep is a non-profit theatre bringing classic and contemporary theatre to Nashville that inspires empathy and prods intellectual and emotional engagement in audiences.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS:

Jonathan Alexandratos is a New York City-based playwright. His work has been presented at the NY Fringe Festival (2012), the Last Frontier Theatre Conference (2013), the Pop Culture Association Conference (2013), and other venues. He has received commissions from the Abingdon Theatre Company and Truant Arts. An avid comic book and action figure fan, Jonathan is always looking for ways to combine comics and pop culture with the stage. His most recent play, Duck, uses comic book tropes to craft an animal allegory about the nature of abuse. This play was completed at Mission to (dit)Mars, a playwrights' lab in which Jonathan is a member. Jonathan holds an MFA in Playwrighting from Queens College, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Beyond the stage, Jonathan co-programs Page 23, an academic literary conference centered on comics and pop culture that operates under Denver Comic Con. He is currently editing a collection of scholarly essays on action figures, which will be out late next year. Jonathan hides out at Queensborough Community College, where he teaches English. He also speaks Klingon.

"I can't wait to return to my home state of Tennessee and work on a new play with the best theatre in town! I'm sure that this journey, which I'm lucky to take with three other talented playwrights, will have a game-changing effect on my work." - Jonathan Alexandratos

Helen Banner is a Manhattan based playwright. She grew up in the British Channel Islands and studied at Cambridge and the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, where she completed her MFA in Dramatic Writing and was awarded the John Golden Graduate Playwriting Award. Helen is an associate artist with New Georges and a member of The Jam and the Inaugural Writer/Director Lab at Everyday Inferno Theatre Company. Her work has been developed at New Georges, the Wild Project, Dixon Place, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Lark, the Great Plains Theatre Conference and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. Helen has been a Finalist for a 2015 InterACT 20/20 Commission and a Semi-finalist for the Gulfshore Playhouse New Works Festival 2014 and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2014. Her play Soldier Love was a Semi-finalist for the Stanley Drama Award 2015 and a Finalist for the Newman/Woodward Prize 2015.

"It feels fantastic to be starting a new play at such an important hub in the new play landscape. I'm thrilled to be part of a Lab bursting at the seams with talent and energy and I can't wait to see where we travel in our year together." - Helen Banner

Edith Freni holds both her BFA and MFA from NYU's Department of Dramatic Writing. Her work has been produced, read and developed by theaters around the country. Edith is a two-time nominee for the prestigious PONY award, has been a finalist for the Jerome Fellowship and the Heideman award, and was a semi-finalist for the 2015 P73 Playwriting Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for L. Arnold Weissberger Award, the Humanitas Prize and the Francesca Primus Award. She was a Kilroy's List Honorable mention in 2014 (Total Power Exchange) and 2015 (The Stroke). Edith was a long-time member of Youngblood and is also a member of Obie-winning Partial Comfort Productions. Her work is published by Playscripts, DPS, Smith & Krauss and Applause. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia where she is the inaugural Emory University Playwriting Fellow. (Photo by Brian McConkey.)

"The Lab's format is one of the main reasons I decided to apply and I can't wait to take full advantage. Not only of the time to focus on this brand new play, but also of all the other brilliant brains that will be in the room. This is the way I like to work." - Edith Freni

Kyle John Schmidt is a writer from Montezuma, Iowa. His plays have been produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville (Take 10 Apprentice Showcase and the Humana Festival), Crashbox Theatre, the Kid Magicians, Play-in-a-Bar, the Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival, Theatre Southwest, Pittsburgh New Works Festival, University of Texas New Theatre, the David Mark Cohen New Works Festival, and read at the Stage West New Play Festival. He has been a finalist for the Humana Festival, PlayPenn, the Lark's Playwrights' Week, and the Princess Grace Award. Furthermore, Kyle is a winner of the Heideman Award and a recipient of the Theatre Masters Award. He received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers.

"I am completely, totally, and haphazardly over the moon about being part of the Ingram New Works Lab. If I ever won the lottery, the Ingram New Works Lab is exactly what I'd buy with my winnings: enthusiastic collaborators, talented writers, a hungry audience, and a year to develop plays in a legendary town." - Kyle John Schmidt

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