Playwrights Selected for Fox Valley Rep's 'Collider 2012' New Play Project

Fox Valley Repertory today announced that it has selected four playwrights for Fox Valley Repertory's 2nd Annual Collider Project, taking place during the St. Charles' Summer Theater Festival in July.   Each of these playwrights from around the country are eager to start their project that ties to Fox Valley Rep's goal of "developing new works that help us better understand the universe and who we are while illuminating and celebrating the worlds of art, science and technology." 

The three playwrights and their respective plays are Gloria Bond Clunie of Chicago with "Quark," Co-playwrights Kevin Kautzman of Texas and Charles Midwinter of Minnesota with "Life Electric", and Monica Byrne of North Carolina with "The Fate of the Universe."

"We're thrilled with the amount of playwrights that showed interest in this new play project, having over quadrupled the amount of submissions we received this year," says Artistic Director John Gawlik. "Together with the internationally renowned Fermilab, Collider 2012: will offer a unique experience for these deserving playwrights to work one-on-one to gain insight from Fermilab scientists and pen a world premiere." 

Quark

Gloria Bond Clunie's "Quark" embraces love, death, and the stars when Dr. Alexandra Seabold, an astrophysicist, and her husband Terry, a kindergarten teacher, wrestle with personal tragedy, commercial space travel, and feeding our starving planet as they struggle with - is "a taste of space" worth it? A highly introspective and very visual play, Quark uplifts as it tackles the challenging themes of death and dying, social responsibility, education and scientific literacy, and love and loss. 

"As fewer students enter our universities equipped to tackle the rigors of college level science courses, our country is becoming painfully aware that in a technologically complex, global society, scientific decisions critically affect all of our lives - whether or not we are equipped to make them," says Clunie of her developing work. 

Clunie is proud to be a founding member of the Playwriting Ensemble at Chicago's Regional Tony Award winning Victory Gardens Theater where her plays North Star, Living Greenand Shoes premiered. She has been recognized by the Children's Theater Foundation of America, the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and honored with a Chicago Jeff, a Scott McPherson, New York's New Professional Theater Award, Chicago Black Theatre Alliance Awards, among others. Currently, as part of Northwestern University's American Music Theatre Project, she is adapting her award winning drama North Star into a musical. 

The staged reading and talkback is scheduled for Saturday, July 7 at 1pm. 

Life Electric

Co-playwrights Kevin Kautzman and Charles Midwinter's "Life Electric" is inspired by James Delbourgo's A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders. The play will take place in the world of the 1740s and 50sand tackle issues around electricity, performance and enlightenment at the root of theAmerican character. The play will explore thediminishment of spectacle and wonder around scientific innovation as electricity (or the"electric fire") moves from the hands of a second-class showman and into the hands ofBenjamin Franklin, a man who helped shape America as much as any other in the 18th century.

"Witnessed out of our turbulent, technologically super-saturated present, theshow we hope will serve as a reminder of the wonder that underpins our advancedtechnology and draw narrative threads between these innovations, spectacle, theAmerican character, democratic values, and the tension in our national character betweenancient and primal superstition and "enlightened" scientific pragmatism," says Kautzman and Midwinter.

Kevin Kautzman is a North Dakota native pursuing his M.F.A. with a focus in playwriting and screenwriting as a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.  He has received commissions from Red Eye and History Theatre, and his work has been performed, read and/or developed around the globe.  He is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota, where he studied history and philosophy, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild Inc., the Playwrights' Center, and Scriptworks. 

Charles Midwinter is currently pursuing his PhD in the History of Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has given talks at the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the History of Science Society. His work has been supported by grants from the American Institute of Physics, the University of Minnesota, and a fellowship from the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin. Charles' short fiction has appeared in Asimov's Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. He holds a B.S. in Physics and an M.Ed. in Science Education, both from the University of Minnesota.

The staged reading and talkback is scheduled for Saturday, July 14 at 1pm. 

The Fate of the Universe

Monica Byrne's "The Fate of the Universe" follows six members of the Caltech astrophysicsdepartment as they settle into their annual "TheFate of the Universe" fall retreat at a redwood forest lodge.There, the strongestevidence yet for how the universe will end is presented: in a slow dissipation--the "Big Freeze"--rather than a reunion, or a "Big Crunch."Over bag lunches, the characters discuss this finding. Their reactions rangefrom logical to emotional, and they begin to question how this finding reflects on thenature of existence itself. On the last day, the group takes a hike in the woods, during which they allbecome separated and lost, leaving them nothing but time to ponder 'the fate of the universe.' 

"Can intimacy be preserved in such a universe? Should wetry? What does it mean that humans need narrative, but the universe is fundamentallya-narrative?" says Byrne. "After each character reacts emotionally and logically to the idea of the "Big Freeze," it's not until they are left in aloneness in the woods --as death, as liberation, as a trap, as coldscientific fact." 

Monica Byrne is a scientist-turned-writer whose plays has been read, developed and produced at several theaters. She is a graduate of the Dirty South Improv Training Program, and in 2011 she was a finalist for an EST/Sloan Commission for her play Nightwork. She was awarded the Mary Elvira Stevens Fellowship for travel to Ethiopia, India and the South Pacific for research on her first novel, completed in November 2011; she has also received grants from the Vermont Studio Center, La Muse Artist Retreat, and the Durham Arts Council. She holds degrees in biochemistry from Wellesley College and MIT, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

The staged reading and talkback is scheduled for Saturday, July 21 at 1pm.

About Collider 2012

Collider: New Play Project partners area scientists and Fox Valley Repertory tap into both playwright and scientists' curiosity and desire for knowledge and human understanding. This collaboration will allow both artist and scientist to share their personal outlook and creativity while ushering in a new play. The final script will be work-shopped with professional directors and actors during the St. Charles Summer Theater Festival from July 7-21, 2012. Public, world premiere staged readings will be held on Saturdays at 1pm.

Fox Valley Repertory is uniquely located within the Illinois Science and Technology Corridor. Illinois is the home of the internationally renowned Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia and is a Midwestern and national leader in science and technology research and development. For more information, please visit www.foxvalleyrep.org/Collider/.

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