American Playwrights News

Playwrights Horizons has announced new details for its World Premiere production of YOUR MOTHER'S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA, a new play by Kirk Lynn (Co-Artistic Director, Austin's Rude Mechanicals), directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman (Detroit, Maple and Vine at PH; Belleville; This Wide Night; The Thugs), which begins previews this weekend.

John Patrick Shanley, playwright, screenwriter and director, Oscar, Tony, Writers' Guild and Pulitzer Prize winner, will be the Honoree of the 33rd Annual William Inge Theatre Festival in Independence, Kansas, at Independence Community College.

Cherry Lane Theatre's award-winning MENTOR PROJECT for emerging playwrights concludes its 16th season with Lina Patel's new play RAGGED CLAWS, running at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St. in Greenwich Village) from April 2 to 12. Jedadiah Schultz directs RAGGED CLAWS, and the Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang serves as Ms. Patel's Mentor Playwright.

BAY STREET THEATRE NEW WORKS FESTIVAL will take place on April 25-27 at the Bay Street Theatre on the Long Wharf in Sag Harbor, NY. The Festival is produced in Association with SPACE on Ryder Farm.

Silk Road Rising, Golden Thread Productions, and Lark Play Development Center are proud to announce that Mona Mansour, author of Urge for Going, The Hour of Feeling and The Way West, has been chosen to receive the 2014 Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award. Honorable mentions went to playwrights Bianca Bagatourian, Ismail Khalidi, Daria Polatin, Mishael Shulman and Zohar Tirosh-Polk.

Second Stage Theatre will continue to celebrate its 35th Anniversary Season by once again offering its popular retro prices ($19.79 - the year in which the Company was founded) as well as audience perks for all of the productions this season.

Marin Theatre Company, in association with Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, will stage August Wilson's Fences, the 1950s entry into his Century Cycle (also known as his Pittsburgh Cycle) - a decade-by-decade exploration of the black experience in 20th century America. Directed by Derrick Sanders, the Pulitzer Prize and two-time Tony Award-winning play will feature veteran film and television actor Carl Lumbly as Troy Maxson, Steven Anthony Jones, the artistic director of Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, as Jim Bono and award-winning actor, playwright and director Margo Hall as Rose, as well as Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Eddy Ray Jackson as Cory, Adrian Roberts as Gabriel, Tyee Tilghman as Lyons and two Marin City youths - Jade Sweeney, who attends Willow Creek Academy, and Makaelah Bashir, Bayside Martin Luther King, Jr. Academy - splitting the role of Raynell.

Playwrights Foundation (PF) Cutting Ball Theater and Tides Theatre announced the Des Voix…Found In Translation Biennial 2014, a Festival of New French Plays and Cinema in San Francisco May 1-25, 2014. Des Voix…Found In Translation is an international exchange project that initiates the translation of vanguard French and American playwrights, supporting the presentation of their work to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Des Voix…Found In Translation features new play readings-May 8-11 at Tides Theatre and also includes: A Festival of New French Cinema May 4, 11, 18 & 25 featuring some of the most dynamic French screenwriters in this generation, concurrently at Tides Theatre; A rare "Bal Litteraire" A New Play Nightclub on Friday May 9 at 7 PM , Hosted with Nathalie Fillion of La Cooperative d'Ecriture (Cooperative Writing) at The French American International School. Go to www.desvioxfestival.com for the full schedule.

Cutting Ball Theater closes its 15th season with the American Premiere of COMMUNIQUE N°10 by French playwright Samuel Gallet, in a translation by Cutting Ball Artistic director Rob Melrose, who also helms this new work. Featuring Damien Seperi, Ponder Goddard, Maura Halloran, Wiley Naman Strasser, Paris Hunter Paul, Hugo Cabajal, and Aaron Malberg, COMMUNIQUE N°10 plays April 25 through May 25 (Press opening: May 1) at the Cutting Ball Theater in residence at EXIT on Taylor (277 Taylor Street) in San Francisco.

REG E. CATHEY (House of Cards, The Wire) joins the cast of EXODUS: DREAMS OF THE PROMISED LAND IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA, playing multiple roles including Solomon Northrup (Twelve Years a Slave) and the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The cast also includes ROSALYN COLEMAN WILLIAMS (The Mountaintop, Seven Guitars, The Piano Lesson) in multiple roles including Elizabeth Keckley (familiar to audiences from the movie Lincoln), JENNIFER RAU as Abolitionist Angelina Grimke, and the noted vocal ensemble THE WESTERN WIND. Conceived by Salon/Sanctuary's Founding Artistic Director Jessica Gould to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, EXODUS was originally presented last year in a sold-out performance staged at the historic Fraunces Tavern, the oldest structure in Manhattan.

Cherry Lane Theatre's award-winning MENTOR PROJECT for emerging playwrights continues its 16th season tonight, March 12 at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St. in Greenwich Village) with SONNETS ON TAP - an evening of Shakespeare sonnets performed to tap dancing - conceived and directed by Awoye Timpo. Mentored by Lisa Peterson, SONNETS ON TAP marks the very first Mentor Project directing mentorship.

Marin Theatre Company's artistic director Jasson Minadakis has announced that Lauren Gunderson's I and You, which premiered at Marin Theatre Company in October with support from the National New Play Network's Continued Life of New Plays Fund, and Martín Zimmerman's Seven Spots on the Sun, which won MTC's 2012 Sky Cooper New American Play Prize and received a public staged reading at MTC in June 2013, have been selected as finalists for the 2014 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award.

Marin Theatre Company presents the Bay Area Children's Theatre World Premiere of 'Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy, the Musical' as part of MTC's Theater Series for Young Audiences. The show features Book, Music and Lyrics by Scott Elmegreen. Adapted from the books by David Soman and Jacky Davis. Directed Benjamin Hanna, the production will run May 24 - June 8, 2014.

Cherry Lane Theatre's award-winning MENTOR PROJECT for emerging playwrights continues its 16th season on March 12 at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St. in Greenwich Village) with SONNETS ON TAP - an evening of Shakespeare sonnets performed to tap dancing - conceived and directed by Awoye Timpo. Mentored by Lisa Peterson, SONNETS ON TAP marks the very first Mentor Project directing mentorship.

Rehearsals started today for the Alliance Theatre's world premiere of THE TALL GIRLS, a play set in the depression-era Midwest where the success of a girls' basketball team may be the only way to a better life for the team's members. Playwright Meg Miroshnik, winner of the 2012 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition for her play The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, has been described by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as 'a ferocious talent with a promising career in store.'

Perseverance Theatre opens Pulitzer Prize winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tenessee Williams. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is showing on the Perseverance Theatre Mainstage today, March 7 - March 30, 2014.

Chicago-Northlight Theatre, under the direction of Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans, announces a forthcoming artistic exchange with Ireland through the co-production of Chapatti, a new work developed through Northlight's Interplay program. The co-production of Chapatti will premiere at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd in Skokie, today, March 7-April 13, 2014, and will open at the Galway Arts Festival in July 2014. Chapatti, by acclaimed Irish playwright Christian O' Reilly, will be directed by Artistic Director BJ Jones and will feature John Mahoney and Penny Slusher.

Salon/Sanctuary Concerts presents Exodus: Dreams of the Promised Land in Antebellum America featuring The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble with guest actors Rosalyn Coleman Williams and Jennifer Rau. The Script and Stage Direction is by Erica Gould and Jessica Gould did the program concept and dramaturgy.

The life of privilege long enjoyed by a venerable Texas family is slipping away and its members refuse to let go of it without a fight in Horton Foote's absorbing and widely praised comedy, Dividing the Estate, which opens at Palm Beach Dramaworks on Friday, March 28 (8pm). Performances at the Don & Ann Brown Theatre (201 Clematis Street) continue through April 27, with specially priced previews on March 26 and 27.

As part of Artists at Play's mission to present stories of underrepresented communities, they will develop and showcase two new works to the L.A. theatre community. This upcoming event features readings of Marabella by local playwright Boni B. Alvarez, whose Dallas Non-Stop was recently Ovation Recommended; and Qui Nguyen's She Kills Monsters, named one of the Best 10 Plays of 2013 (TimeOut Chicago, Edge Boston).