Listen: Mona Monsour Talks THE VAGRANT TRILOGY and More on LITTLE KNOWN FACTS
Mona Monsour's THE VAGRANT TRILOGY made its New York City debut in April 2022 at the Public Theater, and is currently in production
By: Little Known Facts w/ Ilana Levine May. 13, 2022
Little Known Facts is a weekly podcast hosted by stage and film actress Ilana Levine. With over 250 interviews to date with today's most successful artists, Levine engages her celebrity guests in intimate conversations that are hilarious, vulnerable, revealing and inspiring. Ilana's unique brand of celebrity interview has been called "Podcast Vérité," because her conversations are unfiltered, raw, honest and uniquely funny.
Today's episode features Mona Monsour!
Mona talked about her new play The Vagrant Trilogy, and more.
"I was a very sort of serious, young actress," Mona said of her start in the industry. "Nobody in my family was in theatre, whatsoever... There was in my bedroom a poster of New York, and there was a poster of The Public Theater from Measure For Measure..."
"Then I got involved in this thing called San Diego Junior Theatre," she said. "A lot of really fancy people came out of there, like Casey Nicholaw."
Listen to the full episode below!
Mona Monsour's THE VAGRANT TRILOGY made its New York City debut in April 2022 at The Public Theater, directed by Mark Wing-Davey; the production was in technical rehearsals in March 2020 and was postponed due to Covid-19. UNSEEN will have its West Coast debut at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in spring 2022, directed by Evren Odcikin. WE SWIM, WE TALK, WE GO TO WAR premiered at SF's Golden Thread in 2018 (dir. Odcikin). THE VAGRANT TRILOGY was presented at Mosaic Theater in June 2018, (dir. Wing-Davey.) Of the trilogy: THE HOUR OF FEELING (dir. Wing-Davey) premiered at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and an Arabic translation was presented at NYU Abu Dhabi, as part of its Arab Voices Festival in 2016. URGE FOR GOING: productions at The Public Theater (dir. Hal Brooks) and Golden Thread (dir. Odcikin). THE VAGRANT was commissioned by the Public and workshopped at the 2013 Sundance Theater Institute. THE WAY WEST: Labyrinth (dir. Mimi O'Donnell); Village Theater (dir. Christina Myatt); Steppenwolf (dir. Amy Morton); and Marin Theatre Company (dir. Hayley Finn).
Other credits: IN THE OPEN, for Waterwell, directed by James Dean Palmer, and ACROSS THE WATER, written for third-year MFAs at NYU (dir. Scott Illingworth). Mona was a member of The Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group. With Tala Manassah she has written FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS, an EST/Sloan commission. Their play DRESSING is part OF FACING OUR TRUTHS: SHORT PLAYS ABOUT TRAYVON, RACE AND PRIVILEGE, commissioned by the New Black Festival.
Commissions include Playwrights Horizons and La Jolla Playhouse. 2020 Helen Merrill Award, 2012 Whiting Award. 2014 Middle East America Playwright Award, MacDowell Colony 2018, New Dramatists Class of 2020. Mona writes for NBC's New Amsterdam and is creating series for FlipNarrative and AMC International. BEGINNING DAYS OF TRUE JUBILATION, directed by Scott Illingworth and conceived with her company SOCIETY, was part of New Ohio's Ice Factory Digital Festival in summer 2020. In September 2020, Mona received the prestigious Kesselring Prize, awarded by the National Arts Club to one playwright a year. She was nominated by Seattle Rep for her play THE HOUR OF FEELING.
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