Janine Nabers Named 2013-14 Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage

Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak and Managing Director Michael Stotts have announced that playwright Janine Nabers will be the 2013-14 Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage.

Tresnjak said, "I am thrilled that the versatile, accomplished, and wildly talented Janine Nabers is joining our distinguished roster of Aetna New Voices fellows and I look forward to working with her in the coming year."

A season-long engagement, the Aetna New Voices Fellowship provides an artistic home for important playwrights to develop work and become involved in the ongoing life of Greater Hartford. The residency includes working with Hartford Stage's education department, advancing community development, and the commissioning of a new play, as well as a series of readings and workshops throughout the year.

"Aetna congratulates the Hartford Stage on its 50th anniversary and is pleased to once again support the award winning New Voices Fellows," states Floyd W. Green, III, Vice President of Community Relations and Urban Marketing. "Through our collaboration, we have been able to showcase emerging talents who have entertained audiences and inspired arts communities across this great nation. Janine Nabers continues the tradition of the Fellowship, which has been the home for important playwrights of color. We are excited to experience her work and we look forward to another engaging Hartford Stage season."

Marking its ninth year as the sole funder of this essential program, Aetna, Inc., builds healthy communities by promoting volunteerism, forming partnerships, and funding initiatives to improve the quality of life for its employees and customers.

The 2012-13 Aetna New Voices Fellow Matthew Lopez's Somewhere is making its East Coast premiere at Hartford Stage this spring. Breath and Imagination by 2007-08 Fellow Daniel Beaty premieredlast season. Quiara Alegria Hudes, the 2008-09 Aetna New Voices Fellow, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Water by the Spoonful,also produced at Hartford Stage. Poet and playwright Marcus Gardley, whose play TheHouse That Will Not Stand runs this spring at Yale Rep, served as the 2011-12 Fellow. Fetch Clay, Make Man, by2010-11 Fellow Will Power, will run through October at the New York Theatre Workshop.

A native of Houston, Texas, Janine Nabers is a 2013 graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship at Juilliard. Her play Annie Bosh is Missing premiered in August 2013 at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. A 2012-2013 New York Theatre Workshop Playwriting Fellow, she is also a member of the MCC Playwrights Coalition and the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages. She was Page 73's 2011 Playwriting Fellow and is an alumna of the Ars Nova Playgroup, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellowship, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the 2010 and 2011 Sundance Theatre Labs.

"Janine is a tremendously talented writer with an impressive range from A Swell in the Ground, the subtle study of coming-of-age which was part of last year's Brand:NEW festival here, to her musicalMrs. Hughes about Sylvia Plath and TEd Hughes, which is currently in development, to her newest play, Welcome to Jesus, which we're looking forward to hearing for the first time at this fall's Brand:NEW," said ElizaBeth Williamson, Hartford Stage Director of New Play Development.

Presently Janine is working on commissions from Playwrights Horizons and Berkeley Rep. Mrs. Hughes was developed as the 2012 Williamstown Theatre Festival fellowship musical and was part of the 2013 Yale Institute for Musical Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club's 7@7 series, and the Theatreworks New Works Now Festival.

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