Tickets to Pipeline's Matchstick Series Now on Sale
By: Tyler Peterson Dec. 21, 2015
Each evening of the Matchstick Series: Strange Tongues will showcase all seven short one-act plays, imagined by the PlayLab Class of 2016 and inspired by seven works of poetry. The directors are Alison Beatty, Sash Bischoff, Liz Carlson, Tom Costello*, Felicia Lobo, Jesse Thurston, and Sarah Wansley. The show will feature Willy Appelman*, Fernando Contreras*, Tesiana Elie+, Sam Gonzalez, Doug Harris+, Melissa Mahoney, Sydney Matthews*, Sade Namei+, Erik Olson*, Danny Rivera+, Nicole Spiezio*, and Akyiaa Wilson. The production will include Production Design by Christopher Bowser, Costume Design by Heather McDevitt Barton with an original score by Composer and Music Director Chris Ryan. Produced by Natalie Gershtein with Stage Manager Kristy Bodall.
The PLAYLAB CLASS OF 2016, led by Pipeline's Artistic Development Manager, Colby Day*, features a group of seven writers who gather for a year-long series of monthly meetings. The PlayLab serves as a workshop for the playwrights to build new plays with constructive feedback from fellow writers, directors, and the artistic staff of Pipeline. Following the Matchstick Series, each PlayLab member will publicly present the full-length play that they have developed through the program in the Bonfire Reading Series in July 2016.
*Members of the Pipeline Ensemble
+These actors are appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association - Equity Approved Showcase
CLASS OF 2106:
Matthew Barbot is a writer and actor from Brooklyn, NY. His plays have been performed in New York, Miami, LA and Pennsylvania. El Coquí Espectácular and the Bottle of Doom was performed at The Brick's 2014 Comic Book Theater Festival, and will soon be performed at the Julia De Burgos Performing Arts Center; Infallibility was produced as part of the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival. Matt is pursuing his MFA in playwriting at Columbia University.
Jen Browne is a Brooklyn based playwright and actor. Her work has been presented by the New York Fringe Festival, Dixon Place, Caps Lock Theatre, Houston Fringe Festival, Unfringed Festival in Limerick, Ireland, ESPA/Primary Stages and others. She is a long standing member of playwright collective Lather Rinse Repeat. Her short plays A Game of [Sugar] Thrones and Chicago Style Hipsters can be found on Indie Theatre Now. She is a company member with the Deconstructive Theatre Project and has appeared in The Orpheus Variations (Under the Radar, 2015, Here Arts, 2013), Searching for Sebald and others. She studied collaborative and creative performance at Queens University in Belfast, N.I. and received a BA in Theatre Arts from Rowan University.
Gina Femia's plays include Super, or, How Clark Graves Learned to Fly (semi-finalist The O'Neill and The Princess Grace Award), For The Love Of (Sarah Lawrence Theatre Alumni Workshop, F*ck!ng Good Plays Fest at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre), The Violet Sisters (MadLab with NY Madness, Lather, Rinse, Repeat), and Mahogany Brown and the Case of the Disappearing Kid (The Brick's Comic Book Theatre Festival, Finalist Doric Wilson Independent Theatre Artist Award). She is a 2014/2015 Audrey Resident with New Georges (Accidental Burlesque). She is a member of Lather, Rinse, Repeat Collective, an affiliated artist of New Georges, a Company Member with NY Madness and a Company Collaborator with Everyday Inferno Theatre . She has received residencies with SPACE on Ryder Farm and the Grin City Collective. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College (Lipkin Prize in Playwriting).
Reina Hardy is a playwright from Chicago. Her plays, which usually contain magic and sometimes contain science, have been seen across the country, including at Rorschach Theatre in DC, the Vortex in Austin, and the 2013 NNPN National New Play Showcase. She's a Michener Fellow at UT Austin, winner of the 2014 KCACTF TYA Prize, finalist for the Terrence McNally Prize and the recipient of an Interact 20/20 Commission. This spring, she has worked on her plays at the Kennedy Center, the Write Now Conference at IRT, Inkwell in DC, and Route 66 in Chicago. She can make things happen with her mind.
Jacob Marx Rice's plays include Coping (FringeNYC, FringeFAVE, and FringeNYC Encore Series), Chemistry (FringeNYC Excellence in Playwriting Award, FringeNYC Encore Series, Cincinnati Fringe Festival Producer's Pick), Almost Happy (Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Kraine, Dragon Productions), and Uncertainty/Principle (Finalist -National Playwrights Conference, Semi-Finalist - Princess Grace Award). He is currently working on Ripper, a Victorian, feminist horror-play about Jack the Ripper commissioned by a haunted house.
Callan Stout plays have been in New York, London, Los Angeles and Cameroon. LEG (Princess Grace Semifinalist, Cherry Lane Theatre 2014 Mentor Project Semifinalist, (everything but) 3 New Plays, Truffle Theatre Company), A Song for A Surfer (Savage Players, The Vagrancy and LAFPI, Truffle Theatre Company), Crap, Crap, Crap; Or Everything I Don't Want to be at 40 (Cherry Lane Theatre), The Pastry Queen (Writer's Guild of Great Britain), More than Breakfast (NYU, eyeBLINK). She is a member of the Dramatist Guild and is published by YouthPLAYS.com. BFA: NYU Tisch. MLitt: University of Aberdeen. MFA candidate: Columbia.
Amy E. Witting received an inaugural 2015 LAUNCH Commission from Atlantic Theater Company where she had a recent reading of her commission play The House on Top of the Hill. Additional plays include There's Never A Gavin: The True Story of a Disco Roller Skater (Atlantic Theater Amplified Reading Series), The Midnight Ride of Sean & Lucy (Roundabout Underground Reading Series), Day 392 (Kennedy Center ACTF/NNPN MFA Playwrights Workshop, Honorable Mention Kilroy's List), Victor (Cabrini Rep, winner 2013 Thespis Festival), 36 Hours (Frigid Festival), Falling (NY International Fringe Festival), G.I. Joe Jared (Edinburg Festival Fringe and 59E59) and Create Me Pegasus (finalist, The Sam French Festival). She received a 2015 Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship for A Bad Night, and was a 2015 finalist for the Leah Ryan FEWW award and nominated for the 2014-2015 Susan Smith Blackburn prize. She received her MFA at Hunter College.
PIPELINE THEATRE COMPANY (Artistic Director, Ari Schrier) believes that an unbridled imagination is a force of magic with the power to provoke a more courageous and compassionate world. Our company thrives on adventure and believes no story is worth telling without a little risk. We love our villains as much as our heroes, especially in those puzzling moments when we can't quite tell them apart. Above all, we aim to leave you with stories that stick somewhere in your heart, your brain, or your guts. We believe that an unbridled imagination is a force of magic with the power to provoke a more courageous and compassionate world.
Pipeline Theatre Company was founded in 2009 as part of a class project at the Atlantic Acting School. Since then, Pipeline's productions have included: Alex Mills' Shakespeare the Dead (World Premiere, part of the Dream Up! Festival at Theater for the New City); Bekah Brunstetter's Fat Kids on Fire (directed by Tony-nominee Peter Frechette); Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle (2011 NYIT Award for Best Original Score for composer Cormac Bluestone, Nomination for Best Lighting Design for Eric Southern, ITBA Special Citation for Outstanding Production); Evan Twohy's Bubble and Squeak (Finalist in the 35th Annual Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival); Colby Day's Felix & The Diligence (World Premiere, 2012 NYIT Award Nomination for Best Set Design for Andy Yanni); a workshop reading of Nate Weida's musical I's Twinkle (part of Judson Memorial Church's Magic Time series); Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Ash Girl (directed by Jessika Doyel), Colby Day's Giant Killer Slugs (World Premiere, part of the Dream Up! Festival at Theater for the New City), Adam Szymkowicz's Clown Bar, (New York Times Critics' Pick, 2013 NYIT Award Nominations for Outstanding Featured Actor for Andrew Farmer, Outstanding Featured Actress for Kelley Rae O'Donnell, Outstanding Ensemble, and Outstanding Costume Design for Meghan Gaber), Nate Weida's folk gibberish musical BYUIOO (World Premiere) and most recently, Andrew Farmer's The Gray Man (World Premiere).
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