Ars Nova Announces New Members For Play Group 2010

Ars Nova (Jason Eagan, Artistic Director; Jon Steingart and Jenny Wiener Steingart, Executive Producers) proudly announce new members for its 2010 Play Group.

Play Group is Ars Nova's vibrant and eclectic group of emerging writers who gather twice a month at Ars Nova to share new work and get peer feedback. The group offers members the chance to develop their plays with peer support, form collaborative relationships and build a strong sense of community within Ars Nova. In addition, members receive dramaturgical support and artistic matchmaking advice from the Ars Nova artistic staff, priority consideration for Ars Nova's reading series (Out Loud) and industry exposure through a culminating group production at Ars Nova. Members of Play Group 2010 will create a show to be presented in January of 2011.

New members were selected through a competitive open application process and join for a two-year residency. The group is led by Director of Artistic Development, Emily Shooltz, who said: “The Play Group is at the heart of our community of artists, and we're delighted to welcome these six trailblazing playwrights into the mix. The response to our call for applications was overwhelming this year, and the range of voices, styles and experience in the 2010 group is truly inspiring. It will be a privilege to have all of these exceptional writers here sharing new work and inspiration.” 

New Play Group members include: Chad Beckim, Jenny Connell, Kara Lee Corthron, Molly Smith Metzler, Gregory Moss and Joe Tracz. They join second-year members: Kristoffer Diaz, Zayd Dohrn, Tasha Gordon-Solmon, Amy Herzog, Samuel D. Hunter, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Matthew Lopez and Janine Nabers.  Full bios for the new members are included below.  Play Group alumni include Annie Baker, Mike Batistick, Bekah Brunstetter, Evan Cabnet, Dylan Dawson, Ron Fitzgerald, Liz Flahive, Sam Forman, Etan Frankel, Kyle Jarrow, Nick Jones, Steven Levenson, Barry Levey, Liz Meriwether, Carly Mensch, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rachel Shukert, Mat Smart, Aurin Squire, Adam Szymkowicz, Samuel Brett Williams and Beau Willimon.

As New York's premier hub for emerging artists and new work, Ars Nova is committed to developing and producing eclectic theatre, comedy and music to feed today?s popular culture. To that end, Ars Nova strives to create daring collaborations, meld disciplines and give voIce To a new generation of artists. Past productions include Sax & Dixon: We Thee Wed, Mel & El: Show & Tell, Two Girls for Five Bucks and the Ten Dollar Heartbreakers, Playlist, Jollyship the Whiz Bang, Boom, From Up Here, Dixie's Tupperware Party, At Least It's Pink, 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, Holy Cross Sucks!, Freestyle Love Supreme and The Wau Wau Sisters.

In addition to its featured productions, Ars Nova supports and develops new work from the most promising emerging artists through its alternative comedy series (Tragedy Tomorrow), music series (Uncharted), public play-reading series (Out Loud), writer's group (Play Group), artist-in-residence program, and ANT FEST, a five-week festival of craziness showcasing fresh material from today?s most exciting new talent. Ars Nova was founded in memory of Gabe Wiener.

Chad Beckim's credits include …a matter of choice, `nami, Lights Rise on Grace (Winner, Outstanding Play, 2007 NY Inti'l. Fringe Festival),The Main(e) Play, That Men Do (selected for The Lark's 2009 Playwright's Week) and Mercy. He has also authored a number of shorts and one-acts, including Tha Bess Shit, Alexander Pays a Visit, Last First Kiss, Blac(c)ident, and Night, Shift. Chad holds an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College and is a co-Founder and co-Artistic Director of Partial Comfort Productions.

Jenny Connell's plays include Portrait, Summer People, Fire Escape, Chrysalis, Colony, There Be Dragons and The Psyche Project. She?s been a finalist or semi-finalist for BAPF, the Heidemann, the O?Neill, and the Women's Playwright Festival. Jenny trained and performed as an actor at Steppenwolf and Court Theatres, and as a playwright at UT Austin, where she received her MFA. She is a member of Austin Script Works and The Gift Theatre of Chicago, and now lives and teaches in Brooklyn.

Kara Lee Corthron's plays have been produced and developed by the Vineyard Theatre, Center Stage (Baltimore), ACT Seattle/Hansberry Project, New Dramatists, Naked Angels, New Georges, Raw Impressions (HERE Arts Center), E.S.T., Page 73 Productions, ManhattanTheatreSource, Electric Pear Productions, The Shalimar, Penumbra Theatre, Horizon Theatre (Atlanta), African Continuum Theatre (D.C.), and Voice & Vision, among others. Last year, she was a staff writer for the critically- acclaimed NBC drama, KINGS. Kara?s awards include the Princess Grace, the Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights and Lincoln Center's Lecomte du Nouy Foundation Award (three-time recipient). Kara is an alumna of the Juilliard School.

Molly Smith Metzler is currently a Playwright-in-Residence at The Juilliard School. Molly?s plays—including Close Up Space, Carve and Training Wisteria—have been presented by Manhattan Theatre Club 7@7, The Kennedy Center, The Cherry Lane Mentor Project, Summer Play Festival, Tristan Bates Theatre (London) and HotINK, among others. Recent awards include the Lincoln Center Lecomte du Nouy Prize, The Kennedy Center National Student Playwriting Award, The Mark Twain National Award for Comic Playwriting, The David Mark Cohen Award (ATHE). Molly holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Tisch and is also the playscript editor of American Theatre magazine (TCG).

Gregory Moss is a playwright and performer from Newburyport MA. His work has been developed with or produced by The A.R.T., Empty Space, Playwrights Horizons, PlayPenn The O'Neill Conference and NYTW. His play, punkplay will be published in Play A Journal of Plays in November 2009 and will be produced in February 2010 at The Steppenwolf Garage in Chicago. A new play, Orange, Hat & Grace, will premiere at Soho Rep in March 2010 under the direction of Sarah Benson.

Joe Tracz's plays include In the Woods Where Wolves Are (which received a staged reading at the Public Theater), Song for a Future Generation (premiering at Chicago's Lights Out Theatre Company in 2010), Boy Wonders and Phenomenon of Decline. He has performed his show Jim & Moonshine's Sock Puppet Social Issues Theatre at benefits for various Chicago non-profits, and he recently self-produced a Halloween play, An American Werewolf in Equus. Joe is a recipient of a 2009-2010 writing fellowship from the Playwrights Realm. Joe holds an MFA from Tisch and a BA in English from Kalamazoo College, Michigan.