THE WRESTLING PATIENT Selected as NEA Play Competition Finalist

SpeakEasy Stage Company, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and FortyMagnolias Productions, are pleased to announce that THE WRESTLING PATIENT, the new play based on the Dutch Jewish writer Etty Hillesum that they will jointly produce this spring, has been selected as a finalist in the Outstanding New American Play competition administered by Arena Stage and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) New Play Development Program (NPDP).

Written by Kirk Lynn in collaboration with critically acclaimed Boston actress Anne Gottlieb and Obie Award-winner Katie Pearl, THE WRESTLING PATIENT is drawn from the journals of Etty Hillesum, a young woman who was confronted with a remarkable choice: to hold onto a kind of integrity, or to save her own life as WWII engulfs her native Amsterdam and her family. With the help of a charismatic teacher, Etty wrestles to answer the demons of her time by looking within herself.

While the play finished out of the running for one of the two $90,000 production grants, the New Play Development Program Panel chose to name THE WRESTLING PATIENT among the seven finalists and “was among the highest regarded applications in the pool” according to David Dower, Associate Artistic Director of Arena Stage. 

Seventy-two applicants nationwide in association with large and small non-profit theatre companies competed in the Outstanding New American Play Category for the two grants being offered. Each was read by a minimum of three people.  The readers were from all over the country and were reading "blind"-- no names of playwrights or organizations were visible and no supporting materials from the application were given. The recommended plays from that round were then read by six panelists who gathered in Washington DC at Arena Stage over the weekend of September 26-28 to review full applications and comments from readers. They then selected seven finalists and two winners. 

“We are thrilled and deeply encouraged. It is an honor to be among this extraordinary group of finalists chosen by the NEA.” says co-creator/co-producer, Anne Gottlieb.

Kirk Lynn, lead writer for THE WRESTLING PATIENT, was also one of five recipients for Distinguished New American Play Award, for his work on “I Have Never Been So Happy,” a work currently in an earlier stage of development with his company, Rude Mechanicals, in Austin, Texas. 

For more details on the New Play Development Program and the Outstanding New Play Development Program competition, please visit. http://www.nea.gov/news/news08/NPDP2.html.

THE WRESTLING PATIENT, which received a staged reading by SpeakEasy Stage last spring, will have its World Premiere from March 27 to April 11 in the Nancy and Edward Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street in Boston’s South End.  Ticket prices range from $14-$44.                                                             

 For tickets and more information on THE WRESTLING PATIENT, the public is invited to call the BostonTheatreScene.com boxoffice at 617-933-8600.  

About The Artists

Anne Gottlieb (Artistic Director, Actor) is an acclaimed performer who has appeared in many New England and World Premieres (Crave, The Dazzle, and The Laramie Project), including several Elliot Norton award-winning productions. She has toured professionally to London, the New York International Fringe Festival and Moscow’s Podium Festival. She produced, co-authored, and performed in the play Anam Cara: Two Women Fall into the Ancient Tale of Gilgamesh, which toured to The Roy Hart Theatre in France. Her classical work includes leading roles in As You Like It, Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare & Company) The Taming of the Shrew, and Macbeth (Boston Theatre Works). She is the 2004 IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award Winner for her work as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and Emma in Betrayal. Currently, she serves as a Resident Scholar in Collaborative Theater at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. 

Kirk Lynn (Playwright) is a Founder and Co-Producing Artistic Director of the theatre collective Rude Mechanicals in Austin, TX. Kirk has served as playwright with the Rude Mechs on 16 world-premieres. In May of 2001, Kirk’s adaptation of Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces enjoyed a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run. In 2002 and 2003, Lipstick Traces toured the U.S. and internationally, to Austria. His latest work, Major Bang, commissioned by the Foundry Theatre, premiered in January 2006 and received rave reviews. Kirk holds a James A. Michener Fellowship from the University of Texas in Playwriting and Fiction. 

Katie Pearl (Director) is an Obie-award winning collaborative theater maker working throughout the country on site-specific performance and new plays. Recent directing credits include D’Amours CATARACT (Women’s Project, NYC), Steve Moore’s Nightswim (State Theater, Austin TX), and Sally Oswald’s The Painful Adventures (Labapalooza Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse). Pearl has developed work with writers at the Playwright’s Center (MN), New Dramatists and Soho Rep (NY), and University of Texas/Austin. She has led workshops and taught youth theatre classes and is a proud member of Physical Plant Theater of Austin TX nationwide. Pearl has received numerous awards for direction and production from the Austin Critics’ Table, and is the recipient of a Roothbert Fellowship, a Drama League directing fellowship and a 2003 Village Voice OBIE award.

For more about Etty Hillesum or the play, you may visit www.wrestlingpatient.org

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