SpeakEasy Stage Names 2016-17 Boston Project Playwrights

Playwrights Obehi Janice of Medford and Rick Park of Boston's South End have been selected from forty applicants to develop an original Boston-centric play as part of SpeakEasy Stage Company's returning new works initiative "The Boston Project."

In addition, Bill Doncaster of Medford, a 2015-2016 Boston Project Playwright, has been invited to return this season to continue development of his play WARD NINE.

Now in its second season, The Boston Project is a new works initiative that supports the creation and development of new plays set in Boston, which explore what it means to live in this city at this moment and tap into the full breadth of experiences and identities that make up life in the Hub.

Ms. Janice will consider race, gender, and the particularities of startup culture in her play OLE WHITE SUGAH DADDY, while Mr. Park will look at gentrification and drag culture in his play KNOCK DOWN, DRAG OUT. Mr. Doncaster will continue his exploration of community and local politics with WARD NINE.

In addition to expanding from two to three plays in development, the second season of The Boston Project also features increased payments for writers and a longer timetable. The three Boston Project playwrights will each receive a commissioning fee of $2,500, up from the $1,000 paid last season. Each writer will also now have nine months, beginning July 1, 2016, to write and develop their proposed plays, compared to just six months last season.

Work on each play will build toward a two-week developmental workshop, culminating in invited staged readings in March, 2017.

Throughout the process, SpeakEasy Stage will provide directors and dramaturgs dedicated to each project, research assistance, developmental readings, and other support as needed. The playwrights will also benefit from the input and support of SpeakEasy Producing Artistic Director Paul Daigneault and SpeakEasy Artistic Associate Walt McGough.

This expansion of The Boston Project has been made possible through increased exclusive funding from the Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

"One of SpeakEasy's major goals is to make Boston a city that is sustainable for artists," noted SpeakEasy Artistic Associate Walt McGough, who coordinates The Boston Project program. "Commissioning plays through The Boston Project allows us to support writers in the city and give them the opportunity to tell stories that are relevant to their communities and experiences."

"SpeakEasy has always been about Boston and Boston artists," said the company's Producing Artistic Director, Paul Daigneault. "The Boston Project offers us another way to support the theatre community around us and commit ourselves even further to the development and production of new works."

The first season of The Boston Project saw the development of two new plays set in Boston: WARD NINE, by Bill Doncaster, and BORN NAKED, by Nina Louise Morrison. Both plays were presented in staged readings in February 2016, and played to capacity crowds.

The 2016-2017 BOSTON PROJECT PLAYS

OLE WHITE SUGAH DADDY, written by Medford's Obehi Janice, tells the story of Lynn, a Dorchester native who is a rising star in the startup industries of Boston and Cambridge. The play centers on Lynn's attempts to court a new Angel Investor, and looks at how race, class, and color collide in her private life, public persona, and cyber footprint as she attempts to build her legacy. Obstacles arise in many different guises in OLE WHITE SUGAH DADDY, a play about love, identity, and the tension between striving and thriving.

A proud native of Lowell, Massachusetts, Ms. Janice is an award-winning writer, actress, and comedian. Her potent writing has been featured in Kinfolks: a journal of Black expression, and her plays have been developed and/or produced by Company One Theatre (C1 PlayLab Alum), Boston Center for the Arts, Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston, Sleeping Weazel, Interim Writers, Our Voices Festival, Boston One-Minute Play Festival, Boston Theater Marathon, Berkshire Fringe Festival, MPAACT, ImprovBoston, GAN-e-meed Theatre Project, and 119 Gallery. In addition, her comedic short "Black Girl Yoga" was the winner of the Reel 13/AfroPunk Film Competition (WNET/New York Public Media).

Ms. Janice is also an acclaimed actress, whose recent acting credits include Love's Labour's Lost (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company); We're Gonna Die (Company One Theatre/American Repertory Theater); An Octoroon (Company One Theatre/ArtsEmerson);

Mr. g (Underground Railway Theater); and her solo show Fufu & Oreos (Bridge Repertory Theater). She currently serves as the TCG Fox Foundation Resident Actor at Company One Theatre in Boston. A graduate of Georgetown University, Obehi was named "Boston's Best Actress" by The Improper Bostonian in 2014. She is also a leader in the millennial renaissance of socio-political arts and culture, working extensively on stage, film, and TV and as a voice actress in video games, radio, and commercials.

KNOCK DOWN, DRAG OUT, by Boston resident Rick Park, begins when a South End drag club is threatened with demolition to make room for luxury condos. In response, one of the clubs performers, Zonna, decides enough is enough and makes a dramatic stand to save the only place where she has ever truly felt at home. When she starts having visions of her long-departed "drag mother" who disappeared ten years earlier, Zonna realizes that the fight is not just for the club, but for the neighborhood, the gay community, and the city itself.

Rick Park is a Boston-based writer and actor. His full-length play Gay Guy, Fat Girl won the 2013 Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting awarded by the Kennedy Center. Other full length plays include Scene 8, The Warmth of the Sun, and The Superheroine Monologues (co-written with John Kuntz), which enjoyed successful runs in Boston and Orange County, CA, and was nominated as Best New Play by the Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE). In addition, Rick has had several of his ten minute plays performed across the US and UK.

WARD NINE, written by Medford's Bill Doncaster, centers on Chuckie McGreal, an adult with a cognitive disability who has been happily holding signs, dropping flyers, and stuffing envelopes for local politicians around Ward Nine for as long as he can remember. But this election could be his last, since, with his father in failing health, Chuckie may be forced to move to New Hampshire to live with his sister. As the candidates compete for Chuckie's support, Chuckie launches his own campaign to stay in the only home he has ever known.

Bill Doncaster is a playwright, producer, and director and co-founder of Stickball Productions. His play Two Boys Lost was a 2015 Elliot Norton Award nominee for Outstanding New Script and Outstanding Production by a Fringe Company, and a 2015 Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) nominee for Best New Play. His adaptation of George V. Higgins' The Friends of Eddie Coyle played to sold out performances first at Oberon, and then again as part of the Emerging America Festival by invitation of the American Repertory Theater in 2012. His short plays have been produced in Boston, New York, Chicago, Louisiana, and Florida, and his short play A Mended Memory was a 2014 Kennedy Center American Theater Festival Region I Finalist. Bill made his directorial debut in 2012 with Bouncers by John Godber at the "historic" Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, MA.. He earned a BFA at Emerson College, MFA at Lesley University, has nothing but good things to say about two years at North Adams State College, and is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in English Literature at UMass Boston. Bill is also the Outreach Coordinator for UMass Boston's Performing Arts Department, and teaches English at Middlesex Community College.

Pictured: Obehi Janice

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