Nicki Bloom Selected Playwright- in-Residence for 2010 New York Summer Play Festival at Donmar Warehouse

New York's premier play festival, the Summer Play Festival (SPF), is partnering with London's Donmar Warehouse for the sixth year in a row on an international playwriting program for emerging writers. The Donmar Warehouse / SPF Residency Program brings together professional theatre makers from the highly acclaimed Donmar to work with a selected SPF playwright in a focused collaboration of classroom experiments, workshops, and rehearsals, culminating in a full reading of their play. The writer will spend two weeks in London immersed in the local theatre scene, and exchanging ideas and techniques with professional artists. The Donmar staff will guide and support the writer throughout their time in London, offering them a unique insight into the dynamics and complexities of the British theatre industry.

This year's selected playwright is Nicki Bloom (SPF 2009, Tender).

The Donmar Warehouse, located in the heart of London's West End, has a reputation as one of the UK's leading producing theatres. Since 1992, Donmar-generated productions have received 35 Olivier Awards, 20 Critics' Circle Awards, 21 Evening Standard Awards, and 14 Tony Awards from nine Broadway productions.

Previous SPF / Donmar Residents include Sylvia Reed (SPF 2008, The Ones That Flutter), Stephen Brown (SPF 2008, Future Me), Beau Willimon (SPF 2007, Lower Ninth), Rob Handel (SPF 2006, Milicent Scowlworthy) and Victoria Stewart (SPF 2006, Hardball).

SPF has provided numerous resources to thousands of emerging theatre artists including writers, directors, designers, actors, stage managers, and interns to present their work in a protected environment. The Summer Play Festival has had tremendous success in helping to identify talented, emerging artists, and many of our writers have enjoyed Broadway, off-Broadway, international and regional productions. Others are now developing projects with film and television companies.
Vist www.spfnyc.com for more information.

The Summer Play Festival (SPF) stages original new plays and musicals by emerging writers during the summer months at the legendary Public Theater in New York City. Since its inception in 2004, SPF has provided numerous resources to emerging theatre artists, produced over 600 public performances, and has provided an opportunity for 82 writers, as well as over one thousand directors, designers, actors, stage managers, and interns to present their work in a protected environment.

Founded by Broadway producer Arielle Tepper Madover, SPF is also committed to providing a low ticket price of only $10 to bring in new audience members. As a result, the Festival has sold out its four-week performance schedule for each of the past five years and has attracted a diverse audience of over 45,000 theatre patrons, the majority under the age of 35.

SPF playwrights have gone on to receive productions on Broadway, off-Broadway, regionally and internationally. Their work has been presented at institutions such as Lincoln Center Theater, the Roundabout Theatre Company, Manhattan Theater Club, the Atlantic Theater Company and Playwrights Horizons in New York City; the Royal National Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse in London; and dozens of acclaimed theatres across the United States and around the world.

The Donmar Warehouse, under the artistic leadership of Michael Grandage, the theatre has presented some of London's most memorable award-winning theatrical experiences, as well as garnered critical acclaim at home and abroad. The theatre has a diverse artistic policy that includes new writing, contemporary reappraisals of European classics, British and American drama and small scale musical theatre. Over the last 16 years the theatre has created reputation associated with artistic excellence: it has showcased the talent of some of the industry's premier creative artists, and built an unparalleled catalogue of work.

Nicki Bloom is a poet, playwright and novelist. Her first play Tender was produced by nowyesnow in 2007 as part of the Belvoir Street B-Sharp season in Sydney. This production then toured to Hothouse Theatre (Albury/Wodonga) and Griffin Theatre (Sydney) in late 2008. Tender is published by Currency Press. Her adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts was produced by the State Theatre Company of South Australia in October 2008, and is published by Phoenix Press. Nicki's awards include the 2006 Adrian Consett Stephen Memorial Prize (Tender), the 2007 Inscription Chairman's Award for Best Play (Tender), the 2008 PatRick White Playwrights' Award (Bloodwood), the 2009 Inscription Playwriting Award (Bloodwood) and the 2006 Henry Lawson Prize for Prose, for Something Greater Than All of This, a fragment of her debut novel An Archipelago. Tender has also been shortlisted for several awards, including the 2008 NSW Premier's Play Award, the 2007 Philip Parsons Playwriting Award, and the 2006 Max Afford Playwriting Award. Nicki was a panelist at the 2007 Emerging Writers' Festival (Melbourne), a 2008 resident writer at Griffin Theatre Company (Sydney), and the recipient of a Goethe-Institute scholarship to 'Theatertreffen' (Berlin) in May 2009. Nicki is currently under commission from several leading Australian theatre companies including Company B Belvoir, Griffin Theatre Company, and Brink Productions. She is co-artistic director of performance company nowyesnow.

For more information please visit SPF's website www.spfnyc.com or contact Jennifer Taylor at 212-279-4040 or Jennifer@spfnyc.com.

 

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