The Playwrights Realm 2011 - 2012 Professional Writing Fellowships Announced

The Playwrights Realm, under the leadership of Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Stephanie Ybarra, has selected early career playwrights Ethan Lipton, Mia Chung, Nastaran Ahmadi and JC Lee for its 2011-2012 Playwriting Fellowships.

The Playwrights Realm fellows will each receive stipends to work on a new play over the next nine months. Each play will move from draft form to a production-ready state. Not the standard creative development process, each Playwrights Realm fellow will have a customized residency that includes guiding creative development as well as professional development. The entire experience is designed to widen an artist’s network of resources and gain a foothold in the New York theater world.

The fellows each demonstrate an exciting sense of intellectual curiosity, a wonderful use of evocative language, and a desire to contemplate big unanswerable questions. These qualities combined with their dedication to playwriting, understanding of craft, and desire for a rigorous development process makes them ideally suited to be Playwrights Realm fellows.

 "This is a tremendous group of writers to welcome into The Playwrights Realm family," said Ms. Kovner.  "These are four smart, singular theatrical voices.  It was a very competitive applicant pool, and these writers and their plays really impressed us.  Nastaran, Mia, JC, and Ethan all come to the fellowship with different backgrounds and levels of experience.  Each, we believe, is ideally situated to make the most out of the resources Playwrights Realm can offer."
 
            The Playwrights Realm, founded in 2007 is New York's largest theater dedicated solely to the holistic support of early-career playwrights through a combination of artistic and professional development programs, which includes Off-Broadway productions.  
 
            Concentrating on emerging young playwrights, The Playwrights Realm produces a single full Off Broadway play each season.  This year, that one full production was the acclaimed Crane Story by Jen Silverman, directed by Katherine Kovner, that was developed over four years with a series of workshops and readings.
 
            Previous Playwrights Realm full productions include last season's Gonzalo Rodriguez Risco's Dramatis Personae (2010), Christopher Wall's Dreams of the Washer King (2010), Anna Ziegler's Dov and Ali (2009), Anton Dudley's Substitution (2008) and Jen Silverman's Crain Story (2011).
 
Ethan Lipton’s plays have been seen and heard in New York, Los Angeles, Edinburgh (Scotland) and Berne (Austria) at theaters including the Public, the Lark, 3LD, HERE, the Ohio, New York Stage and Film, Dixon Place, the WPA, the Complex and the Powerhouse.  Mr. Lipton is a winner of a NYFA grant and a Drama-Logue Award for playwriting. He has been a Kesselring prize nominee and a member of The Public Theater’s inaugural Emerging Writers Group.  Mr. Lipton is currently working on a commission from True Love Productions to write the book and songs for an original musical.  Most recently, he received a "New York Voices" NEA grant from Joe's Pub, for which he will premiere an original song cycle in 2011 with his band, Ethan Lipton & his Orchestra. Having released four albums and been named "Best Lounge Act of 2009" by New York Magazine, the band has played throughout New York (Joe's Pub, Bryant Park, Celebrate Brooklyn, Ars Nova) and beyond (MASS MoCA, Camden Opera House, VAE) and been featured on radio shows such as NPR's “Weekend Edition” and “"The World." As a performer, Mr. Lipton has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Matt Berninger of the National, Elevator Repair Service and dance company El Gato Teatro.  A graduate of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. Mr. Lipton was raised in the San Fernando Valley and now lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with his wife, photographer Heather Phelps-Lipton.  Mr. Lipton will be working on Red Handed Otter during his fellowship.
 
Mia Chung is a member of New Dramatists and the Ma-Yi Writers Lab.  She was a member of the inaugural 2010-2011 Civilians' R&D Group in Brooklyn; as a member of this group, she wrote her new play Page Not Found.  She is the recipient of a 2012 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts fellowship and a 2011 TCG Global Connections grant to support a pansori collaboration with a South Korean musical theatre artist.  Her play Exquisite Corpse received Honorable Mention for the 2011 Jane Chambers Award.  Ms. Chung's work has been developed by the Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, Inkwell, the Magic Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Mu Performing Arts, and the Brandeis Theatre Company.  She received a Sloan commission, a Creative Arts Council grant, and a residency at the Millay Colony.  MFA, Brown.  MPhil, Univ. of Dublin–Trinity College.  BA, Yale.  Ms. Chung's fellowship play isYou For Me For You.
 
Nastaran Ahmadi is a Brooklyn based playwright whose plays have been developed or produced at New York Theatre Workshop, Actors Theater of Louisville, Lark Play Development Center, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, The Yale Cabaret and The Yale School of Drama. You For Me For You has been a finalist for The Princess Grace Award, The O'Neill Playwrights Conference and The Leah Ryan Fund.  Her play, Doctoring, received an Honorable Mention in 2010 from the Jane Chambers Award, and she received an Honorable Mention for the 2010 Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award.   Ms. Ahmadi holds an MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama where she received the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize for excellence in Playwriting.  www.nastaranahmadi.com  Her fellowship is Exile.
 
JC Lee is a Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellow at The Juilliard School and the winner of the LeCompte Du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center.  His plays include Pookie Goes Grenading, Into the Clear Blue Sky, The Natural Line, This World is Good, Wicked Fox and many others which have been seen/staged/developed throughout the country at theatres such as Crowded Fire Theatre Company, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival & South Coast Repertory, where he is currently under commission.  His trilogy about the end of the world, This World and After, was just produced by Sleepwalkers Theatre in San Francisco in 2010-11. He blogs daily at Rants, Raves & Rethoughts and tweets @jclee1230.  The Inexplicable Disappearance of Hector Villaraigosa is his fellowship play.
 
The Playwrights Realm Fellowship program is funded in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. For more information, visit http://www.playwrightsrealm.org/.

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