Doric Wilson News

Playwright Gina Femia is the recipient of the 2020 William Inge Theatre Festival's Otis Guernsey New Voices in the American Theatre Award, which recognizes substantial early contributions to the contemporary American stage.

American Blues Theater, under the continued leadership of Artistic Director Gwendolyn Whiteside, announces the winner of the 2020 Blue Ink Playwriting Award is Recent Unsettling Events by Andrea Stolowitz. A staged reading of the play will be presented as part of the 2020 Blue Ink Playwriting Festival, along with new work by finalists Football Football Football Football (or I Love Lave Dash) by Kristoffer Diaz, The Mermaids' Parade by Gina Femia, and Crying on Television by R. Eric Thomas. The Blue Ink Playwriting Festival runs May 2-4, 2020 at 4809 N Ravenswood, Suite #126, in Chicago.

The Playwrights Realm (Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereira) will presents the 2020 INK'D Festival of New Plays, showcasing new works by this year's Realm Writing Fellows Tanya Everett, Maya Macdonald, Tasha Gordon-Solmon, and Christopher Reyes (February 24-27). The festival's plays offer vast tonal and stylistic variation while cohering around complex contemplations of structural issues. INK'D has proven to be an indispensable launching pad for the voices driving the future of playwriting. This year's powerful slate continues to introduce audiences to a diversity of fresh perspectives, thereby underscoring theater's potential to expand the possibilities of dramatic storytelling and engage with the world around it.

Casting has been announced for the upcoming New York City premiere of Leaving the Blues, a new play by Jewelle Gomez, directed by Mark Finley. Rosalind Brown (original Broadway productions of Footloose and One Mo' Time) will play the lead role of Alberta Hunter, the great American jazz singer and songwriter. The cast also features Michael Michele Lynch, Joy Suddath, Cooper Sutton, Benjamin Mapp, Ameerah Briggs, Tsebiyah Mishael Derry and Erik Ransom.

WP Theater, under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Lisa McNulty and Managing Director Michael Sag, has announced that the world premiere of playwright and performer Donnetta Lavinia Grays' Where We Stand, co-presented by WP Theater and Baltimore Center Stage, will star Grays [Men on Boats, In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)], who will alternate select performances with David Ryan Smith (One Man, Two Guvnors; Passing Strange) beginning February 15. Directed by Tamilla Woodard (Hadestown Broadway associate director), previews begin Off-Broadway on Friday, January 31 at WP Theater with an opening night of February 11, 2020. The limited engagement at WP Theater will run through March 1, 2020 before playing Baltimore Center Stage April 2-26.

The Parsnip Ship announced today its first cohort of its newly created Radio Roots Writers' Group. The Radio Roots Writers' Group is a group facilitated by The Parsnip Ship (TPS) to support emerging playwrights interested in re-engaging with playwriting through audio-focused storytelling, breaking away from traditional forms of visual storytelling. Much like all programming on The Parsnip Ship's platform, Radio Roots seeks to cultivate distinct new theater artists. The first cohort will include playwrights: Amara Brady, Gina Femia, Jessie DeBruin and Nina Ki.

Quick Silver Theater Company (QSTC) will present a staged reading of Lisa Strum's She Gon' Learn.

Theatre production company Parity Productions, a producer of new work that ensures they fill at least 50% of the creative positions (playwrights, directors, and designers) on their productions with women and/or trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) artists, has awarded two commissions to Shualee Cook for Cercle Hermaphroditos and Gina Femia for you know, that Bakery out in Bensonhurst that don't got a name. The ceremony took place on Wednesday, October 16th at the third annual Parity Awards Ceremony and Celebration at Theaterlab.

On Monday, September 16, 2019, The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation announced the 2019 recipients at the annual Off-Off-Broadway IT Awards. For the past 15 years, the It Awards have celebrated the vibrant and creative indie theatre community under the dedicated leadership of Executive Directors Shay Gines and Nick Micozzi who are stepping down and at the ceremony introduced new leadership for the organization: Cat Parker, Artistic Director of Articulate Theatre Company; Ariel Estrada, Producing Artistic Director of Leviathan Lab Projects; and Jazmyn Arroyo, Co-Founding Artistic Director of Step 1 Theatre Project will join Akia Squiteri, Artistic Director of Rising Sun Performance Company as Directors of the organization.

Celebrate 15 years of the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation and their dedication to Off-Off Broadway by joining them when they present the 2019 New York Innovative Theatre Awards on Monday, September 16, 2019 at 7:00 pm. The ceremony will take place at the Centennial Memorial Theatre at 120 West 14th Street, NYC. Tickets to the ceremony are $29 each and can be purchased at www.nyitawards.com/shop.  

The Playwrights Realm today announces recipients of two career-propelling development programs the organizationa?"led by Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereiraa?"offers to gifted, incisive, and diverse playwrights. Now entering its thirteenth season, The Realm has continually produced work by brave new voices and expanded its commitment to providing holistic support to playwrights striving to make a life in the arts.

Following successful productions in Dublin and New York City, the Heartefact Fund and Different Translation, are pleased to announce The Baby Monitor, a crucial play exploring same-sex parenting and family values, will be presented in Belgrade, Serbia, as part of the inaugural Belgrade Pride Theater Festival.

The final Madness of the season will be a (mostly!) All-Company Madness and will take place on Sunday, July 28th at 8pm at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery). NYM Company member Gina Femia will be the featured guest and pick the theme.

Casting has been set for award-winning playwright and creatorhostproducer of Your Program Is Your Ticket Sean Chandler's new play Running: A New Play featured in the upcoming 2019 New York Theater Festival's Summerfest.

A Southern Fairytale, written by and starring Broadway World award-winning actor Ty Autry and directed by David L. Carson, will be returning to New York after last year's performance at NYSummerfest with a completely reimagined script for an afternoon event at The Duplex Piano Bar and Cabaret Theatre on June 28th at 4:30 PM, straight off its international success in Dublin, Ireland at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival (IDGTF).

McCarter will welcome a group of esteemed and emerging playwrights and theater artists to Princeton for the Sallie B. Goodman Artists' Retreat. The annual retreat in June is a centerpiece of McCarter's LAB, a platform and creative incubator devoted to ongoing theatrical development and artist cultivation. The 2019 Retreat will take place from June 12 - June 19.

A Southern Fairytale, written by and starring Broadway World award-winning actor Ty Autry and directed by David L. Carson, will be heading to Atlanta, Georgia for a one-night-only event at Out Front Theatre Company straight off its international success in Dublin, Ireland at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival (IDGTF) where it was nominated for the Doric Wilson Award for Intercultural Dialogue for exposing the role of conversion therapy and evangelicalism in dehumanizing LGTBQ people. After the hour-long piece, there will be an inter-faith queer panel featuring Kevin Garcia, Charles Thomas, Myles M, and Kelly Wentworth.

Actor and activist Maybe Burke, currently appearing in the new play safeword at The American Theatre of Actors, took to social media this week to address multiple instances of misgendering in reviews of the play.

To honor Transgender Day of Visiblity on March 31, The Musical Theater Factory will  present Ianne Fields Stewart, L Morgan Lee, Samy Nour Younes, and Maybe Burke for IN(Visibility) for an afternoon of repertoire composed solely by trans and GNC people to celebrate the accomplishments of trans people around the globe, while dismantling transphobia and cissexism through spreading knowledge and awareness.

ALLOND[R]A by Gina Femia, the recipient of the 2018 Leah Ryan Prize for Emerging Women Writers, will have a public reading, directed by Elena Araoz on Monday January 28, 2019, 7pm, at New Ohio Theatre