Colt Coeur Announces 2020-2021 Resident Playwrights and Directors

Colt Coeur is welcoming 3 additional artists (playwrights Bleu Beckford Burrell, Adrienne Dawes, and Noelle Viñas) to its Residency Program, with 4 of last year's Residents (directors Tara Elliott, J. Mehr Kaur, and Portia Krieger, and playwright Emma Goidel) opting to extend their Residency through 2021 (due to the unique impact of the Covid-19 pandemic). Now in its 4th year, the CoCo Residency provides an intimate group of playwrights & directors with the invaluable resources of community, space to work, and a stipend. Artistic Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt and company members meet with the Residents on a quarterly basis with an emphasis on forging authentic creative collaborations.

Additionally, the company's 4-show fall season continues on October 24th with a reunion of the 2019 world premiere cast of Hatef**k, by Richard Rodgers-Award winning playwright Rehana Lew Mirza. Hatef**k was described by The New York Times as "Smart, mouthy and sexy! Kavi Ladnier and Sendhil Ramamurthy are dripping with charisma. Just beneath the couple's pheromone-spiked banter lurks a feeling discussion about representation and identity." Passions ignite when Layla, an intense literature professor, accuses Imran, a brashly iconoclastic novelist, of trading in anti-Muslim stereotypes. But as their attraction grows into something more, they discover that good sex doesn't always make good bedfellows. Conflicting cultural identities collide in this thornily clever antidote to a "meet-cute" romance.

On November 21st, Colt Coeur will livestream a reading reuniting the 2019 world premiere cast of Stacey Rose's award-winning America v. 2.1, directed by Logan Vaughn. America v. 2.1 is a day in the life of a troupe of historical re-enactors charged with telling the tragic story of what was once was the American Negro, a woeful race once featured prominently in the American landscape, but whose time has been extinguished at own foolish hand. The troupe finds themselves at odds with the state of their own existences while being painfully oblivious to the parallels and intersections their lives draw to that of the very Negroes whose story they are bound to tell. As this oblivion fades and they are faced with their stark reality, this day in the life of actors, becomes a day of reckoning.

These readings are presented by special arrangement with Actor's Equity through Theater Authority, Inc. Proceeds will benefit the artists involved and Colt Coeur. Hatef**k, scheduled for Saturday, October 24th at 8pm ET, and available to stream through October 27th, is ticketed with access starting at $5 and available at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hatefk-reunion-reading-tickets-122413763863 and at coltcoeur.org. Tickets to America V. 2.1 are available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/america-v-21-reading-tickets-124578043281.

Rehana Lew Mirza's plays include: Hatef**k (Colt Coeur/WP), A People's Guide to History in the Time of Here and Now(Primary Stages Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation's commission; AADA worshop production); Soldier X (Ma-Yi; Brooklyn College; NY-SCA/Lark Commission); Tomorrow, Inshallah (Living Room Theater, Kansas City; Storyworks/Huffpost commission); Neighborhood Watch (NNPN/InterAct commission) and Barries (Desipina, Asian American Theater Company). With her husband Mike Lew, she was awarded the 2020 Kleban for most promising librettist. They also share a Mellon Foundation National Playwright residency administered in partnership with Howlround at Ma-Yi, as well as a commission at La Jolla Playhouse for The Colonialism Project after previously being their 2018 artists-in-residence. They've co-written the book, in partnership with Sam Willmott, to the musical Bhangin' It (2019 Richard Rodgers Award, upcoming at La Jolla Playhouse and McCarter Theater). Additional honors: NYFA Fellow, Colt Coeur Company member, HBO Access Fellow, Lilly Award (Stacey Mindich "Go Write a Play"), Tofte Lake Emrging Writers Residency, EST Sloan Commission, a John Golden Award, Leopold Schepp Fellowship, Ma-Yi Writers Lab Member and Co-Director (2006-2016), Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin Writers Group Member (2014-2017) and a TCG/New Georges Fellowship. MFA: Columbia University; BFA: NYU Tisch.

Adrienne Campbell-Holt is the Founding Artistic Director of Colt Coeur and the recipient of the 2018 Lucille Lortel Visionary Director Award. Adrienne is currently developing new plays with Oscar Olivo, Lily Padilla, Antoinette Nwandu, and Rick Cleveland. Recent: world premiere of Other World, by Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen & Ann McNamee, choreography by Karla Puno Garcia (Bucks County Playhouse), NY premiere of Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector (Colt Coeur), world premiere of We Are Among Us by Stephen Belber (City Theater, Pittsburgh), world premiere of Hatefuck, by Rehana Lew Mirza (WP/Colt Coeur), world premiere of Joan by Stephen Belber (Colt Coeur, starring Johanna Day), Downstairs by Theresa Rebeck at Primary Stages (November-December 2018; starring Tyne Daly and Tim Daly), Associate Director on Dear Evan Hansen, directed by Michael Greif (Broadway), world premiere of Zürich by Amelia Roper (Colt Coeur @ NYTW), world premiere of Thirst by C. A. Johnson (CATF), Afterwords, a new musical by Zoe Sarnak and Emily Kaczmarek, What We're Up Against by Theresa Rebeck (WP Theater), New York Indie Theater Film Festival screening of Henry + the trains, (January 2017), world premiere of Christopher G. Nuñez's The Surgeon and her Daughters (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), world premiere of Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spiegel (Colt Coeur), world premiere of Greg Moss' REUNION (South Coast Rep), world premiere of Eliza Clark's Recall (Colt Coeur), and world premiere of Steven Levenson's Seven Minutes in Heaven (Colt Coeur). Adrienne is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University and the director of #MakeItFair.

Stacey Rose hails from Elizabeth, NJ and Charlotte NC respectively. Her work has been presented at: The Fire This Time Festival, The Lark, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, National Black Theatre, Pillsbury House Theater, Barrington Stage Company, and Kansas City Rep. Stacey has held fellowships/residencies with The Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights' Center, Sundance Theatre Lab, The Goodman Theatre, The Civilians, and Tofte Lake Center. She had two plays featured on the 2019 Kilroys list, with a third listed as an honorable mention. Her play Legacy Land was on the 2020 Kilroys list. Stacey is a recipient of a 2019 Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Women's Commissioning Grant in partnership with Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre and a 2020 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation commission in partnership with Manhattan Theatre Club. She is currently a staff writer for 9-1-1 on Fox. Stacey's work celebrates and explores Blackness, Black identity, Black history, body politics, and the dilemma of life as the "other."

Logan Vaughn is a New York based Artist and Director of new work. In 2008 Logan was awarded the Goodman Theater's prestigious Joyce Arts Fellowship in Casting and subsequently worked as a Casting Director in the Tony Award winning theaters' casting department for five seasons. In addition to the Goodman she has cast for Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory, Cardinal Stage and Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. Logan was Playwrights Horizons Director in Residence 2012-2013. In 2012 Logan was also named a Member of the Director's Lab, Lincoln Center. As a Director she has worked with The Public Theater, MCC Theater, Sundance, Kansas City Rep Theater, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Apollo Theater, Geva Theatre, Playwrights' Center, The Playwrights Realm, Mosaic Theatre, 59E59, National Black Theatre and NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her work in film includes assisting the Academy Award winning producing team behind Precious and Monster's Ball as well as serving as head of casting for several award winning independents. Logan received a 2019 Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Direction of a Play for the New York premiere of Loy A. Webb's The Light at MCC Theater. And most recently directed the World Premiere of Legacy Land (The Kilroys List 2020) by Stacey Rose at Kansas City Repertory Theater. Logan is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Acting at UMKC and the Associate Artistic Director of Ojai Playwrights Conference. In television she has shadowed for HBO, the FOX Network (APB) and the Paramount Network (WACO Mini-Series). Logan trained professionally as a dancer for fifteen years with various companies including Gus Giordano and Visceral Dance. She has a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Film from Columbia College Chicago and has been featured in national and international publications including Glamour, Essence, Lucky and Globetrotter Magazine.

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