12th Annual Ojai Playwrights Conference To Feature New Works By Belber, Cain, Guirgis, & More

THE OJAI PLAYWRIGHTS CONFERENCE (OPC) is thrilled to announce its 2009 Season - 12th Annual program of playwrights, readings and symposiums. Featuring some of the most talented, established and up-and-coming playwrights writing today, this year's Conference includes new works by Stephen Belber, Bill Cain, Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Stephen Adly Guirgis, David Wiener, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori. There are also two symposiums, the first will feature some of the best solo performers ever assembled including Charlayne Woodard, Steve Connell, Sekou (tha Misfit), Lisa Kron, Mozhan Marno, and Leslie Carrara-Rudolph. Additionally, there will be an American Musical Theatre Celebration focusing on the work of Jeanine Tesori (Shrek, Caroline, or Change, Violet) and other luminaries from the musical theatre. OPC is also planning "Family Theatre Day," a full day of activities devoted to families and younger audiences with two special events especially designed for them. The Conference will begin on Tuesday, August 4 and run for two-weeks through Sunday, August 16 at various venues in Ojai. Public presentations will be from August 11 through August 16.

THE OJAI PLAYWRIGHTS CONFERENCE is an annual event fully centered around playwrights and their developing new plays. Plays need to begin someplace where they can be seen, heard, felt and developed. The OPC was founded on the belief that gathering a community of world-class theatre artists together in a place of extraordinary beauty can lead to a collaborative process that enables these artists to qualitatively rework and refine their dramatic vision.

Each year, theatre professionals and interested members of the general public converge in the beautiful Ojai Valley to participate in the development of previously unproduced, quality new plays for the American Theatre. The playwrights are brought to Ojai for intensive, in-residence work on their plays, culminating in public readings. OPC gathers a diverse group of playwrights from all walks of life and from all communities; from Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winners to the most exciting, young, emerging playwrights in the country.

The two-week OPC experience is: new plays, playwrights, a family of actors, directors, dramaturges, technicians, and an audience who cares about the theatre. Collaboration, discussion, engagement, growth: these elements are at the very heart of the Ojai experience.

Plays that have started here have been seen all over the country including works by Jon Robin Baitz, Stephen Belber, Lee Blessing, Christopher Durang, David Lindsay-Abaire, Lisa Loomer, Adam Rapp, Charlayne Woodard and more. OPC plays have been produced at theatres throughout the United States, including the Mark Taper Forum, the Goodman Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse and Broadway. OPC plays have also been produced in London's West End, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Each year the Conference also hosts PUBLIC SYMPOSIA --- platforms for performance and discussion -- the exchange of ideas. Conference artists engage each other and the audience about their craft, their beliefs and their new work. The Conference also conducts a youth workshop for aspiring local student writers. They are tutored by the professional OPC writers and then create new work of their own which is presented publicly during our final weekend. Over a period of just a few years, the OJAI PLAYWRIGHTS CONFERENCE has become one of Southern California's most eagerly anticipated annual cultural events.

THE 2009 OPC: THE PLAYS AND THE PLAYWRIGHTS

Dusk Rings a Bell by Stephen Belber

A woman is mysteriously drawn to a deserted vacation home. She searches for a letter she wrote to herself at thirteen. The letter was to her future self on how to be "happy". A man is back from jail. They come across one another on a wintry day. He claims to have known this woman way back when. Their entire lives are taken out for show and tell like glow-in-the-dark yo-yo's. And around and around they go, rising, falling and twirling to memories of first kisses, first love and the pains of growing up. A tender, funny and moving drama!

Stephen Belber's plays include Geometry of Fire, (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), Tape, McReele (Roundabout/Broadway), and Match (Broadway, Tony nomination for Frank Langella). He was a writer and performer for both the stage and HBO film productions of "The Laramie Project" (Emmy nomination). He recently wrote and directed the feature film, "Management," starring Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn.

How To Write A New Book For The Bible: A play for an older actress by Bill Cain

It has been several thousand years since anyone has added a new chapter to the family saga that is the Bible. Perhaps each family should write its own story and add it to the Bible in order to keep the story current. This is one family's entry. A poignant, penetrating comedy/drama about a mother who will let nothing, not even death, get in the way of her love for her two sons, whether they want it or not. A touching, surprising story of the two sons' and their love for their mother to the very end.

Bill Cain's Stand-up Tragedy premiered at the Mark Taper Forum and it went on to play on Broadway and around the country. Bill's other plays include Equivocation, which was developed at OPC and is being produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and the Geffen Playhouse. For television, he has received the Writers Guild, Humanitas, Alma Awards, and a Peabody Award for the series, "Nothing Sacred".

Lidless by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

Fifteen years ago Alice was an interrogator at Guantanamo. Thanks to drugs she has forgotten this traumatic time. But one detainee cannot forget. He tracks down Alice to get back his life. He demands a shocking payment for the damage she wreaked on his body and soul during their interrogations. A physical, visual, theatrical tour de force about the startling rituals employed to re-humanize a world losing sight of its common humanity.

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig won the 2009 Yale Drama Series Prize and the 2008 Glimmer Train New Writer's Award. She has been honored with grants from the Playwright's Center, Interact Theatre, Santa Fe Art Institute, the Ragdale Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. She participated in Hedgebrook's Women Playwrights Festival and in 2009, her work will be appear at the Alley Theatre, Open Fist Theatre, and Yale Repertory Theatre.

Motherf***er! by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Out of jail, clean and sober, and home in New York City, Jackie is in crazy love. But Veronica, his lady, is not so clean and sober. But nothing can come between them ever -- except a hat. You see, there's this hat on their table. This hat is not Jackie's hat. Then there's this gun Jackie borrows from the wrong person to shoot the hat. Events ricochet into wild complication. The path to true love is full of hair-raising twists, turns and collisions in this ferocious comedy of need and consequence; unbridled passion and brittle self-control.

Stephen Adly Guirgis is the Co-Artistic Director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company and has been a member since 1993. His plays have been produced on five continents and throughout the U.S. They include The Little Flower of East Orange (OPC 2007), Our Lady of 121st Street (Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Best Play Nominations), Jesus Hopped the ‘A' Train (Laurence Olivier Nomination for Best New Play, Barrymore Award), and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (10 Best Time Magazine & Entertainment Weekly). His television work includes "NYPD Blue" and "The Sopranos"

Extraordinary Chambers by David Weiner

Carter Dean brings his wife, Mara, with him on a business trip to Cambodia. He has no idea that she will become fast friends with the resident business "facilitator", Dr. Heng. When Mara encounters a mysterious green-eyed child, Carter realizes their visit is about to become more than "just business". A new play about a marriage torn apart by loss; a business deal in a country devastated by horrific genocide; and a global deal dependent on a mysterious man with connections to the government and the Killing Fields. A provocative and timely new play about the ethics of survival.

David Weiner is a graduate of Duke University and Columbia University's Dramatic Writing Program. His plays include Blood Orange, in vitro, and System Wonderland. His work has been developed and produced by theatres in the United States and Britain that include The Cherry Lane, The Atlantic, The Almeida (UK), and The New Group. He is recipient of The Rosetti Fellowship, Lark Theater Fellowship and the Reynolds Price Award.

Entertaining a Thought: The Imagination Project by Leslie Carrara-Rudolph

Once upon a time there was a girl, Leslie, whose brain wouldn't let her sleep at night. So she takes it out of her head, puts it on a leash, and lets her mind wander. This whimsical musical play is narrated by a candy loving, red headed, sock puppet with four teeth named Lolly Lardpop. With the help of her musical buddy, 88's, on the piano, they pop into the "thought bubble," gather up pink monkeys, a magic tutu, and some very large pants. The first act is a hoopla of joy, silliness and lots of heart. The second act is a live interaction celebrating the imagination between audience, Leslie, and the puppets!

Leslie Carrara- Rudolph is an award-winning internationally-acclaimed performer/writer/puppeteer. She got her start puppeteering with the Jim Henson Company on Muppets Tonight and later toured with their improv group, Puppet Up. She currently performs the fairy puppet, Abby Cadabby, on "Sesame Street," for which she has been nominated for a 2009 Emmy Award as Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series.

Writers in Residence:

FUN HOME By Lisa Kron (writer) & Jeanine Tesori (composer)

Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori are working on a musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel's acclaimed graphic novel, Fun Home. The book charts Alison's attempt to understand her father through The Common and unspoken bond of their homosexuality. The New York Times wrote, "Fun Home, must be the most ingeniously compact, hyper-verbose example of autobiography to have been produced. It is a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions with a seriousness, emotional complexity and innovation completely its own."

Lisa Kron is a writer/performer and best known for Well, 2.5 Minute Ride and 101 Humiliating Stories. She is a founding member of the Obie and Bessie Award-winning theater company, The Five Lesbian Brothers. Lisa is working on a new play scheduled to co-premiere next season at Los Angeles' Center Theatre Group and Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and she teaches playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.

Jeanine Tesori is the composer of four Tony-nominated scores: Twelfth Night (Lincoln Center), Thoroughly Modern Millie (lyrics by Dick Scanlan), Caroline, or Change (book and lyrics by Tony Kushner) and Shrek The Musical. Ms. Tesori is the recipient of Drama Desk and Obie Awards and was cited by ASCAP as the first woman composer to have "two new musicals running concurrently on Broadway."

http://www.ojaiplays.org/