Theatre Company Expands 10th Annual Colorado Play Summit

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts has announced the expansion of the Theatre Company's 10th annual Colorado New Play Summit. The enlargement coincides with the Women's Voices Fund endowment surpassing the one million dollar mark. The festival of new work will take place over two weekends, 2/14-2/15 and 2/21-2/22 and will feature new plays by four of the industry's hottest playwrights; Jason Gray Platt, Theresa Rebeck, Tanya Saracho, and Catherine Trieschmann.

"We're celebrating ten years of new plays with two weekends full of exciting, new programming, including two World Premiere productions on the mainstage," said Bruce Sevy, the Theatre Company's Associate Artistic Director and Director of New Play Development. "Most importantly, this expansion gives us the opportunity to provide our participating playwrights with two full weeks to work on their plays with directors, actors, and dramaturgs. This development time is extremely vital to the new play process and we are honored to be one of the few theatres in the nation that can provide this level of creative support for these artists."

The expanded Summit programming will also include workshops by Denver Center Playwriting Fellow Matthew Lopez (The Legend of Georgia McBride, The Whipping Man), a Playwriting Boot Camp with Paula Vogel (How I Learned To Drive), readings of the finalists of the High School Playwriting Competition, demonstrations of the new Scriptopia playwriting software, and a Local Playwrights' Slam.

Three of the four playwrights featured in this year's Summit were commissioned by The Women's Voices Fund, an endowment that supports the development of new plays by women.

"The continued support of the Women's Voices Fund allows us to invest in the future of women in the American theatre," said Kent Thompson, Producing Artistic Director for the Theatre Company. "In our 14/15 season alone, the endowment allowed us to hire two of the finest female directors in the nation, Kathleen Marshall and Jenn Thompson, and to continue our tradition of commissioning leading female playwrights."

To date, the Women's Voices Fund has enabled the Theatre Company to produce 24 plays by women (including 9 world premieres), commission 14 female playwrights and hire 19 female directors.

Over the past decade, the Summit has introduced 40 new plays, over half of which returned to the stage as full Theatre Company productions. Recent Summit World Premieres include Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, Matthew Lopez's The Legend of Georgia McBride, Catherine Trieschmann's The Most Deserving, Marcus Gardley's black odyssey, Karen Zacarias's Just Like Us, Jeffrey Haddow and Neal Hampton's Sense and Sensibility The Musical, and Dick Scanlan's reimagined version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

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