Columbia University School of the Arts to Present New Plays Festival This Month

Columbia University School of the Arts will present an expanded festival of new plays written by Columbia MFA Playwriting Students. The esteemed faculty who have nurtured these students, including Tony, Pulitzer, and Obie Award winners such as David Henry Hwang, Lynn Nottage, Charles Mee, and Rogelio Martinez invite you to experience these innovative new playwrights.

This is the third round of their New Plays Festival presenting the work of the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Playwrights of Columbia's MFA Theatre Program. The festival will run continuously throughout the summer.

From the Head of Playwriting, David Henry Hwang: "These plays have been created by visionary writers under extraordinary circumstances. Some were originally scheduled to be produced as far back as 2020; others were written during the pandemic itself. Like theatre itself, they have survived the shutdown of our art form to come roaring back to life. We are so proud of what our writers have achieved during these challenging and traumatic times. Enjoy the rebirth!"

About the Plays

It Will Rise Soon Enough by Fiona Gorry-Hines

2030. A mother and her child tread water with a delivery person in a flooding Greenwich Village apartment during a category six hurricane. 2060. A group of rogue individuals struggle to find new identities and homes in the wreckage of once familiar landscapes. 2090. The firstborn of a self-governed settlement questions whether to follow his own will or the will of his people. It Will Rise Soon Enough is a cross-generational work of speculative theatre that examines how we might be forced to rethink our relationships to labor and capital as it pertains to our identities as we face increasingly dramatic changes to our climate.

Performances:
Thursday, July 21 at 2:30pm
Saturday, July 23 at 2:30pm
Saturday, July 23 at 8pm

Tickets: FREE
Location: Lenfest Center for the Arts 615 W. 129th St., New York, NY 10027
Ticketing Info: https://lenfest.arts.columbia.edu/events/it-will-rise-soon-enough

This Hair I Tear Is Mine by Evie Mason

This Hair I Tear Is Mine is, quite simply, a play about being lost at sea. Less simply, stories, real and imagined, interlock across generations in this playful exploration of longing, identity, gender and art. What does it mean to seek connection in the face of abandonment? And is it even possible to find paradise - at sea or elsewhere?

Performances:
Friday, July 22 at 2:30pm
Friday, July 22 at 8pm
Sunday, July 24 at 2:30pm

Tickets: FREE
Location: Lenfest Center for the Arts 615 W. 129th St., New York, NY 10027
Ticketing Info: https://lenfest.arts.columbia.edu/events/hair-i-tear-mine

Pair by Kate Pressman

"You're amazing" - "You're amazing"
"You're amazing" - "You're amazing"

Two au pairs in a tiny room in the eaves of a Swiss chalet. A chance to see the world before their "real lives" of middle class conformity begin. There's something that happens when you're trapped in a place with someone. There's something that happens when you're the only two people on earth that matter. There's something that happens when the place you're trapped in doesn't see you. That tension creates pressure. That pressure finds a release.

Based loosely on the 1933 murders committed by Christine and Léa Papin - the murders that inspired Jean Genet's The Maids, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, and a century of films, novels, songs, and Law and Order episodes in between - Pair explores the subtle tyranny of care work, the longing of the powerless for empire, and the tiny twisted pocket world a relationship creates.

Performances:
Friday, July 29 @ 2:30pm
Saturday, July 30 @ 8pm
Sunday, July 31 @ 2:30pm

Tickets: FREE
Location: Lenfest Center for the Arts 615 W. 129th St., New York, NY 10027
Ticketing Info: https://lenfest.arts.columbia.edu/events/pair

Fiona Gorry-Hines is a playwright, screenwriter, and educator. They were raised in Lexington, MA with five siblings and caught the theatre bug when they started acting as a child and realized they could get a lot of attention for it all while playing make-believe well past the socially acceptable age. Her play Of The Sea was workshopped at Dixon Place and staged at Access Theatre and was a finalist for the inaugural Thomas Wolfe International Play Prize. Other produced work includes You Can't Touch My Sister I Ate In the Womb! (Columbia University), Our House (Gallatin Theatre Troupe), Helena's Bird (Emerging Artists Theatre, Acorn Theatre), and Bruised (Midtown International Theatre Festival). They received their MFA in playwriting from Columbia University in 2022. More at fionagorryhines.com

Evie Mason is a playwright of little acclaim and great ambition. She's written about witches who aren't witches, being transgender, waitresses in South Jersey, the Jersey Devil, the end of the world, and more. She has assisted playwrights Sarah Ruhl, Taylor Mac, and Matthew Lopez, dramaturg extraordinaire Morgan Jenness, and host/comedian Amber Ruffin. Her work has been seen at The Orlando International Fringe Festival, and Columbia University. In May of 2022 she received her MFA in Playwriting from Columbia, and her thesis play, This Hair I Tear Is Mine, will be produced in July.

Kate Pressman (she/her) is a New York-based playwright. Her plays include: Pair (finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Play Conference, 2021), Twenty-Six Seconds (studio presentation at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the Culture in a Changing America Symposium, 2019), and Piano for Four Hands (Roundabout Theatre New Play Reading Series, 2021). She co-founded the theater company 23.5 degree tilt with Elizagrace Madrone in 2021 and their Spring 2022 production, Marta Nesspek Presents... was a series of shorts, written, illustrated and puppeteered by Kate, with actors providing live voice-overs and original compositions by various composers.

About Columbia University School of the Arts:

The Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University School of the Arts presents a season of thesis acting and directing productions as well as a festival of new plays by emerging playwrights each year. The Theatre Program at the School of the Arts offers MFA degrees in: Acting, Directing, Playwriting, Dramaturgy, Stage Management, and Theatre Management & Producing. For more information about the Theatre Program, visit: http://arts.columbia.edu/theatre.