Stephen Belber News

A combined Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner, two Pulitzer finalists, the team whose musical just about swept the 2007 Tonys, the creator of the iconic Vagina Monologues, and an award-winning comedy writer will all debut new theater works this summer on the Vassar College campus.

Ars Nova presents, as part of the Out Loud series, a FREE reading of: GOOD EGG by Dorothy Fortenberry, directed by Jackson Gay. GOOD EGG Responsible Meg has always taken care of her bipolar younger brother Matt. But when she decides to get pregnant-and have her embryos screened for bipolar disorder-is she taking the idea of 'being responsible' too far? A funny and surprising play about bioethics, siblings, and the limits of unconditional love. Dorothy Fortenberry recently graduated from the Yale School of Drama with an MFA in Playwriting. Yale School of Drama: Good Egg (directed by Snehal Desai), Bibles and Candy (directed by Mike Donahue), After the Flood (directed by Shana Cooper). Yale Cabaret: Bicycling for Ladies (music by Colin Wambsgans, directed by Becca Wolff), We're Celebrities, We're Just Not Famous Yet (directed by Becca Wolff) and the solo piece Paint Show. Her work has been developed at Arena Stage, Perishable Theatre, Studio 42, and The Tank, and produced by Journeyman Productions and Vital Theatre Company. She is the winner of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama and the Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award. Jackson Gay's recent directing credits include Carly Mensch's Len, Asleep in Vinyl (Second Stage Uptown); Lucy Thurber's Scarcity, Kia Corthron's Master Disaster, Rolin Jones' The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow (Atlantic Theater Company); Works & Process with Jennifer Tipton (Guggenheim Museum); Thurber's Stay (Rattlestick); f**k You, Eu.ro.Pa! (Play Company); David Adjmi's Marie Antoinette (Sundance Institute Theatre Lab/Public Theater); Best Production Connecticut Critic's Award Jenny Chow (Yale Rep) . UPCOMING: Jason Grote's Box Americana (Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference); Workshop of Saviana Stanescu's For a Barbarian Woman (Long Wharf / International Festival of Arts & Ideas); Andy Bragen's Mother Earth (Minneapolis' PlayLabs); Made In Poland, by Przemys Taw Wojcieszek. (Play Company); A Year With Frog and Toad (Two River Theater); End Days, by Deborah Zoe Laufer (People's Light and Theater Company). Founder of the film production company YARN, whose upcoming projects include Sugar Land, by Lucy Thurber. Recipient of the Jonathan Alper Directing Fellowship at Manhattan Theatre Club, the Williamstown Theater Festival Directing Fellowship and the Drama League's New Directors/New Works Fellowship. MFA Directing Yale School of Drama. Since 2002, OUT LOUD has attracted a variety of the industry's top artists, including writers Stephen Belber, Jorge Cortinas, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Rinne Groff, Jordan Harrison, Rolin Jones, Adam Rapp, Sarah Ruhl and Christopher Shinn; directors Peter Askin, Jo Bonney, Trip Cullman, David Esbjornson, Moises Kaufman, James Lapine, Lisa Peterson and Leigh Silverman; and actors Jason Biggs, Robert Sean Leonard, Marsha Mason, Denis O'Hare, Rosie Perez, Paul Rudd, Mercedes Reuhl, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Swoosie Kurtz, David Strathairn and Fred Weller. Many OUT LOUD plays have gone on to receive full New York productions, including: Liz Flahive's From Up Here, Adam Bock's Swimming In The Shallows, Rinne Groff's The Ruby Sunrise, Daniel Goldfarb's Modern Orthodox, Elizabeth Meriwether's The Mistakes Madeline Made and Beau Willimon's Lower Ninth. Two Out Loud plays have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize: Rolin Jones' The Intelligent Design Of Jenny Chow and Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House. Ticket & Schedule Information GOOD EGG will be read on Monday, June 23 at 7 PM. The Out Loud Series is FREE and open to the public. Reservations are required. Please call 212-977-1700 or email rsvp@arsnovanyc.com. Ars Nova is located at 511 West 54th Street. For more information, check out www.arsnovanyc.com. As New York's premiere hub for emerging artists and new work, Ars Nova is committed to developing and producing eclectic theatre, comedy and music to feed today's popular culture. To that end, Ars Nova strives to create daring collaborations, meld disciplines and give voice to a new generation of artists. Past productions include Boom, Dixie's Tupperware Party, At Least It's Pink, 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, Holy Cross Sucks!, Freestyle Love Supreme and The Wau Wau Sisters. In addition to its featured productions, Ars Nova supports and develops new work from the most promising emerging artists through its alternative comedy series (Tragedy Tomorrow), music series (Uncharted), public play-reading series (Out Loud), writer's group (Play Group) and artist-in-residence program. Ars Nova was founded in memory of Gabe Wiener. For more information, visit www.arsnovanyc.com.

Naked Angels, New York's eternally boundary-pushing theater company, will, in the latter half of 2008, embark on a new chapter in their storied history, commencing with 'Angels in Progress: Old School at The New School,' a workshop series of new American plays that will be presented from May 28 - June 9 at The New School for Drama (151 Bank Street).

LAByrinth Theater Company (Artistic Director John Ortiz; Co-Artistic Director Philip Seymour Hoffman; Co-Artistic Director and Executive Director John Gould Rubin) and The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Executive Director Mara Manus)'s world premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Little Flower of East Orange will run through Sunday, May 4. The production, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, opened on Sunday, April 6.

Ars Nova presents, as part of the Out Loud series, a FREE reading of The Memory Library by Joe Waechter, directed by Pam MacKinnon.

Buried secrets unearthed, mysterious years spent abroad, and the coming together of three people ignite a match that will change their lives forever.

The Roundtable Ensemble will present the world premiere of Chris Kipiniak's Save the World, a superhero-adventure play at the American Theatre of Actors. Performances will begin on Thursday, January 17, and the official opening night will be Saturday, January 19 at 8PM. Performances will run for four weeks through February 9.

The Intentional Theatre Group, in association with Small Pond Entertainment, presents Archipelago, 10 short one-person plays directed by The It Group's Founding Artistic Director, Emerie Snyder. The production will open at Altered Stages (212 West 29th Street between 7th & 8th Ave) on November 8 at 8PM.

LAByrinth Theater Company, in its fifth season of residency at The Public Theater, has announced the lineup for two development festivals of free staged-readings!

Ars Nova presents, as part of the OUT LOUD series, a free reading of Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat, by Yussef El Guindi, directed by Joanna Settle. Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat on Monday, October 29 at 7 PM at Ars Nova

Roundabout Theatre Company has announced 'Roundabout Underground,' which will premiere in the new 65-seat black box theatre space in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre

According to NYTimes.com, the lineup for New York Stage and Film and Vassar College's 23rd Powerhouse summer theater season will include productions of John Patrick Shanley's Romantic Poetry: A Musical Play, featuring a score by Henry Krieger (Dreamgirls) and starring Mark Linn-Baker and Idina Menzel, Stephen Belber's (Match) new play, Geometry of Fire, and concert readings of Pete Towshend's new rock opera, The Boy Who Heard Music, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T, a musical featuring hit songs originally by Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and more.

David Mamet, founder of the Atlantic Theater Acting School in Chelsea, has challenged and encouraged graduates of his school to 'Get out there and produce your own show.'

Manuscript, a dark comedy by Paul Grellong, will be presented for a limited engagement April 4 through April 20 at the Studio Theatre on Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street). Directed by Alex Lippard, the cast of Manuscript features Greg Cayea, Duane Langley and Lisa Peart.

Tickets are now on sale for LAByrinth Theater Company's world premiere production of Intríngulis, a new play written and performed by Carlo Alban with direction by David Anzuelo.

Carlo Alban's new play 'Intringulis,' produced by the LAByrinth Theater Company, opens this March.

Ars Nova (voted 'Best of New York' by New York Magazine), as part of the FREE Out Loud reading series, presents THE RED BEARD OF ESAU, written by Rachel Shukert and directed by Alex Timbers. THE RED BEARD OF ESAU will be read by Jeff Binder, Elliotte Crowell, Billy Eichner, Sam Forman, Van Hansis, David Josefsberg, Julie Lake, Maggie Lauren, Austin Lysy, Reginald Veneziano and Taylor Wilcox on Monday, January 29 at 7 PM at Ars Nova (511 West 54th Street). A Neanderthal woman and Cro-Magnon man embark on a passionate love affair at the very dawn of time. But fate, not to mention an assortment of mystics, priestesses, dwarfs, and beautful blonde Californian twins have other things in store for them. Things that could threaten their very existence! Can love survive? Find out in THE RED BEARD OF ESAU, the world's first genocidal romantic comedy. RACHEL SHUKERT (Writer) is a playwright and author based in New York City. Her plays include Bloody Mary (NYIT Award nominee), Sequins for Satan, The Blackstone Hotel, and Soiled Linens. Her work has been developed and produced at Ars Nova, the Williamstown Theater Festival, the Culture Project, the Ontological/Hysteric, and the EVOLVE series at Galapagos. In 2003, she was the Playwright-in-Residence at e74 productions in Amsterdam, and her work was performed extensively throughout the Netherlands. As a performer, she has appeared with Richard Foreman's Ontological/Hysteric Theater, in New York and internationally; Les Freres Courbusier, the T.E.A.M., Salt Theater, e74, and with her own company, the Bushwick Hotel, which she founded in 2002 with the director Stephen Brackett. She is a regular contributor to Nerve.com (2005 ASME finalist, 2006 'Best Writing' Webby Award) and her work will be featured in their latest print anthology. She has also contributed to Heeb Magazine, McSweeney's, Babble, Culturebot, and Critical Moment. Her upcoming collection of essays, Have You No Shame? will be published by Random House/Villard. ALEX TIMBERS (Director) Recent credits include Gutenberg! The Musical! (The Actor's Playhouse and 59E59), A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant (New York Theatre Workshop; OBIE Award- NYC and Garland Award, Best Director- LA), Hell House (St. Ann's Warehouse), underground with David Dorfman Dance (BAM Next Wave and US tour), Boozy (Culture Project- 10 Best of 2005, Daily News and Time Out), Marge (Summer Play Festival), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Williamstown Theater Festival), and Heddatron (HERE). Alex is a Williamstown Directing Fellow, a Drama League Directing Fellow, and the Artistic Director of award-winning theater company Les Freres Corbusier. OUT LOUD has attracted a variety of the industry's top artists, including writers Stephen Belber, Jorge Cortinas, Daniel Goldfarb, Stephen Guirgis, Rinne Groff, Rogelio Martinez, Adam Rapp, Sarah Ruhl, Julian Sheppard, Jonathan Marc Sherman; directors Peter Askin, Jo Bonney, David Esbjornson, Moises Kaufman, Brian Kulick, James Lapine, Lisa Peterson, David Warren; and actors Jason Biggs, Kathleen Chalfant, Robert Sean Leonard, Marsha Mason, Denis O'Hare, Rosie Perez, Paul Rudd, Mercedes Reuhl, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Swoosie Kurtz, David Strathairn, Fred Weller. Ticket & Schedule Information THE RED BEARD OF ESAU will be read on Monday, January 29 at 7 PM. The Out Loud Series is FREE and open to the public. Reservations are required. Please call 212-977-1700. Ars Nova is located at 511 West 54th Street. For more information, check out www.arsnovanyc.com.

Stars of stage and screen will take part in the Ojai Playwrights Conference 10th Anniversary Gala on Saturday, January 20th in Ojai, CA

Stephen Belber's A Small, Melodramatic Story opened at the LAByrinth Theater Company on October 24th

Performances begin tonight, Tuesday, October 10th for the LAByrinth Theater Company's production of Stephen Belber's A Small, Melodramatic Story