Aurora Theatre Company Announces Call for GAP Submissions

Berkeley's acclaimed Aurora Theatre Company is proud to announce a call for submissions for its seventh season of the Global Age Project (GAP) festival of new works. The company will choose four new plays to be presented as staged readings with professional directors and actors during the GAP festival in February of 2012; the festival will coincide with the company's fully-staged Bay Area Premiere of Annie Baker's BODY AWARENESS, directed by Joy Carlin. Each of the four finalists will receive a $1,000 award and their work will be considered for further development and production during Aurora Theatre Company's regular season; out of town artists will receive travel and accommodation expenses. Deadline for play submission is July 31, 2011; finalists will be announced in early December 2011.

Aurora Theatre Company is excited to offer online script submission for the GAP. Playwrights may upload their submissions directly to Aurora Theatre Company's website at www.auroratheatre.org; there is a $20 submission fee per play manuscript.

The Global Age Project is a discovery and developmental vehicle established to encourage playwrights to address life in the 21st century and beyond. Seeking forward-thinking unproduced work from both established and emerging playwrights, the festival celebrates the diversity of perspectives, styles, voices, concerns, and stories that make up the world today and provides a development opportunity for plays that directly respond to our complicated present and our possible future. Writers are encouraged to submit works that explore and/or examine the changing state of human relationships in this new century; plays need not be about science or technology. The company also encourages submissions that transcend traditional forms of theater presentation. Plays that are set in a historical time period prior to the year 2000 will not be considered.

Aurora Theatre Company's Artistic Director Tom Ross states, "Aurora Theatre Company is eager to once again work with GAP Producer M. Graham Smith and Associate Producer Deborah Taylor as we seek out play scripts dealing with life in the 21st century and beyond. It was a thrill to watch Allison Moore's play Collapse blossom from a bare bones GAP reading into a World Premiere main stage production as part of Aurora's 19th season, with two future productions waiting to happen. Likewise, the GAP readings held this past February were truly rewarding, as we featured a play by our first Australian playwright, Lachlan Philipott, and Bay Area locAl Anthony Clarvoe's GAP play Our Practical Heaven will see additional development during a workshop at the Aurora in the Dashow Wing performance space this summer. Most importantly, our community has enthusiastically embraced the GAP with strong attendance and inspiring excitement; we look forward to another season of presenting new and exciting voices for the stage."

Over the past six years, the GAP has established an astounding track record for nurturing new playwrights. During the first year, Dan Hoyle's early draft of Tings Dey Happen was a GAP prize-recipient and received its first public showing at Aurora Theatre Company; since then, the show has gone on to become a huge success in New York and San Francisco, where it won the Glickman Award. Laura Jacqmin, whose play Happyslap was a GAP prize-recipient during the festival's second year, won the Wasserstein Award for an outstanding script by a young woman who has not yet received national attention. Additionally, playwright Zayd Dohrn, whose play Sick was a 2008 GAP prize-recipient, garnered the first Sky Cooper New American Play Prize at Marin Theatre Company. Our Dad is in Atlantis by Javier Malpica, translated by Jorge Ingacio Cortiñas, was published in its entirety in American Theatre Magazine following its GAP reading in 2008. Joel Drake Johnson's The First Grade originated as a GAP finalist and became the first Aurora main stage production to develop from the GAP. Allison Moore's Collapse, which originated as a GAP finalist, became the second main stage production to develop from the GAP; the play received its main stage debut as a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, a collaboration with Aurora Theatre Company (lead theater), Curious Theatre in Denver, and Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, during the 2010-11 season.

M. Graham Smith, Artistic Director of Precarious Theatre, returns to Aurora Theatre Company for a third season as GAP producer. Directing credits include productions at the Walnut Theater in Philadelphia and the HERE American Living Room series in New York City. In San Francisco, directing credits include the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, American Conservatory Theater's MFA program, The EXIT Theatre, Asian American Theatre Company, PlayGround, BRAVA, Berkeley Playhouse, Golden Thread, and New Conservatory Theatre. Most recently, he directed the West Coast Premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera in San Francisco for Ray of Light Theatre. He teaches physical theater, movement, and mask classes at American Conservatory Theater.

Also returning is GAP Associate Producer Deborah Taylor. Taylor has worked in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York as a producer and actor. Recent producing credits include the Broadway productions of American Idiot and La Cage Aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer. Additional producing credits include Killer Joe at Magic Theatre, NuWerks at Marin Theatre Company (Producing Director), and The Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles, where she started the Zephyr Reading Series and produced the West Coast Premieres of Allison Moore's Slashed and The Last Schwartz by Deb Zoe Laufer. Taylor started FireMused Productions, a theater and film producing company with a primary focus on developing and producing new works. FireMused has participated in several New York (Broadway and Off-Broadway) productions, including Eve Ensler's The Good Body, Cultural Industry's Shockheaded Peter, and STOMP/Las Vegas.

Aurora Theatre Company rounds out its 19th season with the first professional American Premiere of METAMORPHOSIS, directed by Mark Jackson in June. The company opens its 20th anniversary season in September with Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning brutal comedy of manners A DELICATE BALANCE, featuring an extraordinary ensemble of acting luminaries from Aurora's past and present, and directed by Aurora Artistic Director Tom Ross. Aurora Theatre Company is also poised to present an innovative collaboration with former San Francisco Ballet dancer Muriel Maffre in November with a re-imagined production of THE SOLDIER'S TALE, followed by the Bay Area Premiere of Obie-winning playwright Annie Baker's BODY AWARENESS in January, directed by Joy Carlin. Founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver returns to the company to helm Margret Schaefer's Aurora-commissioned World Premiere translation of Arthur Schnitzler's fin-de-siècle gem ANATOL in April. The 20th anniversary season concludes in June with Aurora Theatre Company's World Premiere play commission, SALOMANIA, written and directed by Mark Jackson.

Nominated for 15 and winner of 8 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards for 2010, Aurora Theatre Company continues to offer challenging, literate, intelligent stage works to the Bay Area, each year increasing its reputation for top-notch theater. Located in the heart of the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, Aurora Theatre Company has been called "one of the most important regional theaters in the area" and "a must-see midsize company" by the San Francisco Chronicle, while The Wall Street Journal has "nothing but praise for the Aurora." The Contra Costa Times stated "perfection is probably an unattainable ideal in a medium as fluid as live performance, but the Aurora Theatre comes luminously close," while the San Jose Mercury News affirmed "[Aurora Theatre Company] lives up to its reputation as a theater that feeds the mind," and the Oakland Tribune declared "it's all about choices, and if you value good theater, choose the Aurora."

For tickets or more information about Aurora Theatre Company production or the GAP, the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

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