Goodman Theatre Announces 2018/2019 Playwrights Unit

Goodman Theatre's commitment to new works and emerging artists continues in its 2018/2019 Season. Today, the Goodman named four Chicago-based writers to its Playwrights Unit-Georgette Kelly, whose play Ballast was featured on The Kilroys List and received the Craig Noel Award for Outstanding New Play; Dianne Nora, a playwright, dramaturg, theater scholar and comedy writer who works in Chicago, Brooklyn and Dublin; Marisela Treviño Orta, semifinalist for the 2018 O'Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference and 2019 Kendeda Finalist (ALLIANCE THEATRE); and Stacey Rose, whose work has been presented at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, National Black Theatre and more. The Playwrights Unit, in partnership with Chicago Dramatists, meets bi-monthly to discuss their commissioned plays-in-progress with the Goodman's artistic team. The residency culminates in a public staged reading of each new play in Summer 2019.

Additionally, the Goodman seeks Chicago-based directors for its 2018/2019 Michael Maggio Directing Fellowship. The annual fellowship was established in 2002 to honor the memory and artistry of Goodman Associate Artistic Director Michael Maggio (1951 - 2000) who directed 22 productions at the Goodman and more than 60 productions at venues across the country. The selected fellow will gain complete access to the artistic process at the Goodman, including the opportunity to assist on a Goodman production-from early research and design through the casting and rehearsal process to opening night. Submissions, including a resume, reviews of previous work, two letters of reference and a detailed statement of personal and artistic goals, can be sent directly to Jorge Silva, Producing Coordinator at Goodman Theatre (170 North Dearborn) or JorgeSilva@GoodmanTheatre.org. More information can be found at GoodmanTheatre.org/About.

The Goodman is grateful for the generosity of its New Work sponsors, including: the Time Warner Foundation, Lead Support of New Play Development; The Pritzker-Pucker Foundation and the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Major Support of New Play Development; The Glasser and Rosenthal Family, Support of New Work Development; and The Joyce Foundation, Principal Support for Diverse Artistic and Professional Development.

About the 2018/2019 Playwrights Unit Members

Georgette Kelly's work has been produced across the country and she has participated in numerous artistic residencies. Her play I Carry Your Heart received the inaugural Hope on Stage Playwriting Award, accompanied by a rolling world premiere, and Ballast was featured on The Kilroys List and received the Craig Noel Award for Outstanding New Play. Other plays include: North Star, Faith in a Fallen World, In the Belly of the Whale, F*ck la vie d'artiste, How to Hero and an adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's Lighthousekeeping. Kelly's work has been developed with Goodman Theatre, the Kennedy Center, the National New Play Network, the DC Source Festival, ALLIANCE THEATRE, Diversionary Theatre, Something Marvelous and Chicago's DCASE. She is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and she has participated in residencies at the Tofte Lake Center, the National Winter Playwrights Retreat and terraNOVA Groundbreakers Playwrights Group. She has been chosen as a finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, the Lark Playwrights Week, the Playwrights' Center CORE Writer Program, the BPP Woodward/Newman Drama Award, the Stage Left Playwright Residency and the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. Kelly holds a BA in performance studies from Northwestern University and an MFA in playwriting from Hunter College, where she studied with Tina Howe, Arthur Kopit and Mark Bly. GeorgetteKelly.com

Dianne Nora is a playwright, dramaturg, theater scholar and comedy writer who works in Chicago, Brooklyn, and Dublin, Ireland. Her full-length plays include Julie (25F), Western Country, In Rooms Such as These, Everybody's Legs, Wasps, Ye That Dwell in Dust, Prodigal and Monica: This Play Is Not About Monica Lewinsky. She recently assisted her mentor Tracy Letts in rehearsals for the world premiere of his play The Minutes, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. She is currently co-writing a parody of the Bible with Scott Dikkers, founding editor of The Onion.

Marisela Treviño Orta is an award-winning playwright, a graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and a Playwrights' Center Core Writer. A poet for many years, Orta found her way to the playwriting in 2004 while completing an MFA in writing at the University of San Francisco, where she studied poetry. This season, Orta's play Wolf at the Door will receive a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere at New Jersey Repertory Company, Kitchen Dog Theater, Milagro Theatre, and Halcyon Theatre. Her other plays include Alcira; American Triage; Braided Sorrow (Su Teatro); Ghost Limb (Brava Theatre); Heart Shaped Nebula (Shotgun Players); Shoe; The River Bride (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); and Woman on Fire (Camino Real Productions). Orta is an alumna of the Playwrights Foundation's Resident Playwright Initiative, a founding member of the Bay Area Latino Theatre Artists Network and a member of the Latinx Theatre Commons' national steering committee. Currently she is working on an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit and has also begun a new cycle of worst-case scenario plays-sci-fi thriller plays including WMB (pronounced "womb") and Nightfall. Her work has been commissioned by American Conservatory Theater, Latino Playwrights Initiative, Marin Theatre Company, Nashville Children's Theatre and San Francisco Grants for the Arts. She has been awarded the 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama, 2009 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Drama, 2012 Nuestras Voces Finalist (Repertorio Español), 2012 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist, 2013 National Latino Playwriting Award co-winner (Arizona Theatre Company), 2013 Global Age Project Finalist (Aurora Theatre Company), 2016 Kilroys List, 2016 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Latinidad Playwriting Award Runner Up, 50 Playwrights Project's Best Unproduced Latin@ Plays of 2017, 2018 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist and 2019 Kendeda Finalist (ALLIANCE THEATRE).

Stacey Rose hails from Elizabeth, New Jersey and Charlotte, North Carolina respectively, where she earned a BA in theatre at University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is an alum of the MFA program in dramatic writing at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. While at Tisch she was the recipient of an AAUW Career Development Grant, was a Future Screenwriting Fellow and honored with The Goldberg Prize for her play The Danger: A Homage to Strange Fruit. Her work has been presented at UNC Charlotte, On Q Productions, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, The Fire This Time Festival (Slavesperience, America v. 2.1), The Brooklyn Generator (As Is: Conversations with Big Black Women in Confined Spaces), The Bushwick Starr Reading Series (Igniting The Alabaster You!), Mosaic Theatre (The Black Jew Thing co-written with Alexis Spiegel), The Amoralists Theatre Compay (Bones, Bonez, Bone$), Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre (Muva Death), National Black Theatre (The Ballad O' Nigg-O-Lee) and Pillsbury House Theater (Sven, Ole & The Armageddon Myth). She is a two time semi-finalist for The Princess Grace Fellowship (The Danger), a semi-finalist at Premiere Stages Play Festival (As Is), and a finalist at the Fusion Film Festival (Up-And-Coming). Stacey was a 2015-16 Dramatist Guild Fellow, a 2017-18 Playwrights' Center Many Voices Fellow, a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow and is a 2018-2021 Playwrights' Center Core Writer. She served as writer's assistant and script coordinator for season one of She's Gotta Have It, the Series. Rose's work celebrates and explores Blackness, Black identity, Black history, body politics and the dilemma of life as the "other."

About Goodman Theatre

AMERICA'S "BEST REGIONAL THEATRE" (Time magazine), Goodman Theatre is a premier not-for-profit organization distinguished by the excellence and scope of its artistic programming and civic engagement. Led by Artistic Director Robert Falls and Executive Director Roche Schulfer, the theater's artistic priorities include new play development (more than 150 world or American premieres), large scale musical theater works and reimagined classics (celebrated revivals include Falls' productions of Death of a Salesman and The Iceman Cometh). Goodman Theatre artists and productions have earned two Pulitzer Prizes, 22 Tony Awards, over 160 Jeff Awards and many more accolades. In addition, the Goodman is the first theater in the world to produce all 10 plays in August Wilson's "American Century Cycle" and its annual holiday tradition A Christmas Carol, which celebrates its 41st anniversary this season, has created a new generation of theatergoers. The Goodman also frequently serves as a production partner with local off-Loop theaters and national and international companies by providing financial support or physical space for a variety of artistic endeavors.

Committed to three core values of Quality, Diversity and Community, the Goodman proactively makes inclusion the fabric of the institution and develops education and community engagement programs that support arts as education. This practice uses the process of artistic creation to inspire and empower youth, lifelong learners and audiences to find and/or enhance their voices, stories and abilities. The Goodman's Alice Rapoport Center for Education and Engagement is the home of such programming, most offered free of charge, and has vastly expanded the theater's ability to touch the lives of Chicagoland citizens (with 85% of youth participants coming from underserved communities) since its 2016 opening.

Goodman Theatre was founded in 1925 by William O. Goodman and his family in honor of their son Kenneth, an important figure in Chicago's cultural renaissance in the early 1900s. The Goodman family's legacy lives on through the continued work and dedication of Kenneth's family, including Albert Ivar Goodman, who with his late mother, Edith-Marie Appleton, contributed the necessary funds for the creation of the new Goodman center in 2000.

Today, Goodman Theatre leadership also includes the distinguished members of the Artistic Collective: Brian Dennehy, Rebecca Gilman, Henry Godinez, Dael Orlandersmith, Steve Scott, Chuck Smith, Regina Taylor, Henry Wishcamper and Mary Zimmerman. David W. Fox, Jr. is Chair of Goodman Theatre's Board of Trustees, Denise Stefan Ginascol is Women's Board President and Megan McCarthy Hayes is President of the Scenemakers Board for young professionals.