Long Wharf Theatre Kicks Off Contemporary American Voices Festival This Weekend

Long Wharf Theatre's inaugural Contemporary American Voices Festival, a weekend of new play readings, will take place this weekend, April 18 and 19, 2015.

The festival is part of a continued effort to honor the past and look towards the future during the theatre's 50th anniversary season. The festival is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lord/Kubler Fund for New Work.

The lifeblood of the American theatre is the creation of new work. New plays hold up the proverbial mirror to our times, offering us the opportunity to experience fresh perspectives and powerful new stories to enlighten and entertain audiences.

In an effort to encourage this process and to excite our audience about the writers that excite us, Long Wharf Theatre will feature some of the most important new voices in the American theatre at a reading series in April.

Playwrights Julia Cho, Samuel D. Hunter, and Janine Nabers will be highlighted at the festival, participating in a playwrights symposium moderated by Associate Artistic Director Eric Ting. Cho, Hunter, and Nabers are some of the most innovative and exciting voices in the American theatre today. Cho has had two world premieres at Long Wharf Theatre, critically acclaimed productions of Durango and BFE. The festival marks Hunter and Nabers's first association with Long Wharf Theatre.

Long Wharf Theatre considers the development of new work to be a task intrinsic to its institutional mission. The theatre has had a long, proud history of new works, from authors as revered and distinguished as Paula Vogel and Athol Fugard, to more recent voices, like Julia Cho. The festival revives a longtime tradition of public readings, once run by Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein during his tenure as associate artistic director.

"I am convinced that receptivity to new writing represents the very best of remedies for spiritual, emotional, and intellectual stagnation. And what better form than the theatre: live, immediate and visceral," Edelstein said.

The festival will be an opportunity for audience members to experience a new play in its embryonic state: read by actors and worked on by the playwright in a safe environment. Edelstein hopes that the festival will give audience members a new appreciation for the complexities of new play development, while introducing them to voices that will certainly make a future impact on the American theatre.

Tickets are free, and donations are welcome. Reservations can be made by calling the box office at 203- 787-4282 or online at www.longwharf.org.

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN VOICES FESTIVAL SCHEDULE:

Saturday, April 18
2 pm, a reading of a Serial Black Face, the 2014 Yale Drama Prize winner written by Janine Nabers with a talkback to follow
5 pm, playwrights Julia Cho, Janine Nabers, and Samuel D. Hunter will join members of the artistic department for an in depth discussion of how new plays are created.
Sunday, April 19
2 pm, a reading of Julia Cho's Aubergine on Stage II with a talkback to follow.
7 pm, a reading of Clarkston by Samuel D. Hunter, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, with a talkback to follow.

PLAYWRIGHT BIOS:

Julia Cho's plays include The Language Archive, The Piano Teacher, Durango, The Winchester
House, BFE, The Architecture of Loss, and 99 Histories. She has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2004. Her work has been produced at the Vineyard Theatre, The Public, South Coast Repertory, Long Wharf Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, East West Players, Theatre @ Boston Court, and Silk Road Theatre Project, among others. Honors include the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Barrie Stavis Award, the Claire Tow Award for Emerging Artists, and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. Durango was also named one of the Top 10 Plays of 2006 by Entertainment Weekly and one of the Best of 2007 by the The L.A. Times. She is an alumna of the Juilliard School and NYU's Graduate Dramatic Writing Program. Cho has written for the television programs "Big Love" and "Fringe."

Samuel D. Hunter's plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play) and A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), and his newest plays, The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, and Pocatello. He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, a 2012 Whiting Writers Award, the 2013 Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, the 2011 Sky Cooper Prize, and the 2008 PONY/Lark Fellowship. His plays have been produced in New York at Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Clubbed Thumb and Page 73, and around the country at such theaters as Seattle Rep, Victory Gardens, South Coast Rep, Williamstown Theater Festival, The Old Globe, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, and Marin Theater Company. His work has been developed at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils, and PlayPenn. A published anthology, including The Whale and A Bright New Boise, is available from TCG books. He is a member of New Dramatists, an Ensemble Playwright at Victory Gardens, a member of Partial Comfort Productions, and was a 2013 Resident Playwright at Arena Stage. A native of northern Idaho, Sam lives in NYC. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.

A native of Houston, Texas, Janine Nabers is a 2013 graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship at Juilliard and winner of the 2014 Yale Drama Series Prize for her play "Serial Black Face." She currently writes for Bravo's first scripted series "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce" under Marti Noxon. Her play "Annie Bosh is Missing" premiered in August 2013 at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Janine won the 2013 NYFA Playwriting fellowship and was the 2013-2014 AETNA Playwriting Fellow at Hartford Stage, a 2012-2013 New York Theatre Workshop Playwriting Fellow, and Page 73's 2011 Playwriting Fellow. She is an alumna of the Ars Nova Play Group, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellowship, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the 2010 and 2011 Sundance Theatre Labs, and is also a member of the MCC Playwrights Coalition and the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages. Presently Janine is working on commissions from Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, the Alley Theatre, Hartford Stage, and Berkeley Rep. Her new musical "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.

For more information about Long Wharf Theatre's 2014-15 season, visit www.longwharf.org or call 203-787-4282.

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