Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Theater Institute Announces Free Performance Series

Theatermakers, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Theater Institute summer program, returns this season with its free weekly performance series. On Tuesdays at 8 pm, June 29 through July 27, Theatermakers students will present three original one-act plays created within an intensive period of development. Each week's set of plays will follow a given theme or prompt, such as Dream Play, Adaptations, Modern Greek Tragedy.

Guest playwrights, all National Theater Institute alumni, will assist students in developing these original works. They include Maggie-Kate Coleman ? recipient of the 2009-2010 Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical for POP! A New Musical, which had its premiere at Yale Repertory Theater; and Mike Poe, semifinalist for this summer's National Playwrights Conference.

In announcing Theatermakers? summer season, NTI Artistic director Jeff Janisheski, noted: ?The Theatermakers are the next generation of theater artists. These fifteen Theatermakers students ? 11 actors, 2 directors and 2 playwrights ? come from colleges all across America and are selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants for our summer program. Each week the Theatermakers are given a gargantuan task: create a new batch of original one-act plays within a few days and present them, off-book, to a live audience. It's an electric and exciting event. Each Tuesday they present these works-in-progress and evolve before our eyes as artists. Come join us and support the next wave of American theater.?

For performance information, call the O'Neill box office: 860.443.1238.

Now under the leadership of Artistic Director Jeff Janisheski, the National Theater Institute is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2010. NTI conducts a conservatory-based theater training semester for college-age students each fall and spring. In addition to a rigorous schedule of conservatory classes led by leading theater professionals, students attend performances and meet with artists at New York and regional theaters. NTI also offers a semester of study abroad with the Moscow Art Theater.

NTI's six-week summer program, Theatermakers, gives advanced students and recent college graduates workshops and classes along with the opportunity to participate as assistants to professional artists during the O'Neill's National Playwrights Conference and National Music Theater Conference. Theatermakers provides an intensive daily regimen of classes in acting, directing or playwriting, movement and ensemble workshops, along with panels of guest artists.

Academic credits are available to undergraduates who successfully complete National Theater Institute programs. For information on NTI programs, contact Jean Routt, National Theater Institute Artistic Administrator at jroutt@theoneill.org, 860.443.5378 x224

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964 in honor of Eugene O'Neill, four-time Pulitzer Prize Winner and America's only playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, is the country's preeminent organization dedicated to the development of new works and new voices for the American theater. The O?Neill has been home to more than 1,000 new works for the stage and 2,500 emerging artists. Scores of projects developed at the O'Neill have gone on to full production at other theaters around the world, including Broadway, Off-Broadway and major regional theaters.
In addition to NTI, NPC and NMTC, O'Neill programs include the National Puppetry Conference and National Critics Institute. In addition, the O'Neill owns and operates Monte Cristo Cottage as a museum open to the public. Childhood summer home of Eugene O'Neill, the Cottage is a National Historic Landmark.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center received the 2010 Tony Award for Regional Theatre, a special Tony Award for Theatrical Excellence in 1979, the National Opera Award, the Jujamcyn Award for Theatre Excellence, and the Arts and Business Council Encore Award. For more information, visit www.theoneill.org or email theaterlives@theoneill.org.