InterAct Theatre Company Presents NIGHTBIRD By R. Eric Thomas

The National New Play Network, the country's alliance of nonprofit theaters that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays, announces the 2017-18 Annual Commission is awarded to Core Member InterAct Theatre Company (Philadelphia, PA) and playwright R. Eric Thomas for the new play Nightbird. The play will center on a Mid-Atlantic city reckoning with its relationship to slavery.

In the middle of the night, the mayor takes down the city's remaining Confederate monuments. The next morning, Ciel, a black lesbian graphic artist who's just purchased a home across the park that housed one of the statues, wakes up consumed by a question and an idea: What goes in the place of a Confederate monument in a lower-class black neighborhood? How do we reckon publicly with the past? How do we speak our story into the future? What now?

According to InterAct Theatre Company and the playwright, Nightbird "...is a play about liminal spaces, about the in-between, the tenuous, the fragile and the things on the cusp of exploding. The country in this play, as in reality, is in such a space. We are, as ever, divided politically, with a gaping hole where the idea of history used to be. In this moment, our entire narrative seems up for grabs. Not to put too fine a point on it but are we going to reckon with slavery or not? Will the nation's leaders conclusively reject white supremacy? And after that, well, what then?"

The National New Play Network Annual Commission is chosen from projects nominated by Core Members and selected by NNPN's Board of Directors. NNPN awards at least one $10,000 commission each year, and the theater that nominated the winning proposal is responsible for the administration and development of the commissioned play. Commissioned playwrights agree to grant the right of first refusal to produce their play to all NNPN Core Members in their respective markets, and pay royalties to the Network only after reaching a predetermined level of income from the play. (photo: Neal Santos) R. Eric Thomas is a Barrymore Award-winning playwright and humorist. He is the long-running host of The Moth in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. He is also a Senior Staff Writer for Elle.com where he writes "Eric Reads the News," a daily current events and culture column. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Man Repeller, and others. His debut memoir-in-essays, Here For It, is forthcoming from Ballantine Books. He is a 2018 recipient of a National New Play Network commission for his play Night Bird.

Time Is On Our Side, was commissioned by Simpatico Theater Project and developed with PlayPenn. It was the recipient of two 2016 Barrymore Awards, including Best New Play, and was named one of six finalists for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg American Theater Critics Association New Play Award. Of the play, The Philadelphia Inquirer raved, "it's a superbly crafted two-hour mystery... Thomas creates an entire world with seeming room for all of humanity's hopes and dreams, foibles and longings."

Forthcoming: the Midwest premiere of Time Is On Our Side (About Face Theatre, 2018), Mrs. Harrison (Azuka Theatre, 2018), Infinity Jones Needs Some Space! (development: Act II Theatre), Safe Space (development: Cohesion Theater Company Playwright's Fellowship), Nightbird (NNPN Commision/Interact Theatre Company).

Other plays include The Quick Change (Short Gone Wild, City Theatre, 2017), Miriam1234 (Finalist: City Theatre National National Award for Short Playwriting 2017), Human Resources (City Theatre Summer Shorts, 2015, Finalist: 2015 City Theatre National Award for Short Playwriting, published: City Theatre Anthology 2015), the wordless puppet play Frieda The Invisible Woman (developed with Aaron Cromie, FringeArts 2015), When You Put It That Way It Just Sounds Ridiculous (Finalist: 2014 City Theatre National Award for Short Playwriting), Always The Bridesmaid (Quince Productions).

With over a million social media shares, Eric's ELLE.com column "Eric Reads the News" has quickly become an online humor staple. Covering pop culture, politics and current events, the column is a sardonic and sassy take on our world. Since its inception, it has been praised by such disparate personalities as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mariah Carey, Maxine Waters, Tamron Hall, and Tituss Burgess.

He is an alumnus of The Foundry, a Philadelphia playwrights lab, a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow, and a member of InterAct Theatre Company's Core Playwrights program and the Center Stage Playwrights Collective. rericthomas.com

Founded in 1988, InterAct Theatre Company is dedicated to presenting new and contemporary plays that explore the political, social and cultural issues of our time. The company produces four plays annually, and is actively involved in the development of new plays, workshops, and playwright support, as well as cultivating prize-winning writers, championing world premiere work, and creating community partnerships. interacttheatre.org

National New Play Network (NNPN) is the country's alliance of non-profit professional theaters dedicated to the development, production, and continued 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 theaters. 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 theaters 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 17,000 new plays by living writers. NNPN's 30 Core and 80 Associate Members - along with the more than 250 affiliated artists who are its alumni, the thousands of artists and artisans employed annually by its member theaters, and the hundreds of thousands of audience members who see its supported works each year - are creating the new American theater.

nnpn.org | newplayexchange.org

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