The Farm Theater Announces 2018-19 College Collaboration Project

Now in its fifth season of supporting emerging female writers The Farm Theater will present their 2018/19 College Collaboration Project with playwrights Kimberly Belflower and Erin Malon. The projects will kick-off in February when each playwright will have an opportunity to converse with groups of students from each of the partner schools via video, to discuss the theme they are writing about and shape the direction of their individual pieces. Each of the plays will have a three-day workshop, cast with professional actors, in NYC in August 2018. The projects will each culminate in a public reading in NYC in June 2019 with a cast made up of students from each school along side professional actors.

Playwright Kimberly Belflower will collaborate with Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina (spring 2019), Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida (winter 2019), and Centre College in Danville, Kentucky (fall 2018). This will be Centre College's third time participating in The Farm Theater's College Collaboration Project. Playwright Erin Mallon will be collaborating with Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee (fall 2018) and Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas (spring 2019).

The College Collaboration Project has multiple schools commission an early career playwright to write a play that each school will independently produce throughout the academic year. The faculty, students, and playwright collaborate throughout the year in the development of the text. The script will be a full-length play with a minimum of five characters. The majority of the characters will be under thirty years of age so that undergraduate actors can successfully play the roles. The play will reflect the students' thoughts on the theme suggested by the playwright. This will be The Farm Theater's fifth installment of the College Collaboration Project. Past seasons have featured playwrights Lindsay Joy, Micheline Auger, Morgan McGuire, and Jan Rosenberg.

Kimberly Belflower (Playwright) is a playwright and educator from a small town in Appalachian Georgia. She has developed work in New York City, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, where she recently earned her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. Kimberly's play about Wendy Darling's post-Neverland years, Lost Girl, will have a workshop at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre this summer, in partnership with their Professional Training Institute. Lost Girl was also selected for UT Austin's 2016/2017 Mainstage Season. In Austin, Kimberly was invited to write for the 2017 One-Minute Play Festival, and her full-length play, Teen Girl FANtasies (co-written with Megan Tabaque), was nominated for an Austin Critics' Table Award for Best New Play in 2015. Her play, Gondal, was part of UT Austin's New Theatre showcase (UTNT) and was a semi-finalist for the 2017 Eugene O'Neill Theatre Conference. In New York, Kimberly developed and produced work with Less Than Rent Theatre, Primary Stages, and 54 Below. Her Southern family drama, Chronic Fatigue, received a 2015 developmental production with Front Porch Arts Collective in Greenville, South Carolina. She recently received a commission from Peppercorn Theatre in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and her resulting TYA play, The Sky Game, had its World Premiere in June 2017. Kimberly was a founding member of the New York women's writing group, The Beehive Collective, and the founder of a creative arts program for preteen girls in Austin, The Sophisticated Weirdos.

Erin Mallon (Playwright) is a playwright and voice artist in NYC. Her plays have been presented with Urban Stages, New Georges, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Dreamcatcher Rep, American Theater Group, Project Y and more. Erin's play Branched (dir. Robert Ross Parker) premiered with InViolet Theater at HERE Arts Center in NYC and is in print with Original Works Publishing. Her new play, The Net Will Appear is an Honorable Mention on the 2016 Kilroys List and had its World Premiere this fall at Mile Square Theatre featuring Richard Masur. Other full-length plays include: Bible Adventure Park!, Good Riddance, Hand Me Down, Stunning Displays of Prowess and The Other White Meat. Erin is the narrator of over 200 audiobooks, a member of InViolet Theater and The Collective. She is one half of the newly launched Theater Husband/Theater Wife Project and is founder and co-curator of The Brooklyn Generator, a playwriting engine that creates "plays in less-than-30-days."

The Farm Theater The name is inspired by the "farm" system of baseball whose role is to provide experience and training for developing players. The Farm Theater develops early career artists that may not have the support system afforded others, through workshops, productions, and mentoring. The centerpiece of our programming is The College Collaboration Project.

This program is in its fifth year and has commissioned six playwrights. We have worked in collaboration with twelve colleges. Lindsay Joy's In The Event of My Death, which was developed in the first year of the program was produced Off-Broadway by Stable Cable and had a sold out run, the 2017/18 collaboration commission, In the Cotton by Morgan McGuire was invited to be presented at the Kennedy Centers American College Theatre Festival, and the project has been featured in articles in American Theater Magazine and on HowlRound.

The Farm Theater has produced numerous solo shows, including Artist Director Padraic Lillis' show on suicide awareness Hope You Get To Eleven or What are we going to do about Sally? which was awarded Best Solo Show and Planet Advocate Award at Planet Connections Theatre Festival. This summer The Farm Theater partnered with Planet Connections Theatre Festival to produce Alex Riads The Floor Is Lava. The play was awarded Best New Play and Best Production of a New Play and The Farm Theater was awarded The Planet Advocate Award for raising money and awareness for Girls Who Code. www.thefarmtheater.org