O'Neill Theatre Center Announces 2011 Playwrights Conference Selections
By: Nicole Rosky Apr. 14, 2011
The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center announced today eight plays to be developed at the 2011 National Playwrights Conference (NPC) under the leadership of Artistic Director Wendy C. Goldberg. The selected playwrights will spend the month of July at the O'Neill's campus developing and presenting staged readings of their work during the NPC's 47th season. Tickets for these readings go on sale Wednesday, June 8. Advanced ticket sales for O'Neill Members will be available Monday, May 16.
The plays, which will undergo the O'Neill's signature development process, employing acclaimed professional creative and support staff, including directors, dramaturgs, actors, and designers, are: THE NETHER by Jennifer Haley, THE HAPPIEST SONG PLAYS LAST by Quiara Alegría Hudes (a collaboration with the Goodman Theatre, Chicago), GOOD GOODS by Christina Anderson, AN INCIDENT by Anna Ziegler, ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT by Keith Reddin, TELL US OF THE NIGHT by Keith Huff, THE TROUBLEMAKER PROJECT by Dan LeFranc and HOW WE GOT ON by Idris Goodwin.Performances: Wednesday, July 6 at 8:15 pm; Thursday, July 7 at 8:15 pm
A young cyberdetective interrogates a successful businessman for atrocities against children. But are these crimes real, or committed only in the thought-space of the Nether?THE HAPPIEST SONG PLAYS LAST by Quiara Alegría Hudes - a collaboration with the Goodman Theatre, Chicago; Robert Falls, Artistic Director
Performances: Friday, July 8 at 7:15 pm; Saturday, July 9 at 8:15 pm
On a movie set in Jordan, a veteran relives his trauma while filming a war-themed blockbuster. In a humble kitchen in North Philadelphia, a woman feeds her hungry neighbors as she falls in love with a local musician. A tale of two cousins who span the globe in search of redemption, humility, and their place in the world. GOOD GOODS by Christina Anderson
Performances: Wednesday, July 13 at 8:15 pm; Thursday, July 14 at 8:15 pm
A small Black town that doesn't appear on any map. Stacey Good, the straight man in a comedy duo, ditches the act to return home and take over his father's general store. His abandoned partner, Patricia, comes calling to disrupt his new life, but a fatal accident changes everything. Good Goods is a love story of the (dis)possessed.AN INCIDENT by Anna Ziegler
Performances: Friday, July 15 at 7:15 pm; Saturday, July 16 at 8:15 pm
An Incident follows the Nadelman family from New York City to Maine as parents Philip and Lillian visit Joey, their puzzling, hard-to-handle son, at sleep-away camp. After greeting his parents with even more hostility than usual, Joey disappears. In the search for their son, Philip and Lillian expose the truth of their own relationship, and the full Nadelman family portrait, complete with shades of regret, recrimination, humor, and loss, is developed before our eyes. ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT by Keith Reddin
Performances: Wednesday, July 20 at 8:15 pm; Thursday, July 21 8:15 pm
When the sun sets on a city that never sleeps, a world of lonely people emerges from The Shadows. A community of these denizens of the night end up at a weather station in Antarctica where the sun doesn't rise for months on end. A close encounter with a frozen world of discovery and frustration, violence and penguins. Acquainted with the Night is an epic polar comedy that tackles that end of the world.TELL US OF THE NIGHT by Keith Huff
Performances: Friday, July 22 at 7:15 pm; Saturday, July 23 at 3:15 pm
Late one night, two stressed-out violent crimes unit detectives try to close the puzzling murder of a CTA employee. What should be a simple open-and-shut case, however, gradually evolves into a horrifying mystery and unearths a legacy of violence, bigotry, and injustice stretching back several years. THE TROUBLEMAKER PROJECT by Dan LeFranc
Performances: Wednesday, July 27 at 8:15 pm; Thursday, July 28 at 8:15 pm
Twelve-year-old Bradley Boatright thwarts single dads who want to date his mom, defeats a diabolical video game mastermind, outwits an evil Superintendent, and plans his escape to the lawless woods of French-Canada. But the world Bradley sees may not quite be the same as the one in which he lives. Prepare to embark on a fast-paced epic adventure full of drama, danger, and kicking A.HOW WE GOT ON by Idris Goodwin
Performances: Friday, July 29 at 7:15 pm; Saturday, July 30 at 8:15 pm
A classic American coming-of-age tale with a unique hip-hop treatment: domestic suburban life remixed. The Selector, our DJ/Narrator, samples and loops us through the lives of three Midwestern teen rappers who have yet to discover the power of harmony over discord.Box Office (860-443-1238) and online ticket sales begin Wednesday, June 8; advance ticket sales are available to O'Neill Members beginning Monday, May 16. For further information, call the O'Neill at 860-443-5378, email theaterlives@theoneill.org or visit www.theoneill.org. Schedules are subject to change. The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964 in honor of Eugene O'Neill, four-time Pulitzer Prize Winner and the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, is the recipient of two Tony Awards, in 2010 for Regional Theatre, and in 1979 for Theatrical Excellence.The O'Neill is the country's preeminent organization dedicated to the development of new works and new voices for the American theater. The O'Neill has been home to more than 1,000 new works for the stage and 2,500 emerging artists. Scores of projects developed at the O'Neill have gone on to full production at other theaters around the world, including Broadway, Off-Broadway and major regional theaters.O'Neill programs include the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, National Critics Institute, National Puppetry Conference, the Cabaret & Performance Conference, and National Theater Institute, which conducts semester-long intensive theater training programs, and Theatermakers - a six-week summer program. In addition, the O'Neill owns and operates the Monte Cristo Cottage, boyhood summer home of Eugene O'Neill. The museum is a registered National Historic Landmark and is open to the public during the summer season.It addition to its Tony recognition, the O'Neill has received the National Opera Award, the Jujamcyn Award for Theatre Excellence, and the Arts and Business Council Encore Award. For more information, visit www.theoneill.org or email theaterlives@theoneill.org.NPC ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BIOWendy C. Goldberg is in her seventh season as artistic director of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. During Goldberg's tenure, forty-seven projects have been developed for the stage and many have gone on to great acclaim in New York and around the country. Included in that group is 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Award Winner (Julia Cho's The Language Archive), and two American Theatre Critics Association Citation Award winning plays (Lee Blessing's Great Falls and Deborah Zoe Laufer's End Days). In the 2007-2008 season, nine projects developed during Goldberg's tenure saw their world premieres at theaters across the country. Other critically acclaimed work developed at the O'Neill during Goldberg's tenure include Adam Bock's The Receptionist, Rebecca Gilman's The Crowd You're in With, Jason Grote's 1001, and Julia Cho's Durango. Goldberg's own directing credits include productions at the Goodman Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Actors Theater of Louisville, Denver Center, and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, among others. Goldberg's latest directing project, the world premiere of Tony Glazer's Reading Under The Influence opens this weekend at The DR2 Theater Off Broadway. She is the first woman in the O'Neill's 47-year history to run the National Playwrights Conference. Plays developed at the National Playwrights Conference often go on to readings and full productions at other theaters around the world, including Broadway, Off-Broadway and major regional theaters. Former NPC plays currently in production include:A DEVIL AT NOON by Anne Washburn closed April 3 at the Humana Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky.
SPOON LAKE BLUES by Josh Tobiessen runs April 1 - 24 at The ALLIANCE THEATRE, Atlanta, Georgia.
HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES by John Guare will open on Broadway April 25 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, New York City.
THE DREAM OF THE BURNING BOY by David West Reed is running until May 15, at Roundabout Underground, New York City.
THE K OF D by Laura Schellhardt will run June 22-July 2 at the Adirondack Theatre Festival, Glen Falls, New York.
FOLLOW ME TO NELLIE'S by Dominique Morriseau will have a reading July 14-July 31 at Premiere Stages, New York City.
THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE by Julia Cho is running February 24-June 18 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, Oregon. PLAYWRIGHT BIOS - NPC 2011Jennifer Haley
Jennifer Haley's play Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom premiered at The Actors Theatre of Louisville 2008 Humana Festival and continues to see productions around the country, including a July 2011 production at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. Breadcrumbs premiered at the 2010 Contemporary American Theatre Festival and will also see a July 2011 production by Theater 150 in Ojai, CA. Froggy, stylistically inspired by graphic novels, was developed at the 2011 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at the Banff Centre in Canada. Jennifer's work has been seen at the Summer Play Festival in New York, PlayPenn Playwrights Conference in Philadelphia, Lincoln Center Director's Lab, A.R.T./Moscow Art Theater Institute in Boston, Geva Theatre in Rochester, Theatre at Boston Court in Pasadena, Sacred Fools Theater Company in Los Angeles, Brown/Trinity Rep Playwrights Repertory Theatre in Providence, Manbites Dog Theater in Durham, NC and Page 73 Productions Summer Residency at Yale, among other venues. She has been awarded fellowships by the MacDowell Colony and Millay Colony for the Arts, and a 2009 Primus Prize Citation by the American Theatre Critics Association. Her work is published by Samuel French and Playscripts, Inc. She lives in Los Angeles, where she founded a network of dramatic writers called the Playwrights Union. You can find out more about her at jenniferhaley.com. Quiara Alegría Hudes
Quiara Alegría Hudes's work for musical theater includes Broadway's Tony Award-winning Best Musical In the Heights (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Lucille Lortel Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Tony Nomination for her book), the forthcoming Like Water for Chocolate, and the children's comic-book fantasy Barrio Grrrl!. Her plays include Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Water By the Spoonful, The Happiest Song Plays Last, 26 Miles; and Yemaya's Belly (The Clauder Prize). She has been produced around the country and the globe at theaters like Broadway's Richard Rogers, Off-Broadway's 37 Arts, Off-Off-Broadway's Culture Project, Hollywood's Pantages, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Hartford Stage, ALLIANCE THEATRE, and Miracle Theatre, where she began as writer. Hudes was born and raised in Philadelphia, where she recently returned to receive a Resolution from the City of Philadelphia. Originally trained as a musician, her writing is strongly influenced by the musical traditions she studied including Western Classical, Afro-Cuban, and jazz. Her first play was produced in the tenth grade by Philadelphia Young Playwrights, where she now serves as a board member. After graduating from public school, she received a B.A. in music composition from Yale and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Brown. She is a resident writer at New Dramatists and a USA Fontanals Fellow. She lives in New York with her husband and daughter. Christina Anderson
Christina Anderson's plays include Hollow Roots, pen/man/ship, Sweet Brown Ginger, Man in Love, Glo, BlackTop Sky, Inked Baby, and DRIP. Her work has appeared at A.C.T., Penumbra Theater, About Face Theater, Playwrights' Horizons, Crowded Fire, Ars Nova and other theaters all over the country. Awards and honors include Schwarzman Legacy Scholarship awarded by Paula Vogel, Susan Smith Blackburn nomination, Lorraine Hansberry Award (American College Theater Festival), Van Lier Playwriting Fellowship (New Dramatists), Wasserstein Prize nomination (Dramatists Guild), and Lucille Lortel Fellowship (Brown University). American Theatre Magazine selecTed Anderson as one of fifteen up-and-coming artists "whose work will be transforming America's stages for decades to come." She obtained her B.A. from Brown University and is currently an M.F.A. candidate at Yale School of Drama's Playwriting Program.Anna Ziegler
Anna Ziegler's plays include: Photograph 51 (Theater J; Ensemble Studio Theatre; Fountain Theatre; EST's First Light Festival, directed by Lynne Meadow; winner of the 2009 STAGE Competition judged by David Auburn, John Guare and David Lindsay-Abaire), Dov And Ali (Playwrights Realm @ The Cherry Lane; Chester Theater; Theatre503, London), An Incident (2010 New Play Workshop at Chautauqua Theater Company), Variations On A Theme (2010 TheatreWorks New Works Festival; 2008 New Play Workshop at Chautauqua Theater Company; finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference), The Minotaur (2010 McCarter Theatre's Lab Festival), BFF (W.E.T., 2007; Sundance Theatre Lab 2005; finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award), Life Science (Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep); NOVEL (SPF, 2007), and No Ramon (New Georges' Germ Project, 2011).Ziegler's plays have been developed by: Manhattan Theatre Club, Rattlestick Theatre, The New Group, The Old Vic New Voices program, Primary Stages, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Geva Theatre Center, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, The Playwright's Center PlayLabs Festival, Ars Nova, New Georges, Epic Theatre Ensemble, and many more.She is the recipient of a 2011 Tribeca Film Institute/Sloan grant to adapt her play Photograph 51 for film; Ari Handel, Darren Aronofsky, and Rachel Weisz are attached as producers. Ziegler holds commissions from the Sloan Foundation, New Georges and the Virginia Stage Company. She is the winner of the 2010 Douglas T. Ward Playwriting Prize, awarded by Tisch, which is given to an alum of the dramatic writing program in celebration of her/his work. Ziegler's work has been published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007, Best Ten-Minute Plays 2010, Ten-Minute Plays for 2 Actors: The Best of 2004 (Smith and Kraus) and New American Short Plays 2005 (Backstage Books, ed. Craig Lucas). BFF, LIFE SCIENCE and PHOTOGRAPH 51 are published by Dramatists Play Service. More can be found at: www.annabziegler.net.Keith Reddin
Keith Reddin has twice been a NPC playwright with his plays, Life And Limb and Frame 312. He has also attended the conference ten summers as an actor and two summers as a dramaturg. Other plays include Rum And Coke, Big Time, Nebraska, Life During Wartime, Brutality Of Fact, Almost Blue, All The Rage, But Not For Me, Prophets Of Nature, The Missionary Position and Human Error. They have been produced at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theater Club, Playwrights Horizons, Atlantic theater, Primary Stages, Goodman Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, American Repertory Theater, Wooly Mammoth, Trinity Rep, the Donmar Warehouse, Lyric Hammersmith, Tricycle Theater, New End Theater, as well as in Australia, Israel, France and Germany. Adaptations include Bulgakov's Black Snow, Shatrov's Maybe, Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, Thorton Wilder's Heaven's My Destination, Fitzgerald's Rich Boy, Sophocles Antigone(Too Much Memory) and the plays of Strindberg. He has written for film and television as well.Keith Huff
Keith is thrilled to be back at the O'Neill to develop Tell Us of The Night, which is the third part of a loose trilogy of Chicago cop plays that includes A Steady Rain (Broadway w/Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman) and The Detective's Wife (currently premiering at Writers Theater in Chicago). Other recent productions include The Bird and Mr. Banks at The Road Theater (LA), Pursued By Happiness at Steppenwolf Theater (Chicago) and The Road, and productions of A Steady Rain in Budapest, Barcelona, Paris, and Mexico City. His most recent stage plays include Big Lake-Big City, Sylvia's Travels (a trilogy), and Nine Toes.Keith is currently writing the film adaptation of A Steady Rain for Barbara Broccoli (EON Films), an original screenplay Kill Switch for Alexandra Milchan (EMJAG Films), the cable series The Brothers Buczakowski for HBO, the cable series Why We Fight for Steven Spielberg/DreamWorks TV and AMC, and just completed a stint as Writer/Co-Producer for AMC's Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning series Mad Men, for which he won a 2011 Writers Guild Award (Best Drama Series). Keith has an MFA from the University of Iowa's Playwright's Workshop, is a long-time Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists, and is the recipient of a Joseph Jefferson Award, a Drama-Logue Award, the Cunningham Prize, the John Gassner Award, the Berrilla Kerr Award, and three Illinois Arts Council Playwriting Fellowships. He currently divides his time between Chicago and Los Angeles, but his home base is Chicago, where he lives with his wife, Georgette, and his daughter, Robin.Dan LeFranc
Dan LeFranc received the 2010 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award for Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, premiered by Page 73 Productions and Soho Rep. His most recent play, The Big Meal, received its world premiere at American Theater Company in Chicago, and will receive its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons. His other plays include Origin Story, Bruise Easy, Night Surf, In The Labyrinth, The Fishbone Fables, Backyard, Kill The Keepers, and Catgut.Awards include the Whitfield Cook Award, the John C. Russell Fellowship, a Djerassi Resident Artists Program Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony/Alpert Foundation Residency; and commissions from Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, and American Theatre Company in Chicago. He is a proud member of New Dramatists, the MCC Playwrights Coalition, and a former member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab.A graduate of the MFA playwriting program at Brown University, Dan served as visiting faculty in Literary Arts at Brown and head playwriting instructor of the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. He was recently a visiting lecturer at University of Rochester and Whitman College. Sixty Miles to Silver Lake is published by Samuel French and his short play Hippie Van Gumdrop is published in The Backstage Book of New American Short Plays 2005, edited by Craig Lucas. He was born and raised in Southern California.Idris Goodwin
Hailed as a "writer to watch" by the Chicago Tribune, playwright Idris Goodwin electrifies audiences with his hip-hop aesthetics. From Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater to Minneapolis' Pilsbury House Theater to Albuquerque's Kimo Theater, Idris tours the nation showcasing innovative, genre-defying performances. In 2005, the NNPN New Plays Showcase at Stanford featured his play Braising; since then, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Ford Foundation, The National New Plays Network, The Hip Hop Theater Festival, and The Illinois Arts Council have all championed Idris' performance work.Co-founder of Hermit Arts, an off-loop theater company in his former Chicago haunts, Idris created over 12 critically acclaimed works. His Danger Face Trilogy earned the 2007 Chicago Orgie Award for Innovative Theater. In 2008, Remy Bummpo Theater Company commissioned him to co-create American Ethnic, a spoken word theater piece New City Stage called "hilarious and smart."What Is They Feedin' Our Kids?, Idris' most popular spoken word poem, aired on HBO's Def Poetry and The Discovery Channel's Planet Green. His latest hip-hop album, Break Beat Poems, earned praise from The New York Times and National Public Radio. These Are The Breaks, his Pushcart Prize nominated collection of nonfiction was recently released by Write Bloody Publishing.Year round, Idris performs, lectures and promotes cross-cultural literacy and social awareness at colleges and community organizations across the country. Currently, Idris is enrolled in the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa.
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