Baker, Kron, Rebeck and Ruhl Featured at Wicked Women of Off Broadway Panel 10/3

The Off Broadway Alliance, the organization of Off Broadway producers, theaters, general managers, press agents and marketing firms, will hold the fifth in its series of seminars focused on the culture, business and history of Off Broadway. The seminar, titled "The Wicked Women of Off Broadway", will feature four of Off Broadway's hottest playwrights: Annie Baker (Circle Mirror Transformation, The Aliens, Body Awareness), Lisa Kron (In the Wake, Well, 2.5 Minute Ride), Theresa Rebeck (Mauritius, The Understudy, Our House) and Sarah Ruhl (In The Next Room or the Vibrator Play, Eurydice, Dead Man's Cell Phone).

Patrick Healy, theater reporter for The New York Times, will moderate the event.

The discussion, which will also include an audience Q&A, is being held as a companion to The Alliance's February 2010 panel focusing on "The Bad Boys of Off Broadway" which featured Stephen Adly-Guirgis, Itamar Moses, Adam Rapp and Christopher Shinn.

"The Wicked Women of Off Broadway" will be held at The Snapple Theater Center's Jerry Orbach Theater on Sunday, October 3, 2010. Doors will open at 11:30 for coffee and complimentary continental breakfast. The panel will take place from Noon - 1:30pm with additional time allotted afterward for coffee and conversation with fellow attendees. The Snapple Theater Center is located at 210 West 50th Street at Broadway.

Admission for the seminar is free, however reservations are a must. To RSVP for the event, visit http://wickedwomen.eventbrite.com before October 1, 2010.

About The Off Broadway Alliance

The Off Broadway Alliance is a non-profit corporation organized by theater professionals dedicated to supporting, promoting and encouraging the production of Off Broadway theater and to making live theater increasingly accessible to new and diverse audiences. The Alliance holds monthly meetings and membership is open to everyone in the Off Broadway theater community.

The Alliance created and administers 20 at 20, the biannual event where you can purchase $20 tickets to participating Off Broadway shows 20 minutes prior to curtain. It sponsors a Seminar Series focusing on the culture, business and history of Off Broadway featuring major players from the Off Broadway scene. The organization also administers the "This Day in Off Broadway History" online calendar. In June 2009 The Alliance released the first ever Off Broadway Economic Impact Report, which detailed Off Broadway's $461 million impact on the City of New York during the 2008 theater season.

About The Moderator

Patrick Healy is the theater reporter for the New York Times, covering Broadway/Off Broadway/national theater news and writing features, profiles, and idea-driven articles.

Before becoming the theater reporter in December 2008, he covered the 2008 presidential campaign for the Times. For sixteen months, he was the paper's lead reporter on Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign; after Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, he joined the team of reporters covering the general election. Before the campaign, Mr. Healy was the political correspondent in the Times Metro section. In that role, he covered Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's re-election in 2005 and the Eliot Spitzer for Governor, Andrew M. Cuomo for Attorney General and Hillary Clinton for Senate races in 2006.

Mr. Healy was a reporter for The Boston Globe from 2000 until late 2004. While at The Globe, he covered the presidential campaigns of Senator John Kerry and Senator John Edwards; several foreign assignments that brought him to Iraq and Afghanistan; and higher education in Boston, Cambridge, and the region.

From 1994 until 2000, Mr. Healy worked for The Chronicle of Higher Education, first as a reporter for government and politics and later as political editor. Mr. Healy began his career as a reporter at Foster's Daily Democrat in New Hampshire.

He studied playwriting at New York University and received his B.A. in English from Tufts University in 1993. In 2002, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting on higher education. In 2001, he received the Livingston Award for his Globe series on Harvard honors and grade inflation, the Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association and the First Place Award for Investigative Reporting from the EWA. Mr. Healy lives in Manhattan.

About The Panelists

Annie Baker's full-length plays include CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION (Playwrights Horizons, OBIE Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), THE ALIENS (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, OBIE Award for Best New American Play), BODY AWARENESS (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright), and NOCTURAMA. Her work has also been developed and produced at the Bush Theatre in London, New York Theatre Workshop, MCC, Soho Rep, the Orchard Project, the Ontological-Hysteric, Ars Nova, the Huntington Theatre, South Coast Repertory, the Magic Theater, the Cape Cod Theatre Project and The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in Utah and Ucross, Wyoming. Annie is a member of New Dramatists and MCC's Playwrights Coalition, and she is an alumna of Youngblood, Ars Nova's Play Group and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Recent honors include a New York Drama Critics Circle Special Citation, a Lilly Award, a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination, a Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship and commissions from Center Theatre Group and Playwrights Horizons. MFA, Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College.

Lisa Kron has been writing and performing theater since coming to New York from Michigan in 1984 and is best known for her plays Well and 2.5 Minute Ride. She's a founding member of the Obie and Bessie Award winning theater company, the Five Lesbian Brothers. Her latest play, "In the Wake," directed by Leigh Silverman, can be seen this Fall at The Public Theater. She is currently at work on musical collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori.

Theresa Rebeck is a widely produced playwright. Past New York productions of her work include Mauritius at the Biltmore Theatre; The Understudy at the Laura Pels Theatre (Roundabout); The Scene, The Water's Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at Second Stage; Bad Dates, The Butterfly Collection and Our House at Playwrights Horizons; and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop. Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival, and had a commercial run at the Variety Arts Theatre. All of Ms. Rebeck's plays are published in volume by Smith and Kraus and in acting editions by Samuel French, Dramatists Play Service or Playscripts. Ms. Rebeck's other publications are Free Fire Zone, a book of comedic essays about writing and show business, and two novels, Three Girls and Their Brother and Twelve Rooms with a View, both published by Random House/Shaye Areheart Books. In television, Ms. Rebeck has written and produced for many shows including NYPD Blue and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Her produced feature films include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent features Sunday on the Rocks and Seducing Charlie Barker (adapted from her play The Scene). Awards include the Writer's Guild of America Award for Episodic Drama and a Peabody Award for her work on NYPD Blue. She has also won the National Theatre Conference Award, the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award, the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, an Alex Award and a Lilly Award. Ms. Rebeck has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University and is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Sarah Ruhl's plays include In The Next Room or the Vibrator Play (Glickman Prize, finalist for Pulitzer Prize, 2010), The Clean House (Susan Smith Blackburn award, 2004, finalist for Pulitzer Prize, 2005), Dead Man's Cell Phone, (Helen Hayes award for best new play), Demeter in the City (nominated for 9 NAACP awards), Eurydice, Melancholy Play, Orlando, a new version of Chekhov's Three Sisters, and Passion Play (Kennedy Center Fourth Forum Freedom Award). Her plays have premiered at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway, produced by Lincoln Center Theater; off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights' Horizons, and Second Stage; and regionally at Berkeley Repertory Theater, Yale Repertory Theater, the Goodman Theater, Cornerstone Theater, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Cincinnati Playhouse, and the Piven Theater Workshop in Chicago, as well being produced at many other theaters across the country. Her plays have also been performed in England, Poland, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia, and have been translated into Spanish, Polish, Russian, Korean and Arabic. Sarah received her M.F.A. from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel, and is originally from Chicago. In 2003, she was the recipient of a Helen Merrill award and a Whiting Writers' award, a PEN/Laura Pels award, and in 2006 was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Her work is published by TCG and Sam French, and she is a member of New Dramatists and 13P. She lives in New York City with her family.

PHOTO CREDIT: Monica Simoes

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