Red Bull Theater Announces SHORT NEW PLAY FESTIVAL 2022 Featuring Larissa FastHorse, Stephen Adly Guirgis & More

Red Bull Theater today announced the eight world premieres in this year's Short New Play Festival 2022. This in-person event is the latest installment of Red Bull's renowned annual new play festival of classically inspired ten-minute plays. The 12th Annual Short New Play Festival will return to in person performance on Monday, July 11th at 7PM at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street).

The evening will present works by some of the most exciting writers from across the country, penning classically inspired ten-minute plays. This year's festival will include newly commissioned plays by Larissa Fasthorse (The Thanksgiving Play) and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Adly Guirgis (Between Riverside and Crazy) alongside six plays from up-and-coming playwrights selected through an open submission process: Montana Cypress, Debra Fried, Kevin P. Joyce, Nick Martorelli & Justin Muschong, Zoë Rhulen, and Elaine Romero. Vivienne Benesch and Nathan Winkelstein will direct. Casting will be announced shortly.

"It is a thrill to be bringing our annual Festival back to in-person performance this year! This year's 'Alchemy' theme was magical - it generated hundreds of surprising and delightful plays with a wonderful range. The six selected plays together with our two established playwright commissions offer a terrific panoply of romance, drama, tragedy, and satire - all in conversation with the classics - enriching the boundaries of what that word can encompass. The eight plays brim with the theatricality made for live theater we all love so much. Join us!" said Artistic Director Jesse Berger.

This year's Short New Play Festival is made possible with the leadership support of The Noël Coward Foundation.

The 2022 winning selections are:

And There Shall Be No More Tears

by Montana Cypress
As the U.S. Calvary approaches, a Medicine Man rushes to concoct a remedy to save his people.

With Visible Breath

by Larissa Fasthorse
Inspired by one of the oldest stories of the L/D/Nakota people, Pté Sán Wínyan has been sent from the spiritual world to Earth on a quest to help the people who will be known as the Oceti Sakowin.

Another Part of the Green Room

by Debra Fried
Orson Welles, in the figure of Mercury, finds a trio of Elizabethan actors who have magically transformed into the very roles they play (within the play) in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and recruits them for his 1937 Mercury Theatre production of Faustus.

Cancel Me

by Stephen Adly Guirgis
An ancient King summons a long ago banished Alchemist to transmutate his greatest and worst possession - his son.

Vulgar Gold

by Kevin P. Joyce
Bitter Rosetta uses an alchemical elixir to seduce her sister's husband with chaotic results.

Make Gold of That

by Nick Martorelli & Justin Muschong
A man arrives for his appointment with a modern Alchemist, where he meets other customers with items they want the Alchemist to transmute into the most valuable resource in the modern world: Time.

Medusa Prays

by Zoë Rhulen
Medusa, having just turned her most recent lover to stone, begs Athena to reverse her curse.

Prosperita

by Elaine Romero
Prosperita has the unique gift of folding and understanding both time and war. Her inner transformation calls her to action as she prepares herself to intervene in a most brutal war.

ABOUT THE SHORT NEW PLAY FESTIVAL

Over the Short New Play Festival's twelve-year history, Red Bull Theater has inspired the writing of over 4,000 new short plays of classic themes and heightened language, presenting nearly 100 of them in a one-night-only Festival performance with some of New York's finest actors and directors. Commissioned playwrights have included Marcus Gardley, John Guare, Jeremy O. Harris, David Ives, Ellen McLaughlin, Dael Orlandersmith, Theresa Rebeck, José Rivera, Anne Washburn, Doug Wright, and winning entries by writers such as Anchuli Felicia King, Patricia Ione Lloyd, Lynn Rosen, and Jen Silverman. Stage Rights has published a 5-volume collection of the plays from the first 10 years of Red Bull Theater's annual Short New Play Festival as Red Bull Shorts.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS:

Montana Cypress (And There Shall Be No More Tears) is a playwright, filmmaker and actor. Originally from the Miccosukee Tribe located in South Florida, he now resides in Los Angeles where he is a member of the Native Voices Theatre Ensemble. He is a winner of the Von Marie Atchley Excellence in Playwriting Award, winner of Best Native American Short Film at the 2022 Phoenix Film Festival for his film "Two Brothers," Semi-Finalist for the Eugene O' Neill Playwriting Conference and Runner-up at the National AT&T Create-a-thon contest partnered with Warner Brothers for his short film "Thunderdance" which he wrote, co-produced and acted in. He is featured in "Noggin Knows" (Nickelodeon) Season 2 and is working on a short documentary about alligator wrestling for PBS North which will premiere in 2023 as part of Native Report programming. His most recent film "The Red Orchid" can be seen on the Bawaadan Collective Youtube Channel.

Larissa Fasthorse (With Visible Breath) grew up in South Dakota, where she began her career as a ballet dancer and choreographer. Returning to an early interest in writing, she became involved in Native American drama, first in the Native film community, but she found her artistic home as a playwright. Her satirical comedy The Thanksgiving Play was one of the top ten most produced plays in America. She is the first Native American playwright in the history of American theater on that list. FastHorse is set to become the first female Native American playwright to have a play produced on Broadway when Second Stage Theater presents The Thanksgiving Play, directed by Rachel Chavkin, at the Hayes Theater next spring. FastHorse also co-founded Indigenous Direction, a consulting firm that helps organizations and individuals who want to create accurate work by, for, and with Indigenous peoples. Personally, FastHorse challenges every theatre she works with to be sure that her work isn't the only Indigenous art in the building and that she isn't the only Indigenous person being paid in that season. A 2020 MacArthur Fellow, some of FastHorse's produced plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do? (KCRep), Landless and Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), Average Family (Children's Theater Company of Minneapolis), Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: A Class Presentation (Native Voices at the Autry), Vanishing Point (Eagle Project), and Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater). Additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with her include The Public, Yale Repertory Theater, Guthrie, Geffen Playhouse, History Theater, Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, Baltimore's Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Mixed Blood, Perseverance Theater Company, The Lark Playwrights' Week, the Center Theatre Group Writer's Workshop, and The Berkeley Repertory Theater's Ground Floor. She has recently returned to film and TV with projects at NBC, Disney Channel, Dreamworks, Apple, and Freeform.

Debra Fried (Another Part of the Green Room) taught English and American poetry and literature at Cornell for thirty-five years and lives in Ithaca, New York; studied English and classics at Bryn Mawr (A.B. '76), Yale PhD in English '83; other interests include classic film comedies of the 1930s.

Stephen Adly Guirgis (Cancel Me) is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company. His award-winning plays include Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, the Pulitzer Prize winning Between Riverside & Crazy, The Motherf**ker With The Hat, The Little Flower of East Orange, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped The A Train, In Arabia We'd All Be Kings, Den of Thieves, and Dominica the Fat Ugly Ho. He also wrote, produced, and co-created the Netflix series "The Get Down." As an actor he can currently be seen in Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn, Jason Chaet's Seneca, Russian Doll on Netflix, and Adam McKay's upcoming Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on HBO.

Kevin P. Joyce (Vulgar Gold) is a New York based director and playwright. Originally from Boston, Mass, he received his degree in Theatre Arts from Pace University and ever since has been creating theater in festivals, basements, and barrooms all over New York City and beyond. His published works include The Braggart of Bourbon St., Jackie and Johnny and the Whoracle Named Daphne, When the Cat's Away, Wilde Tales (Three Fairy Tales by Oscar Wilde), and a translation of Pierre Corneille's L'illusion Comique. www.kevinpjoyce.net.

Nick Martorelli (Make Gold of That) is a writer and producer based in Queens. His writing includes multiple episodes for a fiction podcast, several short films, and a series of live radio plays that have been performed in Philadelphia. Nick is a former professional actor, and currently works in book publishing. He can be found on Twitter (@NickMartorelli), where he is always willing to talk at length about "Star Trek," Superman, and Sherlock Holmes.

Justin Muschong (Make Gold of That) is a writer and editor based in Queens. His articles, short stories, and essays have been published in Resource Magazine, Newtown Literary, Atticus Review, Maudlin House, and Alternating Current's The Coil, among others. He has also contributed to the stories and screenplays of short and feature films that have appeared at numerous festivals. In 2018, his script for "Deadbolt" won Best Short Screenplay at the Eclipse Awards in Michigan. He has received further recognition from Project Twenty1 in Philadelphia, Gotham Screen in New York City, and the Snowtown Film Festival in Watertown, New York. He spends too much time on Twitter (@JustinMuschong) and posts too many pictures of his wretched cat on Instagram (@justin_muschong).

Zoë Rhulen (Medusa Prays) is a Colorado-grown, New York-based playwright. She writes to reconnect audiences with the Earth and their own wildness. Her plays include Dirty Pretty, H & P, Mommy and the Pirate, Rooted or homeplay, Slippery (Slingshot Theater Company, upcoming), and Star Country. Her work has been supported by Arts on Site, Curious Theatre Company, The Lark, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Slingshot Theater Company, and Theater Accident. She holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Elaine Romero (Prosperita) is an award-winning U.S. playwright whose plays have been presented across the U.S. and abroad; she is also widely published and anthologized in over 50 publications. Her play, Secret Things, received a critically-acclaimed production in 2021 at 1st Stage where the play was named by DC Metro Theater Arts as one of the best Outstanding Professional Theatre Productions of 2021. Her commissioned play, The Grotowski Method, premiered last year, sparking conversations about race in a rural Midwestern town. The month-long RomeroFest featured her work at theatres nationally and internationally in March 2021 with over seventeen separate projects. Initiated by the Arizona Theatre Company, some of the collaborating companies included Artists Repertory Theatre, Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre, InterAct Theatre Company, Seven Devils New Play Foundry, Winding Road Theatre Ensemble, Teatro Travieso/ Troublemaker Theater, Justice Theatre Project, and Foro Shakespeare in Mexico City.

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

Vivienne Benesch is the Producing Artistic Director of PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where she has recently helmed reimaginings of The Skin of Our Teeth, Life of Galileo, and Three Sisters as well as premieres of Sarah Jean Acuardi's The Storyteller, Heidi Armbruster's Dairyland, Mike Wiley & Laurelyn Dosset's Leaving Eden and Molly Smith Metzler's The May Queen. For 12 years she served as Artistic Director of the renowned Chautauqua Theater Company and Conservatory, presiding over the company's transformation into one of the best summer theaters and most competitive summer training programs in the country. Vivienne has also directed for the Folger Shakespeare Theatre (Helen Hayes nomination for best direction), The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Trinity Repertory Company, NY Stage & Film, and Red Bull Theatre, among others. In 2018, she directed the world premiere of Noah Haidle's Birthday Candles for Detroit Public Theatre and recently had the joy of directing it again on Broadway, starring Debra Messing and Enrico Colantoni. As an actress, Vivienne has worked on and off-Broadway, in film and television, at many of the country's most celebrated theaters, and received an Obie Award for her performance in Lee Blessing's Going to St. Ives. Vivienne is a graduate of Brown University and NYU's Graduate Acting Program. As an educator, she has directed for and served on the faculty of some of the nation's foremost actor training programs, including The Juilliard School, UNC-Chapel Hill's Professional Actor Training Program, Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Program, and for her alma mater, NYU's Graduate Acting Program. She is the 2017 recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award given by the Stage Directors & Choreographers Foundation.

Nathan Winkelstein has been with Red Bull Theater for five years. He is the Producing Director of the Revelation Reading series as well as the host of Remarkabull Podversations. He also serves as the casting associate for Red Bull. Nathan has acted or directed for numerous companies around the country, including The Alley, NYU Grad, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Shakespeare Theater Company, LCT, The Folger, American Shakespeare Center and others. Dubbed 'The Pied Piper of Shakespeare' Nathan provides private acting coaching to select clients and has taught for Red Bull, STC, LCT, TGS and Maggie Flanagan Studio. Nathan received his BA in Theater from the University at Buffalo and his MFA in Classical Acting from the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the UK. Nathan is a proud member of Actors Equity and SDC.

ABOUT RED BULL THEATER

RED BULL THEATER brings rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences, uniting a respect for tradition with a modern sensibility. Named for the rowdy Jacobean playhouse that illegally performed plays in England during the years of Puritan rule, Red Bull Theater is New York City's home for dynamic performances of great plays that stand the test of time. With the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as its cornerstone, the company also produces new works that are in conversation with the classics. A home for artists, scholars and students, Red Bull Theater delights and engages the intellect and imagination of audiences, and strives to make its work accessible, diverse, and welcoming to all. We value and practice inclusiveness, equity and diversity in all of our activities, and are committed to antiracist action. Red Bull Theater believes in the power of great classic stories and plays of heightened language to deepen our understanding of the human condition, in the special ability of live theater to create unique, collective experiences, and the timeless capacity of classical theater to illuminate the events of our times. Variety agreed, hailing Red Bull's work as: "Proof that classical theater can still be surprising after hundreds of years."

Since its debut in 2003 with a production of Shakespeare's Pericles starring Daniel Breaker, Red Bull Theater has served adventurous theatergoers with Off-Broadway productions, Revelation Readings, and the annual Short New Play Festival. The company also offers outreach programs including Shakespeare in Schools bringing professional actors and teaching artists into public school classrooms; Bull Sessions, free post-play discussions with top scholars; and Classical Acting Intensives led by veteran theater professionals. During the pandemic, Red Bull responded swiftly to the shutdown, creating several ongoing programs to serve audiences and artists with our mission: RemarkaBULL Podversations, Online Readings, Seminars, and more.

Red Bull Theater has presented 20 Off-Broadway productions and nearly 200 Revelation Readings of rarely seen classics, serving a community of more than 5,000 artists and providing quality artistic programming to an audience of over 65,000. The company's unique programming has received ongoing critical acclaim, and has been recognized with Lortel, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Off Broadway Alliance, and OBIE nominations and Awards.

For more information about the Short New Play Festival, or any of Red Bull Theater's programs, visit www.redbulltheater.com.

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