Boston Playwrights' Theatre to Present Three Original Plays for 2013-14 Season

Boston Playwrights' Theatre (BPT) announced its 32nd season today, which will feature new work by three of its award-winning alumni playwrights. The line-up includes Burning by Ginger Lazarus, Windowmen by Steven Barkhimer, and Absence by Peter M. Floyd. All three writers are based in Boston.

"I'm honored and excited to support these particular playwrights. They are vastly different writers, but each of them is exploring that 'threshold moment,' the turning point that changes lives," BPT Artistic Director Kate Snodgrass said. "These are the important moments we look for in the theatre."

The company's season will open in late September with Burning by Ginger Lazarus. Adapted from Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, Burning follows lesbian ex-Army officer Cy, who uses a young soldier to profess her true feelings to the woman they both love. Burning will be directed by Steven Bogart. BPT produced Lazarus' IRNE-nominated Matter Familias in 2004. Her play MOCKBA: A Play About Moscow won the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award in 1999.

In November, BPT will present Steven Barkhimer's Windowmen. The coming-of-age comedy centers on Steve, struggling to make ends meet in 1980s New York City with a job at the Fulton Fish Market, and on the characters - and cover-up - he discovers there. Brett Marks will direct. In 2011, Barkhimer was the recipient of a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to work on Windowmen. His play A Hard Rain was awarded of the John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in 2008. Barkhimer is also well-known to Boston area audiences as an actor and director.

The final play of the season is Peter M. Floyd's Absence. Absence tells the story of 74-year-old Helen whose lapses in memory have not diminished her need to control her family...even in her ever-changing reality. The play will be directed by Megan Gleeson. Absence was a co-winner of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Jean Kennedy Smith Award in 2012. The play was also a finalist in the ALLIANCE THEATRE's Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition last year.

Founded in 1981 at Boston University by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Boston Playwrights' Theatre (BPT) is an award-winning professional theatre dedicated to new works. At the heart of BPT's mission is the production of new plays by alumni of its MFA Playwriting Program, the latter in collaboration with Boston University's renowned School of Theatre. The program's award-winning alumni have been produced in regional and New York houses, as well as in London's West End. BPT's productions have been honored with numerous regional and Boston awards, including 11 IRNE Awards for "Best New Script" and five Boston Critics' Association Elliot Norton Awards.

Steven Barkhimer is a Boston-based writer, director, actor, musician and instructor, and a graduate of the playwriting program at Boston University. Plays: Blood Rose Rising (Davis Square Theatre, Somerville MA); A Hard Rain (Best Short Play of 2008, Cauble Award, Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival): Windowmen (Artist Fellowship Award for Playwriting, 2011, Massachusetts Cultural Council). Directing credits include The Merry Wives of Windsor (Actors Shakespeare Project); Fully Committed (Elliot Norton Award, Best Solo Performance); The Compleat Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) (Elliot Norton Award, Best Fringe Production, Orfeo Group). A member of the Resident Acting Company of Actors Shakespeare Project, he has also appeared at the Lyric Stage Company, New Repertory Theatre, Stoneham Theatre, Gloucester Stage Company, Boston Playwrights' Theatre, Underground Railway Theatre, Nora Theatre, Zeitgeist Stage. Author of a collection of original songs (scoring and performances for Twelfth Night, The Beard of Avon, Troilus and Cressida, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), Steve has taught writing, mathematics, literature, philosophy, history, acting, and drama at Boston University, Worcester State College, Cambridge College, Huntington Theatre, and the China Institute at the University of Massachusetts.

PETER M. FLOYD, a New Hampshire native, began his playwriting career with the short play The Little Death, which won the Audience Choice award for best play at the Playwrights' Platform Festival in 2006. Other short plays include Objective, Big Eddie, The Green Room, Perspective, and Love, Billy Bunny. Peter received his MFA in playwriting from Boston University, where he developed his first full-length play Absence. Absence was co-winner of the Kennedy Center's Jean Kennedy Smith Award and a finalist for the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. The latter was sponsored by the ALLIANCE THEATRE where Absence was given staged readings in February and June, 2013. It will have its first full production at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre this coming winter. In July 2012, The Centipede King was accepted for development at the MFA Playwrights' Workshop held at the Kennedy Center; in December, 2012, it was presented as a staged reading in Boston by the Vagabond Theatre Group. Peter was selected as one of four playwrights into the New Repertory Theatre's 2012-13 New Voices program for developing playwrights, and his latest play, Protocol, had a reading at the New Rep in May 2013.

GINGER LAZARUS is an award-winning playwright whose work has been frequently produced in her native Boston and beyond. Her dark reproductive comedy, The Embryos, had a successful run with Fresh Ink Theatre Company. Other recent projects include co-writing Love Hurts and Ourmageddon, which both won awards at the Boston 48 Hour Film Project; A Blessing and a Curse: A Duet of Plays on Motherhood presented by Spiced Wine Productions; and Mary, a short film based on her stageplay, screened at film festivals in Connecticut and New Hampshire. Her play Matter Familias received an IRNE nomination for Best New Play of 2004; other honors include the 1999 John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award for MOCKBA: A Play About Moscow and selection as a ten-minute play finalist in the 2002 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival for Shooting Sparks. Her plays have been produced locally by Boston Playwrights' Theatre, Another Country Productions, Centastage, Queer Soup, Playwrights' Platform, and the Boston Theater Marathon, and have been featured nationally in Untitled Theater's 24/7 Festival, Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Theater Festival, Pan Theater Ten Minute Play Festival, Women's Theatre Project's Naked Women Fully Clothed, and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference Play Lab. Two of her short plays also appeared at The Warehouse Theatre and Canal Café Theatre in London. Ginger holds a master's degree in playwriting from Boston University and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Emerson College. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, StageSource, and Rhombus playwrights' group.

SEASON 2013/2014 AT A GLANCE:

Burning by Ginger Lazarus
Directed by Steven Bogart
September 26-October 20

Cy, a discharged Army officer, places great emphasis on values and ideals, but these are few and far between in the modern "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military. Her inability to speak has far-ranging and tragic results when she has to decide...Which serves love best-a difficult truth or silence?

Boston Playwrights' Theatre - Walcott Theatre
949 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215

$30/General Admission - $25/BU Faculty/Staff, Seniors (62+) - $10/Students (with valid ID)
Call 866.811.4111 or visit www.bostonplaywrights.org

Subscriptions Available - $50/Adult - $27/Student (25 and under with valid ID)

Windowmen by Steven Barkhimer
Directed by Brett Marks
October 31-November 24

A newcomer to the Fulton Fish Market, Steve is just trying to make ends meet in 1980s New York City. But something smells rotten-and it ain't just the fish in this fast-paced, coming-of-age comedy.

Boston Playwrights' Theatre - Odyssey Theatre
949 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215

$30/General Admission - $25/ BU Faculty/Staff, Seniors (62+) - $10/Students (with valid ID)
Call 866.811.4111 or visit www.bostonplaywrights.org

Subscriptions Available - $50/Adult - $27/Student (25 and under with valid ID)

Absence by Peter M. Floyd
Directed by Megan Gleeson
February 7-March 2

Helen's world is growing more chaotic by the minute, and no one seems to be taking it seriously-not even her family. A surprising and deeply moving look at a family in crisis and at one woman's struggle to survive in an ever-changing reality.

Boston Playwrights' Theatre - Odyssey Theatre
949 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215

$30/General Admission - $25/ BU Faculty/Staff, Seniors (62+) - $10/Students (with valid ID)
Call 866.811.4111 or visit www.bostonplaywrights.org

Subscriptions Available - $50/Adult - $27/Student (25 and under with valid ID)

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