Strand's Friends and Neighbors Festival Opens Today

The 2011 Friends and Neighbors Festival: 20 hours with $20 - Starts TODAY! Each performance is only $5 Now playing through June 19, 2011

Seven new plays have been selected from over 100 submissions to be featured in this year's Friends and Neighbors Festival. Each play has been assigned to a director who is limited to 20 hours of rehearsal time and a $20 budget. With your help, one play will be selected for a full production in the 2011-2012 Season!

Read About the Plays and Meet the Playwrights!
A Blessed Unrest by Karuna Lynne Elson
June 1 and 10 at 7pm and June 19 at 3pm
Directed by Mattie Rogers

Jacob copes with falling in love with his physical therapist and his new life as a quadriplegic through fantasies of his idol, Martha Graham, daring him to enjoy life again.
Playwright Bio: Karuna Lynne Elson is an award-winning playwright. Her plays have been produced in New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles and Nebraska. Currently Karuna Lynne writes for the Passage Theatre of NJ as a member of the Playwrights Unit. Five of her short plays were produced in the past few years at Passage Theatre including Crazy, Crazy on You. Her play Stolen Glorie was the winner of the Great Platte River Playwrights Festival of 2001.
Glitter and Spew by Alison Luterman
June 1 and 10 at 7pm and June 19 at 3pm
Directed by Natalia Leimkuhler

Three linked short plays form a three-ring-circus, a meditation on media exposure, shame, and personal responsibility in twenty-first century America.
Playwright Bio: Luterman's first full-length play, Saying Kaddish With My Sister, was produced by the Jewish Ensemble Theatre of Michigan in 2008. Several of her works have been produced in New York and San Francisco, including at the No Nude Men Theatre Company. Currently she works as as a poet-in-the-schools, as a playwright-mentor, and with the Poetry Out Loud program. She also performs improvisational movement, music, and spoken word with Wing It! ensemble in Oakland, California.
Blood-bound and Tongue-tied by Jacqueline E. Lawton
June 2, 11, and 15 at 7pm
Directed by Aaron Heinsman

Blood-bound and Tongue-tied, a provocative and poetic adaptation of Oedipus Rex, follows the astonishing journey of Jocasta, an African American woman whose decision to pass for White leads to devastation.
Playwright Bio: Jacqueline E. Lawton received her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She participated in the Kennedy Center's Playwrights' Intensive (2002) and World Interplay (2003). Some of her plays include Anna K, The Devil's Sweet Water, Ira Aldridge: the African Roscius (National Portrait Gallery commission), Lions of Industry, Mothers of Invention (Discovery Theater commission); and Mad Breed (Active Cultures commission). Her plays have been developed and received workshop readings at the Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival; Rorschach Theatre Company's Magic in Rough Spaces, Round House Theatre; and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (with support from Arena Stage).
Unlimited Nights by Sean Pomposello
June 3 and 17 at 7pm and June 12 at 3pm
Directed by Da'Minique Williams

A couple's relationship is called into question when they are awakened in the middle of the night by a succession of ominous telephone calls.
Playwright Bio: Sean Pomposello is a screenwriter, playwright, former writer for HBO and longtime Madison Avenue ad guy. Many theaters have staged his plays, including Theater for the New City, Naked Angels, The Impact Theater, John Chatterton's Short Play Lab at The Royal Theatre, Variations Theatre Group and Manhattan Repertory Theatre. Both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship and Monterey County Film Commission have recognized his screen work.
Such Good Neighbors by Susan Middaugh
June 3 and 17 at 7pm and June 12 at 3pm
Directed by Da'Minique Williams

Awakened by a fight going on between their next-door neighbors in the middle of the night, a married couple in their 60s argue whether to intervene or go back to sleep.
Playwright Bio: Susan Middaugh has been writing plays since 1990. Middaugh's plays have received productions with Vagabond Players and the Theatrical Mining Company in Baltimore. She has been produced by the Baltimore Playwright's Festival and has twice been a semi-finalist in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition.
2 Pens Elijah by Barbara Sperber
June 4, 8, and 16 at 7pm
Directed by Irene Williams

Rectifying an injustice includes poetry stripteases and life and death decisions in 2 Pens Elijah.
Playwright Bio: After thirty years as a poet, Barbara Sperber started writing plays seven years ago. She was inspired by a quotation from playwright David Hare, "A playwright is a poet disguised as an architect." Since then, going to theatre and writing plays has held a child-like fascination for her. Harnessing language to serve drama, and harnessing drama to serve language takes playwright and audience alike to a mysterious, magical place where only primordial truths exist.
Since We're Here by Zoe Speas
June 5 at 3pm and June 9 and 18 at 7pm
Directed by Danielle Young

An S&M role-play goes awry, leaving an unlikely pair secluded together for an evening of discovery.
Playwright Bio: Zoe Speas is a senior acting/playwriting student at The College of William and Mary. She has had two plays produced with the William and Mary Theatre. Roles with WMT include Helena in All's Well that Ends Well, Angellica in The Rover, and Jean Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Zoe has acted professionally with the Richmond and Virginia Shakespeare Festivals.

 

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