Lone Star Theatre Company Launches Robert Askins Playwright Fellowship

Lone Star Theatre Company is proud to announce the creation of the Robert Askins Playwright Fellowship. The Robert Askins Playwright Fellowship is a program created by award-winning playwright Robert Askins and Artistic Director David Davila, to give Texas playwrights living in New York City a home base to develop their new work. Each playwright will receive creative support from Lone Star Theatre Company through a tiered level of staged readings and developmental workshops in New York City, and will receive professional guidance from Askins and the Lone Star Theatre Co staff.

The inaugural fellows are Alan Charnock (Alien Sex Comedy), Emily Comisar (Track Twelve), Judith Leora (Elijah), and Nilsa Reyna (The Care I Need). The fellowship will commence tonight with a private reception at Lobo Tex-Mex in Brooklyn.

Now in it's fourth season, the Lone Star Theatre Company is committed to bringing Texas Pages to New York Stages. Through a diverse set of programs like Texas Music/NY Stages and the Texas Reads series, Lone Star strives to create innovative and fresh pieces of theatre for New Yorkers brought to you by Texans. Whether a play is by a Texas playwright, or features Texas talent and ingenuity, Lone Star Theatre aims to bring you entertaining theatrical events that will whisk you away from city life.

Their 2015-2016 season includes readings of Charnock's ALIEN SEX COMEDY directed by Bryan Hunt, Leora's SHOWPONY director TBA, Comisar's SWITZERLAND directed by Nilsa Reyna, a concert of Davila's MAGIC TIME MACHINE directed by Jose Sepulveda, and the fourth annual Texas One-Act Play Festival celebrating the strength of women, directed by Davila. Tickets are available by visiting www.lonestartheatre.com.

Alan Charnock was raised and educated in Dallas, Texas, and lives in Queens, New York. A graduate of the University of Dallas, he works in educational technology and writes plays (Alien Sex Comedy, The Job Search & Other Plays) and poetry (Bushwick Poetry). His goal is to create literature and relationships that enrich the culture of the city. He believes in good form, good stories, democracy, freedom, tragedy, and the exploration of the human condition. Also, comedy. @ABCharnock.

Emily Comisar is a proud Texan, a Northwestern Wildcat, and a cooking enthusiast with thirteen years of experience in theatrical writing and production. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Columbia University School of the Arts Theatre Management & Producing program. She holds a BA in Performance Studies from the Northwestern University School of Communications and an MA in Italian Language and Media from Middlebury College. Emily's short plays have appeared as part of reading series produced by Lone Star Theatre Co. and aWe Creative Group, and she is one of the co-creators of "Group: The Webseries," by SeaDog Productions. Her full length work includes The Last Hurrah (Northwestern University), Track Twelve (FringeNYC), and Moonlighting (Lonestar Theatre Co.).

Judith Leora is a former resident of Houston and a proud graduate of Texas A&M University. Recent work includes: Literally a Bowl of Shit (Racial Madness with Featured Guest Neil LaBute), The Cookie Fight (Last Frontier Theatre Conference), The X and the Y, Bristol Valley Theatre (reading), Heart-Shaped Uterus (MadLab reading), Weird About the Baby, NYC Icon Plays/Ego Actus (production), Elijah (O'Neill Semi-Finalist), Lone Star Theatre (reading), Gideon (production/commission), UMass at Lowell, The Raven (co-librettist), Emerging Actors Theatre. Numerous short plays produced in New York, including multiple plays with the ESPA Detention series, New York Madness, OMPF, Brainmelt Consortium, Sticky. Upcoming: The Cookie Fight, Bristol Valley Theatre (production), Showpony, Lone Star Theatre (reading). Managing Director, New York Madness.

Nilsa Reyna (Actor/Writer/Director) relocated to New York City in 2013 and spent many years working in the Chicago storefront theater scene. She founded and served as Chicago Fusion Theatre's Artistic Director from 2007-2012 where she directed Big Love, 12 Hungry Men and Hugging the Shoulder. She was also one of the original ensemble members of Teatro Luna. Currently, she's working as writer/performer on The Care I Need, a solo play about stroke survival and is a co-host of the Are You Famous, Yet? podcast, which recently celebrated 100 episodes. New York acting credits: Indifference (John Chatterton/Midtown International Theatre Festival), Zapata! Tiger of Morelos (Moose Hall Theatre/Inwood Shakespeare Festival). Select Chicago acting credits include Las Hermanas Padilla, The Boy in Black, Proof and bobrauschenbergamerica (CFT), Lorca in a Green Dress and The Other Shore (Halcyon Theatre), The Mark of Zorro (Lifeline Theatre, u/s 17 performaces), Operation Infiltration (Factory Theater), Escanaba in da Moonlight (Circle Theatre) and Anna in the Tropics (Victory Gardens Theater, u/s 1 performance).

Robert Askins was born in Cypress, Texas in 1980. He moved to New York in 2005. His Obie Award-winning play Hand to God is currently running on Broadway at the Booth Theatre after a 2014 run at MCC and three sold-out runs at Ensemble Studio Theater in 2011-12. In 2009 his play Princes of Waco was produced by EST/Youngblood. His one act play Matthew and the Pastor's Wife was a part of Marathon 2010 at EST and The Love Song of the Albanian Sous Chef won a Dallas Outer Circle Critics Award in 2011. Mr. Askins is proud to be an alumnus of I-73, Youngblood, and a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre. He has received two E.S.T./Sloan grants, an Arch and Bruce Davis Award and is one of the 2012 recipients of the Helen Merrill Award for emerging playwrights.

Photo by Walter McBride

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