Consortium of Theatre Programs at Brown Presents 'Writing is Live', New Works by Graduate Playwrights

The Consortium of Theatre Programs at Brown University is proud to announce the first ever Writing is Live, a festival of new work featuring eight plays by writers in Brown's graduate programs.

Formerly the New Plays Festival, Writing is Live celebrates the diversity and strength of new theatrical voices while simultaneously expanding an understanding of "text" in performance. Because performance writing may take forms complete and incomplete, narrative and imagistic, compact or durational, sited in a theater or...anywhere else, the festival stresses the idea of the Live in order to bring each writer closer to an understanding of his or her own work. Because no "text" is ever really finished, the festival is meant to engage each in-process writer in an open, exploratory dialogue with members of the Brown, Trinity Rep and greater Providence communities. Indeed, writers, actors, directors, designers, and audiences alike are full co-conversationalists here, illuminating and charging the life in the Live. ALL collaborators are welcome and valued!

This year's festival, made possible through support from an endowed fund for the Adele Kellenberg Seaver '49 Professorship in Literary Arts, is divided into two parts running consecutively through mid-February. At the heart of the festival are thesis productions by second-year writers Mallery Avidon, Mia Chung, Jackie Sibblies, and Joe Waechter - four emerging playwrights Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, The Light in the Piazza) called "absolutely amazing" in a recent interview with the Village Voice. These fully-workshopped productions promise to provide the same boldly imaginative and entrancingly unique theatrical experiences characteristic of previous New Plays Festival productions. During the first weekend, four Work-in-Progress Showings by Theo Goodell, Rachel Jendrzejewski, Ian McDonald and Lizzie Vine will perform in spaces throughout the city of Providence. Conversational, conjectural, florid and fluid, these works will be characterized by the kind of radical freedom that can only be found in in-process work.

A chief and storied site for the formation of playwrights, Brown's graduate playwriting program grants its students broad inventive license while offering close mentorship and profound resources in the department, the university, and the greater local to international communities. Helmed by renowned playwright Erik Ehn, the program cultivates writers dedicated to the athletic development of their craft, the deep interrogation of the forms and purposes of their art (and of the place of art in the larger world), and a leaning into faithful transformation of society through theatrical action. Alumni of the program include Pulitzer Prize-winning Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics), Pulitzer-nominated and MacArthur Genius Grant-recipient Sarah Ruhl (The Clean House, Passion Play), and Pulitzer and Tony-nominated Quiara Alegría Hudes (In the Heights, Elliot: A Soldier's Fugue).

Tickets are free and available on a first-come, first-served basis. For ticket reservations, directions, and additional information, please visit http://www.writingislive.com/

Work-in-Progress Showings: February 5 - 8
Schedule & Information
(For information on second-year workshop thesis productions, please see page 3)

Encyclopedia
by Rachel Jendrzejewski, directed by Shana Gozansky
Friday, 2/5 @ 8 PM & Saturday, 2/6 @ 8 PM
The Fleet Library @ RISD, 15 Westminster St.

On a remote farm, Dal is categorizing her grief, listening for a click, and sending the balloons of her senses away, one by one. Meanwhile, her caregiver fervently tries to sweep out her mind. As phases of moonlight blur identities, will one woman's reality eclipse the other?

RACHEL JENDRZEJEWSKI is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist. Her plays include Grace Note, DUMB, umbrella (a memory play), Whiskey, Thick Painting, and Bluebird. She has worked closely with Cornerstone Theater Company since 2004 and Padua Playwrights since 2007. She has also collaborated on numerous independent theatre, film, performance art, and music projects across the U.S. and internationally. Most recently, Rachel spent a year in Wroclaw, Poland serving as Assistant Coordinator for The Grotowski Year 2009 and helping create the performance installations Laboratorium Alternatyw (Galeria Entropia) and I'm Not Moving to Warsaw (Art Café Kalambur).

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TOT! An Ontological Slugfest
by Ian McDonald, directed by Christopher Windom
Friday, 2/5 @ 5 PM & Sunday, 2/7 @ 2 PM
McCormack Family Theater, 70 Brown St.

A woman gives birth to a darling baby girl... or does she? Watch this young couple duke it out mano-y-mano as they try to nail down what exactly they have concieved and whether or not to eat it.

Ian McDonald was born in Portland, Maine. He received his BA in English from Loyola Marymount University. His plays have been developed or produced in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Cedar City and Providence. Interests include: Monsters, Robots, Skeletons and a black cat named Lydia Pancake.

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All The Things You Are
by Theo Goodell, directed by Talya Klein
Saturday, 2/6 @ 5 PM & Sunday, 2/7 @ 5 PM
57 Eddy St. (Downtown)

Mark is trying to meet the girl of his dreams. And so is Mark. And so is Mark. Could it be Cindy, the sultry elective-amputation addict? Or maybe it's that woman in the hospital gown, floating high above the skyline... Set in a patchwork world where giant flesh-eating bugs run rampant, disembodied voices long to be touched, and prosthetic limbs do the Charleston, All The Things You Are is a dark and irreverent exploration of bodies, boundaries and the ways we try to connect.

THEO GOODELL's plays have received production and/or development from KC/ACTF, Suffolk University, Whistler in the Dark, New Exhibition Room, Responsibly Shameful Theatre, and The National Theatre of Allston. Plays include: How to Kill a Robot, Awake or I Slept For Miles, Three Wise Monkeys, Pottymouth, and Linoleum. How to Kill a Robot was also presented as a multimedia installation (an actorless dialogue between a TV screen and a projector for an audience of sleeping mannequins) at The Cloud Club in the fall of 2006. Theo has been a frequent collaborator with Imaginary Beasts, most recently performing in their ensemble-created piece Look & Long: A Gertrude Stein Miscellanyat the Boston Center for the Arts. He holds a B.S. from Suffolk University.

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The Phoenix Lights
by Lizzie Vine, directed by Kristopher Lencowski
Sunday, 2/7 @ 8 PM & Monday, 2/8 @ 8 PM
The Henderson Studio, 46 Aborn St. (2nd Floor)

Based on the true story of unidentified, mysterious lights that appeared over Phoenix in March, 1997, The Phoenix Lights tells the story of four people who witness The Phoenix Lights - and how their lives are altered as a result. Using cosmic metaphors to explore the intimate space between people, the play interrogates the age-old question: Are We Alone?

LIZZIE VINE. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, Lizzie Vine graduated from Brown University in 2007 with a B.A. in Theatre Arts, and in May 2010 will complete her M.F.A. in Acting from the Brown/ Trinity Graduate Program. Last year, Lizzie's play At Night It Glows was produced by Brown/Trinity, and this year she is thrilled to have her writing showcased alongside the playwriting graduates as part of the Writing Is Live! Festival. Post-graduation, Lizzie plans to pursue both acting and writing in New York City.

 

Workshop Thesis Productions: February 11 - 14
Schedule & Information

We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915
by Jackie Sibblies, directed by Michael Perlman

Thursday, 2/11 @ 8 PM, Saturday, 2/13 @ 8 PM & Sunday, 2/14 @ 12 PM
Pell Chafee Performance Center, 87 Empire St.

When a group of actors gather together to give a presentation on a distant genocide, they realize that summaries are not enough. In their attempt to delve into history they struggle with stereotype, fear, and their own personal histories -- uncovering the potential for brutality in all of us.

JACKIE SIBBLIES is a writer and designer for theater and film. She has designed sets for productions at Galapagos Art Space and Columbia University, and costumes for music videos and independent shorts. She received her bachelors at Yale, and is currently an M.F.A. candidate in playwriting at Brown, where she has studied under Erik Ehn, Lisa D'Amour, Tracy Scott Wilson, and Chay Yew. Her plays include: Mo'Reece and the Girls, Jenny and Tommy Are Very Much in Love, Timeshare, God Bless You, Francine, and Four Square.

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Lake Untersee
by Joe Waechter, directed by Rachel Walshe

Thursday, 2/11 @ 8 PM, Saturday, 2/13 @ 8 PM & Sunday, 2/14 @ 4 PM
Leeds Theatre, 77 Waterman St.

Love. Family. Divorce. And aliens buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice. Lake Untersee charts the course of Rocky, a 17 year old boy desperate for love, forgotten by his parents, and about to embark on the journey of his life.

JOE WAECHTER's plays include The Strangler, Memory Library, The Hoot Owl, 144 Dead Dogs and Home is Another Plane. His work has been developed or produced by Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, McCarter Theatre, Electric Pear Productions, 24Seven Lab, Kids With Guns, American Repertory Theatre, and BSR 88.1 FM. Joe is the recipient of a 2008-9 Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship, a Kennedy Center/ACTF National 10 Minute Play Award, and a Kennedy Center/ACTF Short Play Award. His play Dragonflies is available from Dramatics Publishing, and his articles have appeared in The Dramatist magazine. He recently received a travel grant to visit Iceland and research an upcoming project. www.joewaechter.com

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O GURU GURU GURU
by Mallery Avidon, directed by Kristan Seemel

Friday, 2/12 @ 8 PM, Saturday, 2/13 @ 4 PM & Sunday, 2/14 @ 4 PM
Pell Chafee Performance Center, 87 Empire St.

Lila doesn't want to go to Yoga Class with you...but not for the reasons you might suspect. With a guest appearance from Julia Roberts herself, O GURU GURU GURU is the vividly honest tale of one disenchanted young woman's longing for a place already gone.

MALLERY AVIDON's plays have been developed or produced in New York by Soho Rep, Target Margin Theater, Clubbed Thumb, Little Theater @ The New Dixon Place, ART/NY, Bee Sting Theater Company; in Chicago by The Pavement Group; and in Seattle by Live Girls! Theater, angry blvd, Strike Anywhere Productions, and Cornish College of the Arts. Her plays include Alina and the Disposable Army, fracture/mechanics, Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love & The Past is Not a Foreign Country. She was a member of the 2007/2008 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab & holds a BFA in Original Works from Cornish College of the Arts.

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You for Me for You
by Mia Chung, directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian

Friday, 2/12 @ 8 PM, Saturday, 2/13 @ 4 PM & Sunday, 2/14 @ 12 PM
Leeds Theatre, 77 Waterman St.

To save her sister's failing health, Yuna decides that she and her sister must break free from the impoverished, oppressive world of North Korea. How much is she willing to pay to get to the free world? What will the journey cost?

MIA CHUNG had a reading of her adaptation of The Orphan of Zhao in the New Eyes Festival produced by Mu Performing Arts in 2009; the play was produced by the Brandeis Theater Company in 2008. She has had workshop productions in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and PlayGround (SF) and was an artist resident at the Millay Colony for the Arts. She was awarded a 2005 Sloan Commission.

For more information, visit www.writingislive.com

 

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