Rapp and Schultz Among Writers in World Premiere of SPIN

The stageFARM (Alex Kilgore, Artistic Director and Carrie Shaltz, Founder / Executive Director) has announced the line-up of plays that will comprise the world premiere of SPIN, a series of new short plays (commissioned on the timely topic) by Adam Rapp, Gina Gionfriddo, Judith Thompson, Elizabeth Meriwether, and Mark Schultz.  With direction by Alex Kilgore and Evan Cabnet, SPIN begins performances Friday evening, October 3, 2008, for a limited engagement through Saturday evening, November 8, at The Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street between Barrow & Bedford Streets). Opening night is Saturday evening, October 11, 2008 at 8:00PM.  The five new plays of SPIN are as follows:

America’s Got Tragedy by Gina Gionfriddo

On a reality show called “America's Got Tragedy,” a dead soldier competes with the pop starlet whose train wreck life upstaged his war.

90 Days by Elizabeth Meriwether

After 90 days in rehab a fledgling groom learns that sobriety and dishonesty aren’t mutually exclusive.

Nail Biter by Judith Thompson

A Canadian CSIS agent learns that torturing a Gitmo detainee may cost him the love of his life.

Fun by Mark Schultz

On the set of a film that turns news headlines into fetish fantasies, a veteran porn actor coaches his scene-mate into making the ultimate sacrifice for art.

 
 Tone Unknown by Adam Rapp

In an undisclosed cabin somewhere in the mountains of America, a TV stunt journalist and her trusted cameraman attempt to scoop the sound of The Rapture from a legendary experimental rock musician.

In describing SPIN, the stageFARM’s Artistic Director Alex Kilgore had this to say,

“As with last year’s VENGEANCE, we're interested in using 5 great playwrights as a barometer for what's happening now. “Spin” is this  year’s zeitgeist, it’s the victory of style over substance. Presentation increasingly obscures content in American discourse and decision-making.  The media, industry, politics, the establishment and the arts have conspired to bring us not their constituent parts, but a presentation of what they would like us to think they are.  “Spin” is the icing under which the cake of our country now lumbers.  Everyone's running around spun out, high on icing.”

SPIN will play Tuesday – Saturday at 8pm. Tickets are $37.50 and are available by visiting www.thestagefarm.org, and at Telecharge.com

Gina Gionfriddo (Playwright) Gina’s short play, Squalor, was commissioned and presented by the stageFARM last fall as part of an evening of plays collectively titled, Vengeance.  Last spring the stageFARM presented the New York Off-Broadway Premiere of her play U.S. Drag. Her newest play, Becky Shaw, premiered last March as part of Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival and will have it’s New York premiere this December at Second Stage Theatre.   Gina’s play, After Ashley, also originated at the Humana Festival.  It was subsequently produced by The Vineyard Theatre in New York and by regional theatres across the country.  Gina has received an Obie Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (for U.S. Drag), The Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, and an American Theatre Critics’ Association/Steinberg Citation.  She is currently at work on a new play commissioned by Playwrights’ Horizons.  Gina is a writer/producer for the NBC series, Law and Order.  She has contributed essays on rock music to the literary journal, The Believer, and short fiction to Canteen.  She is a graduate of the MFA Playwriting Program at Brown University and has taught writing at Brown, Providence College, and Rhode Island College

Elizabeth Meriwether (Playwright) Elizabeth Meriwether's play The Mistakes Madeline Made was originally produced by Naked Angels Theater, and was subsequently done at Yale Rep and published by Dramatists Play Service.  Heddatron, a loose adaptation of Hedda Gabler featuring live robots was produced by Les Freres Corbusier, and won the Newsday Oppenheimer award and was published by Playscripts.  Her newest play, Oliver, was optioned by Scott Rudin productions and is being developed at the Vineyard Theater.  Liz is currently working on play commissions for Manhattan Theatre Club, Yale Repertory Theatre, Ars Nova, and finishing screenplays for Miramax and Dreamworks.  She studied playwriting at the Juilliard School.

Adam Rapp (Playwright) is a novelist, filmmaker, and an OBIE Award-winning playwright and director. He has been the recipient of the Herbert & Patricia Brodkin Scholarship, two Lincoln Center le Compte de Nuoy Awards, a fellowship to the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, the 1999 Princess Grace Award for Playwrighting, a 2000 Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, a 2000 Suite Residency with Mabou Mines, the 2001 Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, Boston’s Elliot Norton Award, was short-listed for the 2003 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, named a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, the 2006 Princess Grace Statue, a 2007 Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship, and most recently received the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His plays include Nocturne (A.R.T., Off-Broadway at NYTW), Ghosts in the Cottonwoods (Victory Gardens; The Arcola, London), Animals and Plants (A.R.T.), Blackbird (The Bush, London; Pittsburgh City Theatre; Off-Broadway with Edge Theater), Stone Cold Dead Serious (A.R.T., Off-Broadway with Edge Theater), Finer Noble Gases (26th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, Off-Broadway at Rattlestick, 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Faster (Off-Broadway at Rattlestick), Trueblinka (Off-Broadway at the Maverick Theater), Dreams of the Salthorse (Encore, S.F.), Gompers (Pittsburgh City Theatre; The Arcola, London), Red Light Winter (Steppenwolf, Off-Broadway with Scott Rudin Productions at The Barrow Street Theater), Essential Self-Defense (Playwrights Horizons/ Edge Theater, Drama Desk Nomination for Best Original Music),  American Sligo (Rattlestick), and Bingo with the Indians (The Flea). 

As a director, his production of Blackbird (Edge Theater) received two Drama Desk Nominations. His production of Red Light Winter was the first play to completely sell-out Steppenwolf’s Garage Theater and won the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work. It then transferred to the Barrow Street Theatre for a six-month Off-Broadway commercial run, where it received a Citation from the American Theatre Critics Association, a Lucille Lortel Nomination for Best New Play, and two OBIE Awards. His production of Finer Noble Gases at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival received a Fringe First Award, A Best Actor Award from the London Stage, and the List Magazine/Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s Best Newcomer Prize. His first anthology of plays, Plays By Adam Rapp, is published by Broadway Play Publishing, which also publishes editions of Blackbird, Animals and Plants, Finer Noble Gases and Gompers. Red Light Winter, Nocturne, Stone Cold Dead Serious and Other Plays, and Essential Self-Defense are all available in trade editions from Faber & Faber. His first feature film, Winter Passing, starring Ed Harris, Will Ferrell, and Zooey Deschanel, received its world premiere as an Official Selection of the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in February, 2006. His second feature, Blackbird, which was adapted from his play, received its world premiere at the 2007 Southxsouthwest Festival, was selected for the 2007 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and recently won the Best Narrative Feature Prize at the Charlotte Film Festival.

He is the author of the young adult novels Missing the Piano (Viking/HarperCollins), The Buffalo Tree (Front Street/HarperColllins), The Copper Elephant (Front Street/HarperCollins), Little Chicago (Front Street Press), 33 Snowfish (Candlewick Press), and Under the Wolf, Under the Dog (Candlewick Press), which was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and received the Schneider Book Award from the American Library Association. His first adult novel, The Year of Endless Sorrows, was published in January, 2007 by Farrar Straus & Giroux. Punkzilla is forthcoming from Candlewick Press in the spring of ’09.  He will direct a Lab Production of his play, The Metal Children, at The Vineyard Theatre this June, and then he will direct the world premiere of his Kindness at Playwrights Horizons this fall.  A graduate of Clarke College in Dubuque, IA, where he majored in Fiction Writing and Psychology, Mr. Rapp also completed a two-year playwriting fellowship at Juilliard. He was born in Chicago, IL, and lives in New York City, where he is the Resident Playwright with Edge Theater.

Mark Schultz (Playwright) Recent plays include: Everything Will Be Different or A Brief History of Helen of Troy (Soho Rep/True Love Productions) for which he won the 2005 Oppenheimer Award and the 2006 Kesselring Prize; Polar Bear (Birmingham Rep, UK) Gift (Rising Phoenix Rep / NY Fringe Festival). Everything Will Be Different was produced by the Actors Touring Company with Theatre Royal Plymouth under the title A Brief History of Helen of Troy at the Soho Theatre in London after a UK tour. Other plays include The Gingerbread House; Magic Kingdom; Brightness. His latest play, Deathbed, premiered in New York in January 2008. Readings and workshops: MCC Theater; The Vineyard; Rattlestick; MTC; New York Theater Workshop; The Public; Studio Dante; Woolly Mammoth.  He was selected for a 2006 Royal Court Residency.  His work is published by Oberon, Dramatists Play Service, and Smith & Kraus and was featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope magazine.  He was a founding member of Theater Mitu, is a member of Rising Phoenix Rep, and is coordinator of MCC Theater’s Playwrights’ Coalition.   He holds an MFA in playwriting from Columbia University.

Judith Thompson (Playwright) Judith Thompson’s critically acclaimed Palace of the End recently concluded it’s New York premiere engagement for Epic Theatre Ensemble and was awarded the 2008 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for playwriting.  The play also won the coveted Dora Award for its Canadian Premiere.  Also for Canadian Stage: Habitat (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist).  She was most recently awarded the 2007 Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, Officer of the Order of Canada.  Other plays include Enoch Arden at the Hope Shelter, Capture Me, Perfect Pie, Sled, Lion in the Streets, I Am Yours, White Biting Dog, The Crackwalker.  Film and television Perfect Pie (Rhombus Media), Lost and Delirious (Cite-Amerique), Life With Billy (co-writer).  A full professor at the University of Guelph since 1993, Judith lives in Toronto.  She directs Shakespeare with students in grades 4-6 every spring.

Evan Cabnet (Director) Brooke Berman’s Wonderland (Juilliard), Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked! An Entertainment (Long Wharf Theater, East Coast Premiere), Liz Meriwether’s The Mistakes Madeline Made (Naked Angels/Culture Project, World Premiere), Tell Out My Soul (Public Theater/SPF), A Little Soul Searching (EST Marathon 2008), Sense of an Ending (Huntington), Then and Now (Ars Nova), JC2K (NY Musical Theater Festival), President and Man (Duke Theater), Training Wisteria (Theater Row/SPF), My Renaissance Faire Lady (Rattlestick/Ontological-Hysteric Theater), and his own adaptations of Ubu Roi and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Williamstown). He has developed new works by Beau Willimon, Carly Mensch, Jim Knable, Kyle Jarrow, Etan Frankel, Liz Flahive, Francine Volpe, Louis Cancelmi, Steven Levenson, Mat Smart, Ken Urban, Josh Lefkowicz, and many others. Associate/Assistant credits include: Edward Albee’s Seascape, Chris Shinn’s Dying City, and The Rivals (Lincoln Center Theater), As You Like It (Delacorte/NYSF), and Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All The Luck (Roundabout). Five seasons at the Williamstown Theater Festival, including the 2003 Boris Sagal and 2002 Bill Foeller Fellowships. Founding member of the Ars Nova Play Group, former member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and Artist-in-Residence at Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Recipient of the 2008 Claire Tow Award for Emerging Artists.

Carrie Shaltz (Founder/Executive Director, the stageFARM) Carrie founded the stageFARM in the Spring of  2006 after completing her graduate work in architecture at the University of Michigan.  Her acting credits include - Off-Broadway: the stageFARM’s VENGEANCE and Drug Buddy.  Other NY Theater: Mixed Tape, Project 30 (AUR). Regional: Fat Pig, The House of Yes, and Top Girls.  Television: “Gossip Girl”, “Law & Order”, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”. Film: “BED” (Dir. Chris Bradford), “Warm Blooded” (Dir. Cassandra Evanisko). Hosting: DIGS (Attached), Applebox.

 
Alex Kilgore (Artistic Director, the stageFARM)

As the stageFARM’s artistic director he commissioned and directed (with Ari Edelson) last season’s VENGEANCE series, and directed 2006’s premiere of David Folwell’s Drug Buddy. As an actor, Off-Broadway credits include the US premieres of David Folwell’s Boise (Rattlestick- 2004 Outer Critics Circle Nomination), Philip Ridley's The Pitchfork Disney (Blue Light Theater Co.), and Lost Highway, (as Hank Williams). Refuge, Henry V, Gin and Bitters, My Crummy Job (EST), and the posthumous premiere of Clifford Odets' Night Music (Actors Studio). Many regional plays. Film/TV: "If I Didn't Care," "Cowboy Jesus," "Fever," "Wonder Showzen," "The City," "Swift Justice"...etc.

His third screenplay "Unveiled" directed by Bill Bannerman is in preproduction, and in January he will direct his second screenplay "Texasstyle" starring Henry Thomas and Bill Sage produced by Lillian LaSalle. He is a graduate of NYU's Gallatin School, the Director of The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and plays in the band CLAW.

Photo Credit Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.