American Blues Theater Presents BLUE INK PLAYWRIGHTING FESTIVAL Digitally

American Blues Theater presents the 2020 Blue Ink Playwriting Festival digitally, May 1-4, 2020. For the first time ever, audiences around the world can access the scripts of the Blue Ink Playwrighting Festival online, free of charge. To read more about this year's festival lineup and access scripts, visit www.americanbluestheater.com or follow American Blues Theater on social media where they'll highlight one playwright and script each day of the festival at www.facebook.com/americanbluestheater or @american_blues_theater on Instagram.

Plays included in the 2020 Blue Ink Playwrighting Festival include 2020 winner Recent Unsettling Events by Andrea Stolowitz, along with new work by finalists Football Football Football Football (or I Love Lave Dash) by Kristoffer Diaz, The Mermaids' Parade by Gina Femia, and Crying on Television by R. Eric Thomas.

"We're honored to celebrate the works of these four incredible playwrights in our annual Blue Ink Playwriting Award competition. Their bold voices and relevant themes make them distinct American writers. Due to this unprecedented pandemic, we are showcasing their scripts electronically and promoting these fantastic artists nationally," notes Artistic Director Gwendolyn Whiteside.

2020 Blue Ink Playwrighting Festival Lineup:

FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL (or I LOVE LAVE DASH)

by Kristoffer Diaz

QUOTE FROM THE PLAY:
"Shooting guns is part of my morning workout. It's a system I made up myself. Kind of like biathlon, only first I shoot the guns, then there's running, burpees, transcendental meditation, some sex, I climb up a wall, speed read old naval strategy guides, shoot again, run again." - Lave Dash

One professional football team must choose between two potential top draft picks: charismatic multiethnic finesse machine Lave Dash and salt-of-the-earth muscle monster Mervin Gufflinson the First. But when these two young legends join forces, it not only changes the game, but also all sports, and also the whole world, and maybe the entire universe. An insane comedy about masculinity, most likely featuring women.

Kristoffer Diaz is a playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and educator. His play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. His adaptation of the Disney film Hercules premiered in Central Park in Summer 2019 as part of the Joseph Papp Public Theater's Public Works program with a cast of nearly 200. Other full-length titles include Welcome to Arroyo's, Reggie Hoops, and The Unfortunates. His work has been produced, commissioned, and developed at The Public Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Geffen Playhouse, ACT, Center Theatre Group, The Goodman, Second Stage, Victory Gardens, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among many others. Awards include the Guggenheim, Jerome, Van Lier, NYFA, and Gail Merrifield Papp Fellowships; New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award; Lucille Lortel, Equity Jeff, and OBIE Awards; and the Future Aesthetics Artist Regrant, among others. As a screenwriter, Kristoffer has developed original television pilots for HBO and FX, written for the first season of Netflix's GLOW, and adapted the musical Rent for FOX.

Kristoffer holds a BA from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, an MFA from NYU's Department of Dramatic Writing, and an MFA from Brooklyn College's Performing Arts Management program. He teaches playwriting at New York University. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and a member of its Board of Directors, a member of the Dramatists Guild Council, and a member of the Writer's Guild of America, East.

THE MERMAIDS' PARADE

by Gina Femia

QUOTE FROM THE PLAY:
"You're like my friend. He don't talk much. I do the talking for us. I think it's cause he's got too many thoughts running in his brain. He keeps 'em in, swirling like a tornado." - Islande

Biron has been deployed to Iraq, and Islande is stuck in Coney Island. A fable of a mermaid connects them both as they are forced to confront their personal horrors in order to try to find one another and themselves during a time of war.

Gina Femia has written over 30 full-length plays which have been developed/produced/seen at MCC, Page 73, Playwrights Horizons, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Rattlestick Theatre, New Georges, Powerhouse, Theatre of NOTE, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Panndora Productions and Project Y, among others. She is a 2019-2022 Core Writer with the Playwrights Center, and a current member of both Nashville Rep's Ingram New Plays Lab and Parsnip Ship's Radio Roots Writer's group. She's an alum of EST Youngblood, Page 73's Interstate 73, Pipeline Theatre's PlayLab and New Georges' Audrey Residency. Gina's received commissions from EST, Spicy Witch Productions and Retro Theatre Productions and residencies with Page 73, Powerhouse, NTI at the O'Neill, Fresh Ground Pepper and SPACE on Ryder Farm. ALLOND(R)A is included on the 2019 Kilroys List. Winner: Leah Ryan Prize and Doric Wilson Award.

RECENT UNSETTLING EVENTS

by Andrea Stolowitz

QUOTE FROM THE PLAY:

"I mean sometimes, sometimes I think it's all just designed as evidence, a class of evidence in order to support the system we have today. To keep things the way they are." - JC

A small liberal arts college erupts in protests over its required Western Civilization class. As the fights intensify and the entire campus takes sides, the complexities of identity politics, the limits of free speech, and the consequences of preserving the status quo are examined. The play takes its inspiration from real-life events.

Andrea Stolowitz is the winner of the 2020 Blue Ink Playwriting Award.

Andrea Stolowitz's plays have been developed and presented nationally and internationally at theaters such as The Long Wharf, The Old Globe, The Cherry Lane, and New York Stage and Film. Andrea's latest play Recent Unsettling Events is an Artists' Repertory Theatre Commission, the winner of the Portland Civic Theatre Guild's New Play Prize, and is a semi-finalist for the 2020 O'Neill summer conference. Andrea's play The Berlin Diaries is a recipient of the City of New York Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment Women's Film, TV and Theatre Fund. The play will be produced in New York City in March 2021. The Berlin Diaries was presented at English Theater Berlin/International Performing Arts Center and Portland's Hand2Mouth Theatre Company. It was developed at The Playwrights' Center, New Dramatists, PlayPenn, and The New Harmony Project. A recipient of Artists Repertory Theater's Fowler/Levin new play commission, Andrea premiered her play Ithaka at the theatre in 2013. The play had its mid-west premiere in Chicago in 2014 at InFusion Theater and its Canada premiere in May 2016. The play won the 2015 Oregon Book Award in Drama judged by Naomi Iizuka. Andrea works as a collaborating writer with the award-winning devised company Hand2Mouth Theatre . Their current collaboration Pep Talk is touring nationally. Andrea is the Lacroute Playwright-in-Residence at Artists Repertory Theater, a member of New Dramatists class of 2024, and a core member at The Playwrights' Center. An MFA playwriting alumna of UC-San Diego, Andrea has served on the faculties at Willamette University, The University of Portland, Duke University and UC-San Diego.

CRYING ON TELEVISION

by R. Eric Thomas

QUOTE FROM THE PLAY:
"Oh my God, there are so many dishes in the sink! I'm so glad you didn't clean up for me. It makes me feel so much better about the way I live my life." - Ellison

Four strangers; one apartment building; unlimited channels. After a chance meeting in the elevator of an apartment building, Mackenzie, a video editor, realizes that she's seen Ellison somewhere before. Namely as a contestant on a reality dating show 10 years earlier. Struck by the girl she remembers from the decade-old clip, Mackenzie decides they should be friends and quickly gets caught up in an escalating series of hijinks to make that happen in this platonic romcom. Mackenzie's quest pulls in Chris, her brother's ex who is doing his best to be a weird loner, Taffy, an amateur sleuth who never met a stranger, and Kenley, a praise and worship leader at Chris' church who seems to have figured out life's greatest mystery: how to make friends as an adult.

R. Eric Thomas, an author and playwright, won the 2016 Barrymore Award for Best New Play and the 2018 Dramatist Guild Lanford Wilson Award and was a finalist for the 2017 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. He is the recipient of a 2017/2018 National New Play Network Commission and has also been commissioned or produced by Arden Theatre Company, Simpatico Theatre, Azuka Theatre, Single Carrot Theatre, About Face Theatre, City Theatre Miami, Act II Playhouse and more. He is also the long-running host of The Moth in Philadelphia and D.C. and a Senior Staff Writer for Elle.com where he writes "Eric Reads the News," a daily current events and culture column with hundreds of thousands of monthly readers. His debut memoir-in-essays, HERE FOR IT, was published by Ballantine Books in February 2020 and was hailed by Lin-Manuel Miranda as "pop culture-obsessed, David Sedaris-level laugh-out-loud funny." Recent productions include SAFE SPACE (Single Carrot Theatre), MRS HARRISON (Azuka Theatre, Barrymore nomination - Best New Play), MIRIAM1234 (City Theatre Miami) and TIME IS ON OUR SIDE (About Face Theatre & Simpatico Theatre). He is an alumnus of The Foundry, the Lambda Literary Fellowship, and the Ingram New Works Project.

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