Colorado New Play Summit Announces 2010 Readings

When he inaugurated The Denver Center Theatre Company's Colorado New Play Summit in 2006, Artistic Director Kent Thompson called the event a "summit" because of the glorious Rocky Mountains and his goal to build the event into a peak experience... "a new play festival that is a must-see event for theatre professionals from across the United States."

The young Summit continues to establish its place in the top tier of American new play festivals with the announcement of four readings of new American plays and the commissioned world premieres of When Tang Met Laika by Rogelio Martinez and Eventide by Eric Schmiedl, based on the novel by Kent Haruf. Adding to the festival's national scope is the decision by the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) to hold its winter meeting at the Summit bringing critics from across the country to Colorado.

Artistic Director Kent Thompson, Director of New Play Development Bruce Sevy and Literary Manager Douglas Langworthy have selected the following new works to present to artistic directors, literary managers, dramaturgs, directors, press representatives and ATCA critics who will travel to Denver February 11, 12 and 13 for the 2010 Summit.

THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS
by Caridad Svich based on the novel by Isabel Allende

From the confines of her prison cell in an unnamed Latin American country, Alba thinks back over the past 50 years of her family's history. Her grandfather made his fortune working in the mines, but her father became a field hand and revolutionary. While the tensions between the haves and the have-nots escalate, the Communist party takes power. Caridad Svich's haunting and lyrical adaptation of Isabel Allende's critically-acclaimed bestseller, The House of the Spirits, looks at four generations of political and social upheavals through the powerful lens of memory.

Caridad Svich

Caridad Svich is a US Latina playwright, translator, lyricist and editor whose works have been presented across the US and abroad at diverse venues including Repertorio Espanol, The Women's Project, INTAR, 59East59, Cincinnati Playhouse, McCarren Park Pool, 7 Stages, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, ARTheater-Cologne, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. The summer 2009 issue of American Theatre magazine featured a significant profile about her work, and she is the recipient of the 2009 Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women. Among her key plays are 12 Ophelias, Any Place But Here, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Fugitive Pieces, Iphigenia...a rave fable, Instructions for Breathing, and The Booth Variations. She has translated nearly all of Federico Garcia Lorca's plays as well as works by Lope De Vega, Calderon de la Barca, Julio Cortazar and new plays from Spain, Cuba and Mexico and has freely adapted works by Wedekind, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare. She's a former Harvard/Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellow and has received grants from the NEA, TCG, Pew Charitable Trusts and California Arts Council. She has edited several books on theatre and performance including Trans-Global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries (Manchester University Press) and Divine Fire (BackStage Books). Her work is published by TCG, Smith & Kraus, Playscripts and more. She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance & press, associate editor of Routledge's Contemporary Theatre Review and contributing editor of TheatreForum. She is member of PEN American Center, The Dramatists Guild and is featured in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latino History. She holds an MFA from UCSD. Website: www.caridadsvich.com

MAP OF HEAVEN
by Michele Lowe

Lena's painting career is on the rise; her beautiful abstracted maps of places real and imaginary are poised to take downtown New York by storm. But her husband Ian, a radiologist, makes a fatal error that upends Lena's relationship with her agent and threatens to take down her first show. A contemporary drama with tragic undertones, Map of Heaven explores the devastating consequences of a single lapse in judgment.

Michele Lowe

Michele Lowe is the author of Inana, which premiered at the Denver Center Theatre Company and was a finalist for the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her play Victoria Musica recently premiered at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. New York productions include The Smell of the Kill (Broadway debut) and String of Pearls (Outer Critics Circle nomination for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play). She is the librettist and lyricist for the musical A Thousand Words Come to Mind (Joe's Pub), which she wrote with composer Scott Richards. She also is the author of Mezzulah, 1946 (City Theatre) and Backsliding in the Promised Land (Syracuse Stage). Lowe has been commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Arden Theatre and Geva Theatre. Her plays have been produced by companies around the world including Primary Stages, Vineyard Theater, Intiman Theater, Florida Stage, Reykjavik City Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Asolo Rep, and Cleveland Play House. Her work has been developed at the Eugene O'Neill National Music Theatre Conference, Colorado New Play Summit, New Harmony Project, PlayLabs, New York Stage and Film, Hartford Stage's BRAND: NEW Festival, the ACT & Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival and the Lark Play Development Center. Her work appears in New Playwrights/The Best Plays of 2005 (Smith & Knaus, 2006), The Best Women's Stage Monologues 2005 (Smith & Knaus, 2006) and Monologues for Women by Women (Heinemann, 2004). Screenplays include The Emergence of Emily Stark and Quitting Texas. She recently completed her first novel, It Goes Without Saying. Lowe is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Playwrights' Center and ASCAP.

The catCH
by Ken Weitzman

America's national pastime meets America's financial meltdown. A failed dot-commer plots to regain his fortune by catching a star slugger's record-breaking home run ball - through a mix of willpower, determination and sheer optimism. Playwright Ken Weitzman's baseball drama The catch knocks the cover off our national obsession with sports, stardom, money - and positive thinking.

Ken Weitzman

Ken's previous plays include The As If Body Loop (Humana Festival '07), Arrangements (Atlantic Theatre Company, Pavement Group), Spin Moves (Summer Play Festival), Hominid (Theatre Emory), Fire in the Garden (Castillo Theatre), Stadium 360 (Out of Hand Theater), Memorabilia (ALLIANCE THEATRE). Ken's plays also have been developed and presented at, among others, New York Stage and Film, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, Arena Stage, the Geva Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Dad's Garage, Florida Stage, Page 73 Productions, Hartford Stage, and the New Harmony Project. His awards include The L. Arnold Weissberger Award for Arrangements, the McDonald Playwriting Award for The As If Body Loop (best new play in San Diego), The Mario Fratti/FrEd Newman Political Playwriting Contest for Fire in the Garden, and the Elizabeth George Commission for an Outstanding Emerging Playwright (chosen and awarded by South Coast Repertory Theatre). He has been commissioned by Arena Stage, South Coast Repertory, the ALLIANCE THEATRE, Theatre Emory, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Currently, Ken is the Playwright-in-Residence for Out of Hand Theater Company. Ken received his MFA from the University of California, San Diego, and has taught Playwriting at Emory University, University of California San Diego, and, currently, at Indiana University.

CIVILIZATION (ALL YOU CAN EAT)
by Jason Grote

The filming of a post-racial TV commercial kicks off Jason Grote's fierce burlesque of America's love/hate obsession with food. A giant pig on the rampage, mass choreography, Washington and Jefferson selling snacks to the inner city, the search for love and meaning - all are braided together to devastating effect through the inspired vision of the author of 1001 - DCTC's acclaimed 2007 premiere. Commissioned by Clubbed Thumb.

Jason Grote

Jason Grote's 1001 was developed in The Denver Center's first Colorado New Play Summit in 2006 and received its world premiere here the following year. That production received an Ovation Award from The Denver Post, was named best new non-local play by Westword, and was listed in the year-end top ten lists of The Boulder Daily Camera and The Rocky Mountain News. It has since been published by Samuel French and gone on to ten more productions throughout the United States, one of which (Page 73) was listed in Time Out New York's Top Ten of 2007, and another of which (Theater @ Boston Court) was nominated for Best Performance of 2008 by L.A. Weekly. The Washington, DC premiere (Rorschach Theater) was the subject of a feature by Voice of America, broadcast in Farsi into Iran. He is currently developing a musical version of the play with composer Marisa Michelson as part of Montclair State University's 2010 New Works Initiative. His other plays include Maria/Stuart, Hamilton Township, Darwin's Challenge, Box Americana, and This Storm Is What We Call Progress. Other recent projects include HABIT, an installation piece with conceptual artist David Levine, (The Water Mill Center, The Luminato Festival, Mass MoCA); the screenplay to What We Got: DJ Spooky's Quest For The Commons; a radio play program, The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU; and commissions from The Denver Center and ACT/Seattle. Civilization (All You Can Eat) was a commission from Clubbed Thumb, supported with a grant from The New York State Council on The Arts.

The 2010 Colorado New Play Summit also will include a panel of theatre professionals and ATCA critics discussing "New Works and the Critics." Denver Center trustee and National Theatre philanthropist Jim Steinberg of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust will moderate the discussion. Panelists include Christine Dolen from The Miami Herald, Jeffrey Eric Jenkins editor of Best Plays and Christopher Rawson from the Pittsburgh Post - Gazette.

With additional funding from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Associate Artistic Director and Director of New Play Development Bruce K. Sevy and Dramaturg and Literary Manager Douglas Langworthy are insuring the future of the Colorado New Play Summit by developing one of America's most ambitious new play commissioning programs, building a collection of new works, now numbering more than 20, to be featured at Summits and eventually at the Denver Center and other national stages in full productions.

For more information and Summit registration visit www.denvercenter.org/summit

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