Keen Teens, the educational Theatre Partnership between Off-Broadway's Keen Company and the publishing company Playscripts, Inc. has selected the writers for the program's fourth season. Bekah Brunstetter, Marcus Gardley and Qui Nguyen have been commissioned to write thirty minute, large cast plays, which will be produced with student actors Off-Broadway in May 2010.
Keen Teens is a unique educational theatre program which seeks to improve the quality of plays written for high school students by commissioning scripts from highly regarded professional writers. The playwrights' only guidelines are that the plays be 30 minutes in length, involve a large cast, and reflect Keen Company's mission of producing plays that are generous in spirit and provoke identification. Keen Teens then casts high school students from the tri-state area to perform in the World Premiere productions of these plays at Off-Broadway's Theatre Row. Playscripts, Inc. publishes the plays, which have already garnering productions across the country.
In its first three seasons, Keen Teens produced plays by Naomi Iizuka, Anton Dudley, Winter Miller, Ryan Pavelchik, Courtney Baron, Bathsheba Doran, Barton Bishop, Jason Grote, Liz Flahive and Cheri Magid. This year's performances will be May 28-30, 2010 in the Kirk Theatre at Theatre Row.
MARCUS GARDLEY's two most recent plays This World in a Woman's Hands and Love is a Dream House in Lorin both received outstanding critical acclaim and sold-out runs at Shotgun Players in Berkeley, California. The latter was nominated for the National Critics Steinberg New Play Award. His plays have been produced at Yale Repertory Theatre, Brown University, Georgetown University, Umass Amherst and Cutting Ball Theater. His new play On the Levee will premiere at Lincoln Center in July.
Bekah Brunstetter's plays have been read and produced by the Babel Theatre Project, New Georges, The Rattlestick Playwright's Theater, the Ohio Theater (Think tank), NYU, The New School for Drama, Working Man's Clothes, Flux Theatre Ensemble, Phare Play Productions, Old Vic/New Voices, The Drama League, Boston Theatre Works, Manhattan Theatre Source, SPF, and The Alliance Theater. She is a member of the Ars Nova play group, the Playwright's Center, At Play Productions, and the Dramatist's Guild. She will be the 2010 Playwright in Residence at the Finborough Theater in London.
QUI NGUYEN is the Co-Artistic Director of the award-winning Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company. His scripts include Trial By Water (Ma-Yi Theater/Queens Theatre In The Park) and Soul Samurai; Fight Girl Battle World; Living Dead In Denmark; StaiNed Glass Ugly; A Beginner's Guide To Deicide; Vampire Cowboytril Ogy; and the upcoming Alice In Slasherland all for Vampire Cowboys. Honors and nominations include Innovative Theatre Awards, The New Dramatists Playwriting Fellowship, and being named one of ten "downtown playwrights to watch" by TIMEOUT NEW YORK.
For more information, go to www.keencompany.org
