Goodman Theatre Announces 2017-18 Playwrights Unit

Goodman Theatre's commitment to new works and living writers continues in its 2017/2018 Season.

The five Chicago-based playwrights newly named to the Playwrights Unit, a year-long residency in partnership with Chicago Dramatists, include Sam Collier, finalist for The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 2017 National Playwright Conference for her play, Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King; Ricardo Gamboa, recipient of the MacArthur International Connections Award and Joyce Award; Isaac Gomez, the 2017 artistic curator for the Chicago Park District's Theater on the Lake; Kristin Idaszak, recipient of the Kennedy Center's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award for her play Second Skin; and Nigel O'Hearn, whose work has been presented as part of the Chicago Fringe Festival, International Ibsen Festival and more.

The Playwrights Unit meets bi-monthly to discuss their plays-in-progress with the Goodman's artistic team. The residency culminates in a staged reading of each new play in summer 2018.

"I'm thrilled to welcome this talented group of Chicago writers to the 2017/18 Playwrights Unit," said Director of New Play Development Tanya Palmer. "Each playwright has a very distinctive voice and aesthetic, but they all share a passion for telling stories that are challenging, relevant and full of life. I know they will all benefit from the collaboration with their peers, and I look forward to sharing the results of their hard work with our audiences next summer."

Playwrights Unit alum Rohina Malik brings her work Yasmina's Necklace­-developed as part of the Goodman's New Stages Festival and premiered at 16th Street Theater last fall-to the Goodman's Owen stage, October 20 - November 19. Malik illuminates the refugee experience in a "sweet and hopeful story" (Chicago Tribune) about love and renewal in the face of past devastation. Tickets ($10-$40, subject to change) go on-sale Friday, September 5 and available by phone at 312.443.4800, online at GoodmanTheatre.org/Necklace or at the box office (170 N. Dearborn).

In addition to the Playwrights Unit, the Goodman's longtime commitment to nurturing new works by emerging and established playwrights is demonstrated in its New Stages Festival, which offers audiences the first look at new plays by some of today's hottest writers. Now in its 14th year, the 2017/2018 New Stages festival takes place September 20 - October 8, and features eight new works-three developmental productions + five script-in-hand staged readings. More than one-third of all plays developed in New Stages have received a world premiere production at the Goodman or another leading U.S. theater-including Malik's Yasmina's Necklace and Ellen Fairey's Support Group for Men (June 23 - July 29, 2018) this season. Visit GoodmanTheatre.org/NewStagesFestival for the full line-up and to reserve tickets.

ABOUT THE 2017/2018 Playwrights Unit MEMBERS:

Sam Collier is a playwright, poet, and theater artist. Her play Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King was a finalist for The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 2017 National Playwright Conference. Other plays include Silo Tree, Suit of Leaves, thing with feathers, and Quiet, Witches, which was produced in 2015 by the Berlin-Brandenberg International High School in Germany. Collier's work has also been developed by the Chicago Theatre Marathon, PTP/NYC, The Make Ready, Horse & Cart, Theater Nyx, New Ground Theatre, the UNESCO Cities' Play Festival, and the AWOI Little Festival of Iowa Legends. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Iron Horse, Mortar, Liminal Stories Magazine, Prompt Press, Guernica, and Pure Francis. She has taught writing with Cornell College, Young Playwrights' Theater, Imagination Stage, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Combined Efforts Theater, and The University of Iowa and has held fellowships and residencies with the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the National Theatre Institute and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Collier is a 2017-18 writing fellow with the National Writers Series in Traverse City, and she holds an MFA in playwriting from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop.

Ricardo Gamboa is an award-winning artist, activist and academic working in his native Chicago and New York City. In New York City he is an alum of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics' EmergeNYC program, a member of the NY Neo-Futurists, and a Critical Collaborations Fellow at New York University. In Chicago, he is a member of Free Street Theater and the Southside Ignoramus Quartet; a founding adult partner of the Young Fugitives; and the creator and host of the live news show and podcast The Hoodoisie. He is a recipient of a MacArthur International Connections Award and Joyce Award, among others. Gamboa's current projects include The New York Times-recommended web series Brujos and the play Meet Juan(ito) Doe. He has authored the plays The Real Life Adventures of Jimmy de las Rosas and the La Elotera trilogy. He is currently pursuing his doctorate degree at New York University's renowned American studies program. He has worked with more than 5,000 young people in the United States and Latin America.

Isaac Gomez is a Chicago-based playwright, dramaturg and educator, originally from El Paso, Texas/Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. His plays include La Ruta (developed at Primary Stages, Steppenwolf Theater Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre and Pivot Arts); Wally World (Sideshow Theater Company commission); PerKup Elkhorn (developed at Northlight Theatre Company and Chicago Dramatists); The Way She Spoke: A docu-mythologia (Greenhouse Theater Center); The Displaced (Haven Theatre); Throwaway Kids (Cunningham Commission for Youth Theatre -- The Theatre School at DePaul University); and The Alchemist (Actors Theatre of Louisville acting apprentice new play commission). Other companies he's worked with include Victory Gardens Theater, American Theater Company, Teatro Vista, Definition Theater Company, Jackalope Theatre, Broken Nose Theater, Stage Left and Something Marvelous. As dramaturg, Gomez has worked with Victory Gardens Theater, Goodman Theatre, Teatro Vista, Oracle Productions, Strange Bedfellows, and Sideshow Theater Company. He is a recipient of the Jeffry Melnick New Playwright Award at Primary Stages, the co-creative director at the Alliance of Latinx Theatre Artists in Chicago where he runs and is a participant of El Semillero: ALTA Chicago's Latino Playwrights Circle, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, an artistic associate with Victory Gardens Theater, an ensemble member with Teatro Vista, an artistic associate with Pivot Arts, the artistic curator for Theater on the Lake 2017/2018, a steering committee member of the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) and an artistic community member at The Hypocrites. Gomez is a professional lecturer at The Theatre School at DePaul University.

Kristin Idaszak is a Chicago-based playwright, dramaturg and performance maker. Idaszak is the recipient of an Adele & Theodore SHank Fellowship, which supports her residency at the Goodman during the 2017/2018 season.Her play Second Skin received the Kennedy Center's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award. Her play Fugue for Particle Accelerator received its world premiere at 20% Theatre Company Chicago. Her work has also been developed around the country, including through residencies at the city of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs, Stage Left Theatre, and the Qualcomm Institute at Calit2 in San Diego. She has co-created collaborative original work that has been seen at the WoW Festival at La Jolla Playhouse and the Blurred Borders Festival, an international showcase of contemporary dance theater. She has been nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work and received two honorable mentions on the Kilroys List. She was the 2015 Kennedy Center Fellow at the Sundance Theatre Lab. She has received two Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellowships. She is currently working on a commission for Ensemble Studio Theatre/the Sloan Foundation and serving as an adjunct faculty member at DePaul University. Previously, she served as associate artistic director/literary manager of Caffeine Theatre and associate artistic director of Collaboraction. MFA: University of California, San Diego. BFA: The Theatre School at DePaul University.

Nigel O'Hearn's plays have been produced in Edinburgh and New York (as part of each city's International Fringe Festival), Chicago and at various theaters in his hometown of Austin, Texas. From 2009-2012, He served as the artistic director and resident playwright of Palindrome Theatre in Austin, which produced his adaptation of Accidental Death of an Anarchist (best comedy nomination, 2012/2013 Austin Critic's Table); his adaptation/translation A Hedda Gabler (finalist, 2012 International Ibsen Festival, National Theatre of Norway); and the Equity workshop premiere of his play The Attic Space. In early 2014, O'Hearn moved to Chicago, where his productions include: "they": a lamentation (Chicago Fringe Festival); Circle Machine-an adaptation of Chuck Mee's Full Circle, co-written with Emma Stanton and Thom Pasculli (Oracle Productions); An Alliance of Brats, an adaptation of Ibsen's The League of Youth (Illinois State University and Heartland Theatre Company, Normal, Il); and A Hedda Gabler (Red Tape Theatre), which saw its fifth production at Wichita State University this past November. He received an M.A. from the University of Chicago, where he was an Arts, Sciences, and Culture Graduate Collaborative Grant recipient for co-developing a scientific study that gauged the cognitive impact of reading poetry on Alzheimer's patients and their primary caregivers. His most recent play, Song We Forgot to Sing: a play in several scenes and poems, is a verse dramatization of that study process, which received an Equity reading at the Logan Center in 2017.

Goodman Theatre is a premier not-for-profit organization distinguished by the excellence and scope of its artistic programming and civic engagement. Led by Artistic Director Robert Falls and Executive Director Roche Schulfer, the theater's artistic priorities include new play development (more than 150 world or American premieres in the past three decades), large scale musical theater works and reimagined classics (celebrated revivals include Falls' productions of Death of a Salesman and The Iceman Cometh). Goodman Theatre artists and productions have earned two Pulitzer Prizes, 22 Tony Awards, over 160 Jeff Awards and many more accolades. In addition, the Goodman is the first theater in the world to produce all 10 plays in August Wilson's "American Century Cycle" and its annual holiday tradition A Christmas Carol, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this season, has created a new generation of theatergoers. The Goodman also frequently serves as a production partner with local off-Loop theaters and national and international companies by providing financial support or physical space for a variety of artistic endeavors.

Committed to three core values of Quality, Diversity and Community, the Goodman proactively makes inclusion the fabric of the institution and develops education and community engagement programs that support arts as education. This practice uses the process of artistic creation to inspire and empower youth, lifelong learners and audiences to find and/or enhance their voices, stories and abilities. The Goodman's Alice Rapoport Center for Education and Engagement is the home of such programming, most offered free of charge, and has vastly expanded the theater's ability to touch the lives of Chicagoland citizens (with 85% of youth participants coming from underserved communities) since its 2016 opening.

Goodman Theatre was founded by William O. Goodman and his family in honor of their son Kenneth, an important figure in Chicago's cultural renaissance in the early 1900s. The Goodman family's legacy lives on through the continued work and dedication of Kenneth's family, including Albert Ivar Goodman, who with his late mother, Edith-Marie Appleton, contributed the necessary funds for the creation of the new Goodman center in 2000.

Today, Goodman Theatre leadership also includes the distinguished members of the Artistic Collective: Brian Dennehy, Rebecca Gilman, Henry Godinez, Dael Orlandersmith, Steve Scott, Chuck Smith, ReGina Taylor, Henry Wishcamper and Mary Zimmerman. David W. Fox, Jr.is Chair of Goodman Theatre's Board of Trustees, Cynthia K. Scholl is Women's Board President and Justin A. Kulovsek is President of the Scenemakers Board for young professionals.

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