Playwrights' Arena Announces 2019 Season

Playwrights' Arena, the first and oldest theater dedicated to discovering, nurturing, and producing original works written exclusively by Los Angeles playwrights, will present three World Premieres during its 2019 Season: SOUTHERNMOST by Mary Lyon Kamitaki, THE END OF BEAUTY by Cory Hinkle and LIKE/SHARE by Janine Salinas Schoenberg.

SOUTHERNMOST, to be directed by Playwrights' Arena Artistic Director Jon Lawrence Rivera, opens the season on April 6th. It is a play dealing with a conflict of ideas. When a daughter returns home to Hawaii for a vacation, her father is taken aback at her modern, mainland lifestyle as well as her refusal to support his latest venture: a coffee farm in their backyard. His determination clashes with her resistance, both to the coffee and her rural Hawaiian roots. Faced with the threat of an impending lava flow, will they embrace the future, or risk losing everything?

Mary Lyon Kamitaki is an emerging Los Angeles playwright born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaii. After graduating from Pomona College, she went on to earn an MFA in Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California's School of Dramatic Arts in 2018. Her work includes plays, screenplays, and television scripts that center young women and families with a particular focus on coming-of-age stories. Her plays have received readings and a workshop production at USC and been named semifinalists in both the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Eugene O'Neil Theater Center's 2017 National Playwrights Conference.

Cory Hinkle's play THE END OF BEAUTY examines a perfectly beautiful marriage interrupted by the arrival to dinner of a former student who is riding high on fame and success as an artist. By the end of dinner, power and loyalties shift, leaving someone out in the cold. Will beauty be restored? Find out in a production directed by Barbara Kallir opening May 25th.

Cory is a writer based in Los Angeles. He has been the recipient of the McKnight Advancement Grant, two Jerome fellowships, a MAP Fund Grant and a Jerome Travel and Study Grant. From 2008 to 2012 he co-ran the playwright-driven company Workhaus Collective where his plays Little Eyes and SadGrrl13 were produced. His recent plays include Apocalypse Play (premiere at Moving Arts, Ovation Recommended production); Uncovered Cities (developed with Circle X); Golden (commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville); Clandestino (workshopped at Sundance Theatre Lab and New York Theatre Workshop); The Killing of Michael X (Jackalope Theatre) and The End of Beauty (developed at the Road Theatre and Cape Cod Theater Project). He was a co-writer of That High Lonesome Sound (2015 Humana Festival); All's Fair/The War Within (co-created with Dominique Serrand and Steven Epp, premiere at the Southern Theater);Fissures (lost and found)(2010 Humana Festival) and Rehearsing Failure (Network of Ensemble Theaters, Red Eye Theatre, Southern Theatre). Cory was a recipient of the 2016-17 Humanitas Play LA Award, the recipient of the 2015 Heideman Award and he is a former MacDowell Colony fellow. He is an affiliated writer at the Playwrights' Center and earned his MFA in Playwriting from Brown University.

LIKE/SHARE by Janine Salinas Schoenberg, and directed by Diane Rodriguez, is a play ripped from today's headlines about a female college student unconscious in an alley who was filmed while being molested by two young men. When the film surfaces on the internet, it goes viral, but what may be clear at first viewing gets blurry by different points of view. Opens September 21st.

Janine Salinas Schoenberg received her M.F.A. from the University of Southern California's Dramatic Writing Program. As a playwright she has had works developed and/or produced at: Atwater Village Theatre, Playwrights' Arena, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Center Theatre Group, South Coast Repertory, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She has been nominated for the Princess Grace Award, the Wendy Wasserstein Prize, and was a Quarterfinalist for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, and a Project Involve Fellowship through Film Independent. Janine was a participant in the AFI Directing Workshop for Women where she was awarded the Nancy Malone Award in directing for her short film, Jenny & Lalo. She also participated in the 2014 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive, and the 2015 National Hispanic Media Coalition Television Writers Program. Janine was one of eight writers selected for the 2016 Disney/ABC Writing Program. As a television writer she has written for ABC's American Crime and FX'sSnowfall.

All performances will be at Playwrights' Arena at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039. For tickets and information go to: www.playwrightsarena.org

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