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Atlantic Theater Slates 2017-18 Amplified Reading Series, Launch Writers & Tow Resident
By: BWW News Desk Sep. 20, 2017
Atlantic Theater Company has announced its 2017-2018 Amplified Reading Series selections, presenting six bold new plays throughout Atlantic's season with an expanded rehearsal process for more meaningful engagement with the material and the playwright.
Writers in the new season's reading series include Ghazi Albuliwi, Eliza Bent, Geraldine Inoa, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Nina Segal, and BrIan Watkins. Amplified is curated by Director of New Play Development Abigail Katz.
Atlantic also announces 2017-2018 Launch writers Abby Rosebrock and Tori Sampson, with commissions which are offered annually to early-career playwrights who have not yet received an Off-Broadway production and have fewer than three commissions from mid- to large-size theater companies.
Atlantic will welcome Amy Staats as their 2017-2018 season Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence. The residency program, funded by The Tow Foundation, includes a full-time salary with the playwright being integrated into the theater's day-to-day operations. The goal is for the playwright to gain experience and insight into all aspects of the nonprofit theater world. The residency includes a guaranteed full production of their play.
2017-2018 Amplified Reading Series:
Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 2pm
ON A CLEAR DAY I CAN SEE TO ELBA
By Eliza Bent
Directed by Knud Adams
Linda Gross Theater | 336 West 20th Street
Poetic, personal, and chock-full of puns, On a Clear Day I Can See to Elba takes on the solipsism of love, the maddening aspects of intimacy, and the curious nature of self-hood within a relationship. Lambrusco, Queen, and geraniums populate the ongoings in Bent's two-hander. Elba ultimately asks: What is the nature of self-actualization within a couple?
Monday, November 20, 2017 at 12:30pm
SOVEREIGNTY
Directed by Molly Smith
Atlantic Stage 2, Studio A | 330 West 16th Street
Sarah Ridge Polson, a young Cherokee lawyer fighting to restore her Nation's jurisdiction, must confront the ever-present ghosts of her grandfathers. With shadows stretching from 1830s Cherokee Nation (now present-day Georgia) through Andrew Jackson's Oval Office to the Cherokee Nation in present-day Oklahoma, Sovereignty asks how high the flames of anger can rise before they ultimately consume the truth.
Monday, December 11, 2017 at 2pm
INTO THE EARTH WITH YOU
By BrIan Watkins
Directed by Danya Taymor
Linda Gross Theater | 336 West 20th Street
Granddad is gone. No elegies. No dirges. No dowries. It all goes in the grave. But three sisters can't forget what's buried when an impossible discovery upends their notions of loss and gets the women asking: who among us has been digging? A burial play about the presence of absence, inspired by Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "Dirge Without Music."
Tuesday, December 19, 2017 at 2pm
REVELATION
By Ghazi Albuliwi
Directed by Saheem Ali
Linda Gross Theater | 336 West 20th Street
Atheist. Metrosexual. Vegetarian. Recovering 12 step-programmer. Broadway musical star. Meet Sayed Al-Mansur. An Arab with a Jewish sense of humor. He's just been deported to Islamistan for all the wrong reasons after a major terrorist attack. Now he must confront his past, present, and future in a repressive Islamic state ruled by a fanatical dictator. Will this neurotic New Yorker survive his exile and finish his newest musical about the Prophet Muhammad before it's too late?
Monday, January 29, 2018 at 2pm
IN THE NIGHT TIME (BEFORE THE SUN RISES)
By Nina Segal
Atlantic Stage 2 | 330 West 16th Street
A baby cries. A bottle breaks. A window smashes. Over the course of a single night, a couple try to still their screaming infant - but as the hours grow longer, the world becomes elastic around them, and the horrors that scar our planet threaten to crash into the baby's room. Should they ever have brought this child into such a wounded world?
Monday, March 19, 2018 at 2pm
RECKONING: FURIES FROM A NEW QUEER NATION
By Geraldine Inoa
Directed by David Mendizábal
Atlantic Stage 2 | 330 West 16th Street
2015: a year when the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on marriage equality coincided with a record number of trans women being murdered. Reckoning: Furies from a New Queer Nation examines two of the most pressing issues affecting Queer America today: gay white male privilege and the systemic oppression of trans women. Because when a Supreme Court ruling like marriage equality passes, we must ask: what did we accomplish and who did we leave behind?
Atlantic's new play development activities are made possible by leadership support from the Time Warner Foundation with additional support from the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, and the John Golden Fund. Special thanks to the Tow Foundation and Kenyon College for their support of residencies and commissions for early-career artists at Atlantic.
Atlantic productions and programs are also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
ABOUT THE AMPLIFIED READING SERIES PLAYWRIGHTS:
Ghazi Albuliwi Born in the Middle East and raised in Brooklyn, Albuliwi started standup comedy at the age of seventeen and soon was performing at major clubs around New York City. His autobiographical film titled West Bank Brooklyn was selected to world premiere at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles. Albuliwi's film became the hit of the festival circuit playing notable national and international festivals. He would go on to be named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the 'Top 25 New Faces of Indie film.' His latest feature comedy Peace after Marriage which he is writer/director and lead actor won the Tribeca Film Institutes "Creative Promise Award" during the Tribeca film festival. Recently he was awarded The Kevin Spacey Foundation 2015 'Artist of Choice Award' in theater for his comedic feature-length play Highly Suspect, which was presented with The New Group as a workshop production this past year. He was also a finalist for the 2015 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences prestigious Nicholl Fellowship for his comedy feature screenplay Arafat. He has performed live on NPR's "Snap Judgement" storytelling series and was featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Wall Street Journal for his humor and writings.
Eliza Bent is a playwright and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. She has been a SPACE on Ryder Farm Working Farm resident writer, a MacDowell Colony fellow, a Target Margin Institute Fellow, the recipient of an LMCC Process Space grant and US Embassy of Iceland grant. Bent is currently a New Georges Audrey Residency artist for her play Bonnie's Last Flight, a resident playwright at the Abingdon Theatre and is an alum of Project Y Playwright's Group and TerraNova's Groundbreakers group. Her plays have been developed and performed at the Abrons Arts Center, JACK, the Bushwick Starr, Dixon Place and the Great Plains Theatre Conference. Bent is a former senior editor at American Theatre magazine, a performer with the Obie-award winning company Half Straddle, and an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College where she received an MFA in playwriting.
Geraldine Inoa is a playwright and activist based in Brooklyn. She is a member of The Public Theater's 2016-17 Emerging Writers Group. Her play Scraps was developed through the LAByrinth Theater Company's Up Next Series and was a semifinalist for the O'Neil National Playwrights Conference. She was a finalist for the 2017 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship at the Lark and winner of Pride Films & Plays 2016 LezPlay Contest. Her work has been developed at the Future is Female Festival, the All Out Arts Reading Series, and the Gallatin Arts Festival. She received a B.A. from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. www.geraldineinoa.com
Mary Kathryn Nagle was born in Oklahoma City, OK, and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She graduated summa cum laude from Tulane Law School where she was the recipient of the Judge John Minor Wisdom Award. She is a partner at Pipestem Law P.C., a firm specializing in the restoration of tribal sovereignty and safety for Native women. Her play Manahatta will be produced in Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2018 season, and her play Sovereignty will be produced in Arena Stage's 2017-2018 season. Other recent productions include AMERINDA's presentation of Miss Lead at 59e59, and Native Voices at the Autry's production of Fairly Traceable. Nagle is an alum of the 2013 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, and an alum of The Civilians 2014 Research & Development Group. Nagle is the Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, a program designed to develop Native voices in the American theater and ensure that Native plays reach the American stage.
Nina Segal is a playwright based in London and New York. Productions include: Big Guns (directed by Dan Hutton Yard Theatre, 2017); In The Night Time (Before The Sun Rises) (directed by Ben Kidd, Gate Theatre, 2016; upcoming Italian-language production directed by Emiliano Russo, Teatro Belli, 2017); and Danger Signals (created with Built for Collapse, New Ohio, 2017/18). Nina has been a finalist for the Yale Drama Series Prize 2016 and the Adrian Pagan Award 2015 and is currently attached to the HighTide First Commissions scheme.
BrIan Watkins is a New Dramatists resident playwright and a Juilliard Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program fellow. Watkins' plays include Wyoming (Lesser America), My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer (The Flea Theater; NY Times & Time Out NY Critics' Pick), Into The Earth With You, Juke, A Scavenge (Williamstown Theatre Festival) and High Plains (UK premiere at Underbelly, Edinburgh; Coho Theatre, Portland). His work has been seen and developed at New York Theatre Workshop, Labyrinth Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The Flea Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Lesser America, Edinburgh Fringe, INTAR, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, The Drama League, Creede Repertory Theatre, Local Theatre Co, Wild Claw, Route 66 Theatre, and Coho Theatre, among others. He is a Stavis Playwriting Award nominee, and is the recipient of a Jerome Foundation/Tofte Lake Emerging Artist Fellowship, a Sundance Lab finalist, an O'Neill National Playwrights Conference finalist, a Princess Grace Playwriting Award finalist, a recipient of the John Osborne Award for the Performing Arts, and a Heideman Award finalist. His work is published by Broadway Play Publishing.
ABOUT THE AMPLIFIED READING SERIES DIRECTORS:
Knud Adams (Director, On a Clear Day I Can See to Elba) directed last year's public workshop of Eliza Bent's On a Clear Day I Can See to Elba at The New Ohio. Recent productions: Justin Kuritzkes' Asshole (JACK), Torrey Townsend's The Workshop (softFocus), Julia Jarcho's Every Angel is Brutal (Clubbed Thumb), Celine Song's Tom & Eliza (JACK), Max Posner's Snore (Juilliard), Carl Holder's An Intimate Evening with Typhoid Mary (The New Ohio), Jen Silverman's That Poor Girl and How He Killed Her (U. of Rochester), Jenny Schwartz's Krazytown (NYU), Daniel Kramer's My Jane and Annie Baker's Body Awareness (Chester Theatre Company), and Nick Jones' Salome of the Moon (Waterwell). He trained by assisting some of the nation's foremost theater artists: André Gregory, Elizabeth LeCompte, Richard Foreman, Sam Gold, Sarah Benson, and Rachel Chavkin. Knud has developed new work with dozens of theaters throughout NYC and regionally, including NYTW, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, The New Group, The Bushwick Starr, Playwrights Realm, P73, and Ars Nova. Drama League Alum, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Playwrights Horizons Directing Resident.
Saheem Ali (Director, Revelation). Originally from Nairobi, Kenya, Saheem is a director of plays and musicals with an emphasis on new work. Recent credits include Twelfth Night (The Public), Kill Move Paradise (National Black Theater), Nollywood Dreams (Cherry Lane), Dot (Detroit Public Theater), The Booty Call (Inner Voices) and A Lesson From Aloes (Juilliard). He has workshopped new plays at Playwrights Realm, MCC, New York Stage & Film and PEN World Voices. He has co-written two musicals with composer Michael Thurber: The Booty Call (Roundabout Underground Reading Series) and Goddess (O'Neill Musical Theater Conference). He was the Associate Director of The Tempest at The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park. He is a Usual Suspect and former Directing Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop.
David Mendizábal (Director, Reckoning) is one of the Producing Artistic Leaders of The Movement Theatre Company in Harlem. He is also currently the Artistic Associate at Atlantic Theater Company. Directing credits include: Tell Hector I Miss Him (Atlantic); On the Grounds of Belonging (The Public Theater); Locusts Have No King (INTAR); Evensong (APAC); And She Would Stand Like This, Look Upon Our Lowliness and Bintou (The Movement). David is a participant in the Leadership U: One-on-One program, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group. He is a Founding Member and Artistic Producer of The Sol Project and serves on the Steering Committee for the Latinx Theatre Commons. Alumnus of The Drama League Director's Project, Lincoln Center Director's Lab and NALAC Leadership Institute.
Molly Smith (Director, Sovereignty) has been a leader in new play development for over 30 years and has served as Artistic Director of Arena Stage since 1998. Her most recent directing credits at Arena include Carousel, Oliver!, The Originalist, and Fiddler on the Roof. Her directorial work has also been seen at The Old Globe, Asolo Repertory, The Glimmerglass Festival, Berkeley Repertory, Trinity Repertory, Canada's Shaw Festival, Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, Montreal's Centaur Theatre and Perseverance Theater in Juneau, Alaska, which she founded and ran from 1979-1998. She has worked alongside playwrights Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, Lawrence Wright, Karen Zacarías, John Murrell, Eric Coble, Charles Randolph-Wright and many others. She led the re-invention of Arena Stage, focusing on the architecture and creation of the Mead Center for American Theater and positioning Arena Stage as a national center for American artists. During her time with the company, Arena Stage has workshopped more than 120 new plays, produced 39 world premieres, staged numerous second and thiRD Productions and been an important part of nurturing nine projects that went on to have a life on Broadway. In 2014, Molly made her Broadway debut directing The Velocity of Autumn, following its critically acclaimed run at Arena Stage.
Danya Taymor (Director, Into the Earth with You) is a director and translator originally from Northern California. Recent work includes Antoinette Nwandu's Pass Over (Steppenwolf), Tuvalu (Sundance), and Flat Sam (PlayPenn); Nathan Yungerberg's Esai's Table (Cherry Lane Mentor Project); Justin Kuritzkes' The Sensuality Party (The New Group); BrIan Watkins' Wyoming (Lesser America) and My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer (The Flea); Susan Soon-He Stanton's Cygnus (Women's Project); Sarah Gancher's The Place We Built (The Flea); Dan McCabe's ChrisTina Martinez (Juilliard); Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (Atlantic Stage 2); Shakespeare'sThe Tempest (NYU/Stella Adler); and Legom's I Hate f-ing Mexicans (The Flea), which she also translated. She is a 2014-2016 Time Warner Directing Fellow at Women's Project, a former 2050 fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, an Artist in Residence at TFANA, a member of Ensemble Studio Theater, and an Associate Artist at The Flea Theater. Other awards/fellowships include: Van Lier Directing Fellowship; Gates Foundation Grant, Rough Draft Residency at the Drama League and Lincoln Center Directors Lab. Upcoming work includes Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Everybody (Juilliard) and Martyna Majok's Queens (LCT3).
ABOUT THE LAUNCH PLAYWRIGHTS:
Abby Rosebrock is a New York-based writer and actress from South Carolina, and author of the plays Dido of Idaho, Blue Ridge, Singles in Agriculture, Different Animals and more. Her work has been produced, presented or developed at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Lark, Cherry Lane, Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, New York Stage & Film, Labyrinth, Drama League, Dixon Place and regionally in Georgia, Montana and Idaho. www.abbyrosebrock.com/plays
Tori Sampson is a Minneapolis based playwright originally from Boston. Her plays include If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must be a Muhfucka, This Land Was Made, Cadillac Crew, Where Butterflies Go in the Winter and Some Bodies Travel. Her plays have been developed at Great Plains National Theater Conference, Berkeley Repertory Theater's: The Ground Floor residency program, Victory Garden's IGNITION festival and UBUNTU theater. Tori is a 2017-18 Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellow. Two of Tori's plays appeared on the 2017 Kilroys List and she holds an Honorable Mention from the 2016 Relentless Award. She is the Kennedy Center's 2016 Paula Vogel Playwright and second place Lorraine Hansberry recipient. She is a 2017 finalist for the Alliance Theater's Kendeda Prize. Tori is currently working on commissions from Berkeley Repertory Theater and Yale Repertory Theater. She holds a B.S. in sociology from Ball State University in Muncie, IN and an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama.
ABOUT THE TOW PLAYWRIGHT-IN-RESIDENCE:
Amy Staats is an actor, writer, filmmaker and 2017-2018 Tow Playwright-in-Residence with Atlantic Theater Company. Her plays include: Eddie and Dave (Developed at Atlantic Theater Company, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor and at SPACE on Ryder Farm with Margot Bordelon and Megan Hill); Hands (Developed at Naked Angel's First Mondays and at SPACE on Ryder Farm with The Ensemble Studio Theater); I Hope She'll Be Okay (Developed at Williamstown Theater Festival with Jess Chayes) and Throws of Love (Samuel French Festival, winner, directed by Jess Chayes). Her television and film scripts include: Nice and Easy, Farm to Table and Mary and Louise; Select awards include: 2017 Launch Commission with Atlantic Theater Company; 2015 Samuel French Shorts Festival winner; BVEW Screenplay Fellowship and Best Script at LA Comedy Shorts Festival for Mary and Louise. Productions of her plays include: Throws of Love (Samuel French, Twisted Shorts with Core Ensemble); Been Caught Stealing, Cat House (Dodo Theater Collective's Triptych Series) and The Changing of the Guard (The Ensemble Studio Theater). Upcoming projects: Amy will be performing in The Mad Ones' Miles For Mary at Playwrights Horizons in January 2018.
Atlantic Theater Company (Neil Pepe, Artistic Director; Jeffory Lawson, Managing Director) Formed in 1985 by David Mamet and William H. Macy, Atlantic is an award-winning Off-Broadway theater dedicated to producing great plays simply and truthfully while utilizing an artistic ensemble. At Atlantic, we believe that the story of a play and the intent of its playwright are at the core of the creative process. We aim to produce plays and musicals that are vital and thought-provoking - from premieres by emerging and established writers to classics that speak to modern audiences.
In addition to being an award-winning producing organization, we've been teaching theater since our founding. Today, the Atlantic Acting School has grown into one of the most respected training institutions in New York City - offering a diverse range of programming including an accredited conservatory program, a BFA program through NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and after-school and summer programs for kids and teens. We also bring theater into the classroom through robust arts education initiatives that serve a record 4,200 public school students each year.
Since its inception, Atlantic has produced more than 150 plays including Tony Award-winning productions of Spring Awakening (Steven Sater, Duncan Sheik) and The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Martin McDonagh); Pulitzer Prize recipient Between Riverside and Crazy (Stephen Adly Guirgis); New York Drama Critics' Circle winner for Best New Play The Night Alive (Conor McPherson); and Lucille Lortel, Obie, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics' Circle Award-winning The Band's Visit (David Yazbek, Itamar Moses); among many others! Atlantic has garnered 12 Tony Awards, 24 Obie Awards, 21 Lucille Lortel Awards, 10 Drama Desk Awards, 8 Outer Critics Circle Awards, 4 New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards, 3 Drama League Awards, 3 Theater World Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
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