Playwrights Announced For Ojai 2023 Summer Conference & New Works Festival

Playwrights receive a week-long workshop to develop their new plays followed by a public presentation in OPC's 26th Annual New Works Festival, August 2 - 6.

Ojai - Ojai Playwrights Conference (OPC), under the leadership of new Producing Artistic Director Jeremy B. Cohen, today announced the selection of playwrights for its 26th Annual New Works Festival to be held August 2 - 6 in Ojai, CA.

Playwrights and their plays to be presented in the Festival include: Ngozi Anyanwu, My...Name is Beatrice; Benjamin Benne, and thou shalt be healed; Mathilde Dratwa, Dirty Laundry; Julia Izumi, Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with Live & Active Cultures!); and Anne Washburn, The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire.

Prior to sharing their plays with the public at the Festival, the playwrights will participate in
Conference week, which includes play development workshops with directors, dramaturges, and OPC artistic staff. They then will be joined by actors, stage managers, and production teams who help bring each playwright's vision to life for the public presentations.

Writers-in-Residence June Carryl, Madeline Sayet, and DeLanna Studi will take part in a non-public play development process and participate in the Festival as part of the artist community. (All playwright bios, play descriptions, and presentation days/times listed below.)

This 2023 Festival marks Jeremy B. Cohen's first year as OPC's Producing Artistic Director. He is joined by co-artistic producers Khanisha Foster, Jeff Liu, and Hannah Wolf. (See bios at
ojaiplays.org/artisticproductionstaff.)

"I couldn't be more thrilled with this first cohort of writers we've curated for my first Ojai Playwrights Conference and New Works Festival," Cohen said. "Their stories and artistry reflect a powerful vision for how we need to move theater forward on stages across the country. This season is filled with playwrights whose work insists we gather together again to listen, to share, to connect, and then to take that experience back out into the world."

In addition to the five new plays, the Festival will include a special event for artists in Ojai and the OPC community (including participants in the Youth Workshop and Intern programs) to share their work with the public, and an evening of conversation with the 2023 Festival playwrights, led by Cohen.

Festival passes are available now and range from $80 - $400; all passes include preferred seating. Single tickets will be general admission and donation-based (pay what you can), and available two weeks prior to the Festival. More information: https://www.ojaiplays.org/new-works-festival 

ABOUT THE 2023 NEW WORKS FESTIVAL PLAYWRIGHTS & PLAYS

Mathilde Dratwa

Dirty Laundry | Friday, August 4, 8:00 p.m.

A woman finds herself grappling with both grief and anger following the sudden death of her mother and the shocking revelation of her father’s infidelity. Meanwhile, her father tries his best to verbalize his own complicated feelings about love, loss, lust…and household chores. And the other woman wonders: Is she still “the other woman” when the original woman is gone? A play about the absurdity and messiness of life and death. 

BIO: Mathilde Dratwa's (she/her) plays include Milk and Gall (Theatre503, London), A Play about David Mamet Writing a Play about Harvey Weinstein, Dirty Laundry, and Esther Perel Ruined my Life. Her work has been presented by the Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Rattlestick, LAByrinth Theater Company, the Playwrights’ Center, Audible, and the Young Vic. On the film/TV side, Mathilde has developed content for Picture Start, Endeavor, LuckyChap, Dirty Films, FX, Red Wagon, Sony/TriStar, Chernin and wiip.

Benjamin Benne

and thou shalt be healed | Saturday, August 6, 3:00 p.m.

Siblings Mary and Johnny were raised in the same Christian cult. Now in their 30s, the still religious Mary is having a crisis of faith and is in need of a miracle. Her now secular brother offers a controversial solution. When reunited on a remote mountain in New Mexico, surrounded by energy vortexes, rumors of aliens, and a golden eyelash palm pit viper named Daisy, they wonder: Did they ever know the same God?

BIO: Benjamin Benne’s (he/him) plays include Alma (World Premiere '22: Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre, L.A. & American Blues Theater, Chicago; ArtsWest, Seattle '22; Curious Theatre, Denver '23; Central Square, Cambridge '23), In His Hands (World Premiere '22: Mosaic Theater, D.C.), and What / Washed Ashore / Astray (World Premiere '23: Pillsbury House, Minneapolis). He’s a winner of Portland Stage's Clauder Competition Grand Prize, Arizona Theatre Company's National Latinx Playwriting Award, Kennedy Center's KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award, American Blues' Blue Ink Playwriting Award, the Playwrights' Center's McKnight and Many Voices Fellowships, and was named part of "LA Vanguardia: The Latino innovators, investigators, and power players breaking through barriers” by the L.A. Times. Commissions: South Coast Rep, Seattle Rep. MFA: Playwriting, David Geffen/Yale School of Drama '22. www.benjaminbenne.com

Ngozi Anyanwu

My… Name is Beatrice | Saturday, August 5, 8:00 p.m.

My… Name is Beatrice is a continuation of what hopes to be The Homecoming Queen as we follow Kelechi’s return to America, this time with her “daughter” Beatrice. And we’ll come to find out healing and reuniting is messy business. And requires letting go. 

BIO: Ngozi Anyanwu’s (she/her) playwriting credits include: Seven Deadly Sins (Drama Desk Award); The Homecoming Queen (Kilroys list 2017, Leah Ryan Finalist), world premiere at The Atlantic theater (2018); Nike… (Kilroys List 2017), workshopped at The New Black Fest in conjunction with The Lark and The Strand Festival in conjunction with A.C.T and Space on Ryder Farm and New York Stage and Film. Anyanwu wrote and starred in Good Grief (Kilroys List 2016, semi-finalist Princess Grace, Humanitas Award), produced at Center Theatre Group (2017) and The Vineyard Theatre (2018) and The Last of the Love Letters, The Atlantic Theatre Company (2021). She has had multiple playwright residencies and commissions and has extensive credits as an actor. Anyanwu is currently Artist-in-Residence with the National Black Theatre. Education: UCSD (MFA Acting), Point Park University (BA).

Julia Izumi

Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with Live & Active Cultures!) | Sunday, August 6, 11:00 a.m.

Tonight we welcome Akira Kurosawa, the acclaimed filmmaker, who will give us an exclusive peek into the thrilling world of his movies. But, you know, it’s so weird, every time he talks about his films, it kinda sounds like he’s talking about yogurt? Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with Live & Active Cultures!) is a fantastical lecture/performance hybrid about what influences our art and “healthy” cultural consumption.

BIO: Julia Izumi’s (she/her) works include Regretfully, So the Birds Are (Playwrights Horizons/WP Theater), miku, and the gods. (ArtsWest), Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea (Rorschach Theatre), and others. Her work has been developed at MTC, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Berkeley Rep, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference, and more. Honors for her work include the OPC Dr. Kerry English Artist Award, O’Neill Finalist, and KCACTF’s Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award. Current New Dramatists Resident, LMCC Workspace Resident, and Civilians R&D Group Member. Current commissions: True Love Productions, MTC/Sloan, Playwrights Horizons, Seattle Rep 20x30. MFA: Brown University.

Anne Washburn

The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire | Sunday, August 6, 3:00 p.m.

Set in an alternative community on the Northern California coast, The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire is a play about a death, a pageant, a resurrection, a rescue, a locked basement door, boxes of old clothes and papers, jars used as vases, plums, a hamster cage, a wildcat skull, and many graces. The kids may or may not be all right.

  

BIO: Anne Washburn (she/her) is a California-born Brooklyn-based playwright whose plays include 10 out of 12, Antlia Pneumatica, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, A Devil At Noon, I Have Loved Strangers, The Internationalist, The Ladies, Little Bunny Foo Foo, Mr. Burns, Shipwreck, The Small, and transadaptations of Euripides' Orestes & Iphigenia in Aulis. Her work has premiered with 13P, Actors Theater of Louisville, the Almeida, American Repertory Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, Classic Stage Company, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dixon Place, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Fogler, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, Two River Theater Company, Vineyard Theater and Woolly Mammoth.

OPC 2023 WRITERS IN RESIDENCE

Madeline Sayet (she/her) is a Mohegan theatre maker who believes the stories we pass down inform our collective possible futures. She has been honored as a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Hollywood & Entertainment, TED Fellow, National Directing Fellow, NCAIED Native American 40 Under 40, and a recipient of The White House Champion of Change Award from President Obama. As playwright: Up and Down the River, Antigone Or And Still She Must Rise Up, Daughters of Leda, The Neverland. Her play Where We Belong has been performed at The Public Theater, Seattle Rep, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, The Goodman Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Portland Center Stage, and Baltimore Center Stage as part of a national tour produced by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in association with The Folger Shakespeare Library and published by Bloomsbury. Her performance of Where We Belong at the Goodman Theater earned her a Jeff Award nomination for Best Solo Performance. As director: Long Wharf Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Perseverance Theatre, Connecticut Repertory Theater, TheatreSquared, Delaware Shakespeare Festival, South Dakota Shakespeare Festival, The Krannert Center, Glimmerglass Festival, 59e59, and more. She is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, and Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP). www.madelinesayet.com 

June Carryl (she/her) is originally from Denver and studied Political Science and English Literature at Brown University. Her plays include Blue (Rogue Machine), N*gga B*tch (Residency, Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre, Vagrancy Theatre's Blossoming Project), Girl Blue (CTG L.A. Writer’s Workshop), Florence & Normandie (Golden Tongues – Diversifying the Classics Initiative – UCLA/Playwrights Arena), The Good Minister From Harare (Playwrights Arena Summer Series, ADAA Saroyan/Paul Award), and the life and death of (Vagracy Theatre), Colossus (Semi-Finalist, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference), and Stone Angels (Finalist, the Killroys). Part One of her collaboration with composer Jason Barabba about Aunt Jemima premiered as part of Overtone Industries.  

DeLanna Studi (she/her) is a proud citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry. She has over 25 years of experience as a performer, storyteller, educator, facilitator, advocate, and activist. Theater credits include the first national Broadway tour of August: Osage County, Gloria: A Life at the Daryl Roth Theatre, Informed Consent at the Duke on 42nd Street, and several regional theaters. DeLanna originated roles in over 18 world premieres including fourteen Native productions. She wrote and performed And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears, based on retracing her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears with her father, which has been produced throughout the country and was the first American play chosen for the Journees Theatricales de Carthage in Tunisia, Africa. DeLanna has extensive acting credits in film and television, and has had residencies and workshops at universities and organizations across the country. She is a recipient of the Butcher Scholar Award, MAP Fund Grant, and Cherokee Preservation Grant. Since 2007, she has served as the chair of the SAG-AFTRA National Native Americans Committee.

Since 1998, theatre professionals and enthusiastic audiences have converged in Ojai to participate in the development of new plays for the American theatre. Numerous plays developed at OPC have been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theatres across the country. Some have been nominated for and won prestigious awards. Both Fun Home by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori and Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz were Pulitzer Finalists. Fun Home won the Tony Award for Best Musical; and Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed and Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Motherf**ker with the Hat were each nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. In 2019, OPC received the LADCC Gordon Davidson Award for distinguished contribution to the Los Angeles theatrical community. In 2023, artistic leader, director, and playwright Jeremy B. Cohen was named Producing Artistic Director, succeeding Robert Egan who led the organization for 21 years. 

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