HotCity Theatre's 5th Annual GreenHouse New Play Festival to Run, 6/25-6/27

 

HotCity Theatre, a professional theatre company with a focus on contemporary programming and new play development announces the production of the company's 5th AnnuAl GreenHouse New Play Festival. Three plays "in progress" are chosen from over 250 submitted by playwrights all over the world. Each script is given a workshop that includes professional directors on staff at HotCity, a professional dramaturg (a literary drama scholar) and professional local actors. This workshop provides a springboard for re-writes, culminating in readings at the festival by professional actors and adjudicated by HotCity artistic staff. At the festival event, scripts are performed as staged readings, followed by talkback sessions where you, the patrons, are given the opportunity to offer your thoughts and ask questions of the playwrights.

After each reading, audiences and artists take part in an important and often riveting post-show discussion with the playwright and dramaturg. These are usually 20 minutes long and offer the playwright important feedback on audience perception and opinions. This provides our audiences a necessary influence on the selection and development of the script to be produced while giving them a glimpse of the playwriting process.

Each night ends with a post-show reception on the beautiful roof-top patio.

The New Play Festival is sponsored by the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation and the Arts and Education Council.

About the Project Process:

Acquiring Submissions

The process begins by advertising the call for submissions in trade magazines and online forums all over the country. We have a goal to reach playwrights that are experienced with the process of creating a new script. A large number of submissions are important to maintain a consistent quality for the program while we select plays that are able to be produced by HotCity, and fit our mission as a company. Over the past three years of the New Play Festival, we have averaged about 245 scripts per year, submitted from over seven countries. Playwrights are asked to submit 10 pages to be read by a selection committee.

Script Selection

HotCity has created an intern program, directed by a member of the HotCity GreenHouse staff to act as a selection committee that reads each 10 page submission. This arduous task is very important, and training interns to use proper criteria is necessary. GreenHouse interns are interested students from colleges with playwrighting, dramaturgy, or directing foci who are taught to consider production requirements, quality dialogue, believable characters, interesting and current themes, entertainment values, innovative structure, and the HotCity brand of theatricality when eliminating applicants. The selection committee chooses approximately 40 scripts for consideration.

These 40 authors are asked to submit full scripts that are read by the HotCity GreenHouse staff. Of these, three are chosen for the New Play Festival. Requirements for selection include a limited cast size, under two hours long, physically can be produced at the our theatre space at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and can never have been produced with a professional Acting Company.

GreenHouse Artists

To staff the festival, HotCity interviews and contracts a professional dramaturg who is flown in and offered lodging, a per diem, and transportation. The playwrights are required to attend the festival, and are given travel and lodging for the entire week as well. Three local, professional directors are chosen to supervise the reading of a script, and cast local actors for the roles. Support staff includes a stage manager; directing interns who act as assistant directors; management interns who develop and execute front of house duties, marketing, and other festival logistics; and volunteers who usher and sell concessions.

With three readings, over 35 people will be a part of the GreenHouse New Play Festival.

The Festival Workshop

The first four days of the festival week are the workshop days. During this time, the dramaturg leads daily discussions with the playwright, staff and actors to promote ideas for improving the script. Actors are made available to 'test' the script changes and daily readings of altered material offer the dramaturg and playwright a look at how the material might play on a stage.

The workshop is important, as it is a focused, creative environment that offers a playwright all the tools to develop their script. The dramaturg is an important advocate for the play itself, inviting suggestions and asking questions of the author with thee points of view in mind: the author, the subject or theme of the piece, and the potential audience. The dramaturg also acts as a neutral, independent moderator for discussions between actors, director and playwright within the rehearsal process.

Discussions with the four attending playwrights from the 2009 Festival offered many suggestions in improving the process to attract more submissions. The process above reflects the desires of the playwrights to be able to workshop their script before its public Festival reading, and importantly, offer not just the chosen 'winner' of the festival a future workshop, but all three finalists for the Festival. For the two playwrights not chosen to be produced by HotCity, the experience remains constructive and invaluable for future possible submissions and productions.

The Festival Readings and Public Event

After four days of creative collaboration and re-writes, the actors and director produce the New Play Festival staged readings. This takes place at the Centene Center of Arts and Education in the 4th floor ballroom and atrium in Grand Center. Each script is presented at night: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. After each reading the dramaturg leads a thorough discussion with the audience to gauge reaction to the script. There are three primary reasons why this is important to the festival:

1. The author, for the first time is able to receive important information about how the script is received from patrons that are not related to the playwright or the process of writing it.

2. HotCity staff is able to determine whether the script is of acceptable quality to be produced.

3. The audience witnesses and has an active part in the process of creating a new piece of theatre.

Questions asked by the dramaturg might include:

"How did this moment make you feel?"

"How would you describe this play to a friend?"

"Do you feel that this character was relatable or believable?"

"Do you think that the intentions of the dialogue were clear?"

"Do you believe the motivation for this specific character choice?"

It is important that the discussion not become a clearing-house for suggestions by the audience for improving the script. For this reason, the dramaturg focuses attention toward constructive, informative feedback to create a positive, creative environment for both the playwright and the patrons.

The end of the festival concludes with a Sunday night roof-top reception for the playwrights, staff, and attendees.

After the Festival

Soon after the festival, the HotCity staff meets and chooses a script to be premiered in the following Mainstage season. The playwright is notified and takes information from the audience discussions and finishes a final draft that HotCity options for production and presents the following spring. Our relationship with the playwright can last anywhere from 8-12 months.

After the premiere showing in St. Louis, HotCity and the author works with literary companies to publish the script for future productions nation-wide.

When: Friday June 25th @ 7pm, Saturday June 26th @ 7pm and Sunday June 27th @ 4pm

Where: Centene Center for Arts and Education: 3547 Olive Street just east of Grand near the Kranzberg Arts Center in Grand Center

How Much: FREE. No reservations accepted, general admission seating. Tickets available first come, first serve at the door.

More Info at 314.289.4063 or www.hotcitytheatre.org

All event spaces are handicap accessible.

The Finalists for the 5th AnnuAl GreenHouse New Play Festival:

"Reals"  by Gwydion Suilebhan Directed by: Sarah Armstrong

About the Show:
Jack has worked hard to develop his "real-life superhero" persona. He works out every day, hones his skills as a former member of the Coast Guard, and devotes endless hours to perfecting his costume. Now, as Nightlife - the man who brings life to the night - he's ready to start fighting crime. Or at least... he thinks he is. With his partner and confidant, Belt - Laney, actually, a sarcastic and very reluctant hero with advanced martial arts training - he's assembling a team to walk the streets at night and start attacking crime head-on. He has zeal, big muscles, and a superhero code to live up to... but not much more. When Jack and Laney start interviewing potential team members, however, the flimsy façade of their crazy ambitions begins to crumble. Deceit, lies, and secrets slowly unravel their trust, until a shocking act of real violence perpetrated by Sensei - the first hero they consider adding to the team - reveals the truths they've all three tried very hard to hide beneath their suddenly very silly masks, capes, and nicknames.

About the Author:
Gwydion Suilebhan is the author of Reals, The Constellation, Cracked, The Faithkiller, Abstract Nude, Let X, The Great Dismal, The Butcher, and The Treehouse. His plays have been produced, workshopped, and read at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Source Theater Festival, Active Cultures, Rorschach Theatre, Taffety Punk Theatre, Midtown InterNational Theatre Festival, Intentional Theatre Group, Kennedy Center, National Theater, Capital Fringe Festival, Maieutic Theatre Works, Towne Street Theatre, Point of Contention Theatre, and Theater of the First Amendment. Gwydion has received two Individual Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and has been accepted into the Mead Theatre Lab program three times. In 2009 he was a finalist for Outstanding Emerging Artist at the DC Mayor's Arts Awards. His work has been commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Source Theatre Festival, Taffety Punk Theatre Company, and the Intentional Theatre Group.

"Day Trader"  by E. Rudnick  Directed by: Carter Lewis

About the Show:
Ron Barlow is a defeated Hollywood comedy writer. When his marriage becomes overwhelming, Ron concocts a plot so twisted that it may ultimately become his undoing. Enlisting the help of a beautiful young actress, Ron's desperate strategy centers on his fifteen year-old daughter, Juliana. Lurking in The Shadows of this scheme is Ron's best friend, Phil, a fellow writer with plans of his own. Greed and betrayal dovetail into a virus that consumes the soul under the unforgiving California sun.

About the Author:
Eric Rudnick is a Los Angeles-based playwright, Emmy-nominated television producer, and screenwriter. His plays have been produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as in New York and Los Angeles. His 3-play cycle "The Edge of Allegiance" was an LA Weekly "GO" pick that the paper called "hilariously out there" and "truly inspired." Eric served as a director and producer on the Style Networks' "Peter Perfect," which was nominated for an Emmy in 2009. He has written, produced or directed over a dozen television shows. His original sit-com pilot, "Circus/Maximus," was optioned by FOX television. As a screenwriter, Eric has been a finalist at the Slamdance Film Festival. Raised in New York, Eric studied writing and acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse, David Mamet's Atlantic Theatre Company and Playwrights Horizons.

"The Winners"  by David L. Williams Directed by: Chuck Harper

About the Show:
Cassie and Kurt, a couple in their late thirties, are celebrating; they recently won $337 million in the lottery and they're going to fulfill a fantasy for both of them and hire an escort. They found the website of Tiffany, a twenty-three year old Asian-American call girl, and have invited her over to spend the whole night with them. Tiffany, seeing the money that can be made from this situation, is definitely game, and even though Cassie and Kurt are awkward at first, they start to be much more open to all the possibilities that Tiffany offers. What starts as a fantasy turns into something darker, though, when one person decides that what can really be bought with all this money isn't just sex but freedom, a freedom that can't ever be taken back.

About the Author:
David L. Williams is a graduate of the theatre department of Cornell University, where he was a four-time award winner in the Heerman's-McCalmon Playwriting contest. Since then, he has written more than twenty-five plays and musicals, including the book for the hit children's musical, "The Bully." He is a member of the Dramatist Guild and has won the Riverside Stage Company's Founder's Award and the EBE Ensemble's "You Fill In The Blank" festival. Additionally he has been chosen as a finalist in Inkwell Theatre's Inkubator Festival and a two-time finalist in HotCity Theatre's GreenHouse New Play Festival. His career highlights include having four of his plays and musicals selected for the New York International Fringe Festival and having his work produced in New York, Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Florida, and Washington, D.C.

About HotCity Theatre

HotCity Theatre produces contemporary, issue-oriented works of theatre that challenge and inspire St. Louis-area audiences. HotCity also develops new theatrical works, encourages diversity, and through educational outreach nurtures a life-long passion for theatre. HotCity Theatre operates under a Small Professional Theatre contract with Actors Equity, the union of professional actors and Stage Managers in the United States, and receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission, John R. Goodall Charitable Trust, the Missouri Arts Council, the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation, the Arts and Education Council, the Siteman Foundation, the William A. Kerr Foundation, the Greater St. Louis Community Foundation, as well as generous individuals in the community.

For more information, contact John Armstrong at 314-289-4061 or email at jarmstrong@hotcitytheatre.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.