RASTUS AND HATTIE By Lisa Langford Selected For NNPN National Showcase Of New Plays

Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT) is proud to announce that Rastus and Hattie, a new play written by Lisa Langford, Cleveland Public Theatre's 2018/2019 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellow and longtime CPT artist, was selected alongside 5 new plays to be read at NNPN's 17th annual National Showcase of New Plays this December in Sacramento, California.

NNPN and B Street Theatre will host the National Showcase of New Plays from December 7-9, presenting readings of six production-ready new plays to more than 150 NNPN Core and Associate Members, Affiliated Artists, independent theatre-makers, and invited guests.

During two rounds of readings, adjudicators narrowed the pool of 70 submissions to 12 Finalists. From there, a committee of NNPN Artistic Leaders and Affiliated Artists selected the six plays that will be featured.

According to Raymond Bobgan, CPT Executive Artistic Director: "This is huge for Cleveland Public Theatre, and even more huge for Lisa. Her play will be shared in front of Artistic Leaders from across the country with the potential to have premieres at NNPN member theatres. This is a game changer. We couldn't be more proud, and we can't wait for our world premiere of Rastus and Hattie next fall!"

Lisa Langford, 2018/2019 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellow says: "I'm honored and really excited, especially for the theatre, because Raymond and Cleveland Public Theatre have been instrumental in developing and sharing this play."

Established in 2002, the National Showcase of New Plays is an annual three-day event that highlights unproduced plays from across the country. The Showcase creates a unique and invaluable opportunity for production-ready new plays to be viewed by NNPN's Core and Associate Members' artistic and literary leaders, as well as literary agents, publishers, and independent producers invited from around the country.

More than 90% of the plays featured in the Showcase have received a production within the next three seasons, many of them supported as NNPN Rolling World Premieres.

ABOUT RASTUS AND HATTIE

Needra and Marlene enjoy a perfect post-racial friendship until two problematic Black robots (and a glitch in the time-space continuum) make them confront their ideas about race and the value of the past. This is a hilarious comedy with a bite, confronting racism and the wish to change history.

THE SIX SELECTED PLAYS

• Alabaster by Audrey Cefaly (nominated by Florida Repertory Theatre)
• Amerikin by Chisa Hutchinson (City Theatre Company)
• Rastus and Hattie by Lisa Langford (Cleveland Public Theatre)
• Mothers by Anna Moench (2018 MFA Playwrights' Workshop)
• Strange Men by Will Snider (Affiliated Artist)
• Bleeding Hearts by Steve Yockey (Affiliated Artist)

THE 2018 FINALISTS

• Boycott Esther by Emily Acker (Azuka Theatre)
• A Dark Wood by Eric Coble (Affiliated Artist)
• Moonlight on the Bayou by Lindsey Ferrentino (Actor's Express)
• Cottontail by Andrew Rosendorf (Affiliated Artist)
• Nightbird by R. Eric Thomas (InterAct Theatre Company)
• The Abuelas by Stephanie Alison Walker (Affiliated Artist)

National New Play Network is an alliance of professional theatres that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays. Since its founding in 1998, NNPN has supported more than 250 productions nationwide through its innovative National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere program, which provides playwright and production support for new works at its Member theatres. Additional programs - its annual National Conference, National Showcase of New Plays, and MFA Playwrights Workshop; the NNPN Annual and Smith Prize commissions; its residencies for playwrights, producers and directors; and the organization's member accessed Collaboration, Festival, and Travel banks and online information sessions - have helped cement the Network's position as a vital force in the new play landscape. NNPN also strives to pioneer, implement, and disseminate ideas and programs that revolutionize the way theatres collaborate to support new plays and playwrights. Its most recent project, the New Play Exchange, is changing the way playwrights share their work and others discover it by providing immediate access to information on more than 21,000 new plays by living writers. NNPN's 32 Core and nearly 90 Associate Members - along with the nearly 300 affiliated artists who are its alumni, the thousands of artists and artisans employed annually by its member theatres, and the hundreds of thousands of audience members who see its supported works each year - are creating the new American theatre. nnpn.org | newplayexchange.org

Lisa Langford earned a BA in Modern European History from Harvard University and an MFA in playwriting from Cleveland State University. Her play, The Art of Longing, was a finalist for the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers and a semifinalist for the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 2017 National Playwrights Conference; it was produced in the Fall of 2018 at Cleveland Public Theatre. Lisa was also a finalist in NYC's The Playwrights Realm's Scratchpad Series and selected for the National New Play Network's Cross Pollination Project. Her ten-minute play, The Bomb, about the Black Lives Matter movement, is published in the anthology, Black Lives, Black Words. She is the 2018/2019 Nord Family Foundation Playwright Fellow at Cleveland Public Theatre.

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