Mile Square Theatre Presents The 14th Annual 7th Inning Stretch Festival
By: Julie Musbach May. 10, 2018
Mile Square Theatre, Hudson County's leading professional theatre, presents its annual 10-minute play festival, 7th Inning Stretch: 7 10-minute plays about baseball.
In celebration of Hoboken's historical claim as the birthplace of baseball, since 2003 MST has commissioned some of America's most celebrated playwrights to create short work on the theme of baseball. This year's lineup of writers has eagerly accepted the assignment and will be hitting it out of the park on May 18, 19, and 20 when this annual event is presented at Mile Square Theatre's Hoboken performance venue.
This year's writers include Bixby Elliot (If on a Winter's Night), Bruce Graham (Moon Over the Brewery), Chris O'Connor (The Mascots), Tira Palmquist (The Way North), Guillermo Reyes (Men on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown), Nantida Shenoy (Washer/Dryer), and Anna Ziegler (Photograph 51).
Chris O'Connor, MST Artistic Director and producer of the festival, says, "This is our 14th year of premiering 10-minute baseball plays, and once again, we have an accomplished and diverse roster of playwrights for the Stretch. The plays are moving, funny, and so entertaining. It makes for a unique evening of theatre. The Stretch never fails to dazzle our audience, and they will not be disappointed. The entire event is a benefit for Mile Square Theatre."
7th Inning Stretch, presented by Mile Square Theatre
May 18 @ 8pm
May 19 @: The Triple Play Party! Doors open at 6:30, curtain at 8pm Join the actors and the board for an evening of food, drink, and incredible auction items!
May 20 @ 3pm
Tickets available at www.milesquaretheatre.org, or by calling 201-683-7014.
Tickets are $30 • $18 students and seniors.
Triple Play Party: $75
Discount Parking available at The Harlow @ 14th and Willow, and at Little Man Parking at 1300 Jefferson Street.
For more information on Mile Square Theatre, please visit www.milesquaretheatre.org.
7th Inning Stretch Sponsors: Breakline, Haven Savings Bank, Hoboken Brownstone, Minervini/Vandermark Architecture
MST Season Sponsorships: Advance Realty, Bijou Properties, Carepoint Health, CSBK, Halstead Property, Ironstate, Jet.com, Little City Books, The Rockefeller Group
Mile Square Theatre is supported by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
This program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey Council on the Arts/Department of state, a partner agency of the National endowment for the arts and by funds from the national endowment for the arts, administered by the Hudson county office of cultural & heritage affairs, Thomas A. Degise, County Executive, and the Board of Chosen Freeholders.
Member of The New Jersey Theatre Alliance.
PLAYWRIGHT BIOS
BIXBY ELLIOT is a New York City based writer. Plays include: If on a Winter's Night (The Tank, NYC), Sommerfugl (InViolet, NYC), Abraham Lincoln was a F*gg*t (About Face, Chicago), Girl You Know It's True (Pavement Group, Chicago and Theater Off Jackson, Seattle), Treasure Island, FL (Columbia University, NYC), PS1923.45 LS01 volume 2: The Book Play (NYC International Fringe Festival, NYC), Hotel Oracle (The Sum of Us, NYC) and I Am Not Peter Pan (Cherry Lane Theater, NYC and Edinburgh Fringe Festival - Best of Fest Winner). Bixby's writing also includes television projects - previously he was in development with Jennifer Lopez Entertainment for a new hour long comedy/drama and is currently at work on new projects. He has also written two screenplays Highway and Happy, Now (finalist for the Sundance Writers Lab). Bixby is a graduate of the MFA playwriting program at Columbia University and is the proud co-curator of The Brooklyn Generator (a new play generation project). He knows almost nothing about baseball.
Bruce Graham PLAYS: Burkie, Early One Evening at the Rainbow Bar & Grille, Moon Over the Brewery, Minor Demons, Belmont Avenue Social Club, According to Goldman, Desperate Affection, Stella and Lou, Coyote on a Fence, The Champagne Charlie Stakes, Funnyman, The Craftsman, North of the Boulevard. Graham has won consecutive Barrymore Awards for Best New Play (Some thing Intangible, Any Given Monday) the Joseph Jefferson Award (The Outgoing Tide) and a Jeff nomination for White Guy on the Bus. His new play, Sanctions, opens at Delaware Theatre Company this September. MOVIES: Dunston Checks In, Anastasia, Hunt for the Unicorn Killer. TELEVISION: Roseanne, Leg Work, Cedar Cove, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Trading Christmas, The Good Witch. Along with Michele Volansky he is the author of The Collaborative Playwright. Graham is a graduate of Indiana Unive rsity of Pennsylvania and teaches playwriting and film courses at Drexel University. He divides his time between Elkton, Maryland and South Philly with Stephanie.
CHRIS O'CONNOR is Founding Artistic Director of Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken, NJ. In 2017 he received an Award of Excellence from the New Jersey Theatre Alliance for his stewardship of MST. He conceived and produces MST's annual 10-minute play festival 7th Inning Stretch. He has directed over 20 productions at MST, and has directed at theatres and universities all over America, most recently at Lyric Repertory in Logan, Utah, where he directed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged. His recent work at MST includes The Garden of Rikki Tikki Tavi, Betrayal, Circle Mirror Transformation and the world premiere of Long Gone Daddy by Joseph Gallo. As an actor, Chris has performed in such theatres as Maltz Jupiter Theatre, Franklin Stage Company, Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre, The Culture Project, Soho Rep, Center Theatre Group, Gloucester Stage, Provisional Theatre of Los Angeles, The Bathhouse Theatre, Seattle Children's Theatre, and City Theatre in Pittsburgh, where he originated the role of Peter in Craig Wright's The Pavilion. Recent TV/film credits include Magic City, Burn Notice, and the upcoming indie thriller Depraved. His plays for young people have been produced at Seattle Children's Theatre, his short baseball play The Mascots is published in Smith & Kraus's 2011 Best 10-Minute Plays and his play Miss Ring Has Lost Her Phone was a finalist in the 2016 City Theatre National Short Play Competition. He has taught at SUNY Purchase, Rutgers University, University of Miami, and is currently Assistant Professor on the Theatre Arts faculty at Molloy College. BFA, Carnegie-Mellon University and MFA, Rutgers University.
TIRA PALMQUIST Tira's plays include The Way North, Overburden, Two Degrees (Denver Center), Ten Mile Lake (Serenbe Playhouse), Age of Bees (MadLab Theater, Tesseract), And Then They Fell (MadLab, Brimmer Street, New York Film Academy), This Floating World and others. Two Degrees has been featured in numerous festivals (including the 11th Annual Denver Center New Play Summit, the New American Voices festival in the UK, the Caltech 2014 Mach 33 Festival and the 2014 Great Plains Theater Conference) and had its World Premiere in the Denver Center's 2016/17 Season. Two Degrees was also listed in the Honorable Mention list for the 2016 Kilroys. And Then They Fell was workshopped by Brimmer Street (Los Angeles, 2015) and the UMass New Play Lab (2014), and premiered at Brimmer Street in Los Angeles in September 2016, with upcoming productions in both Minneapolis and Columbus, OH. Ten Mile Lake, which premiered in 2014 at Serenbe Playhouse just outside of Atlanta, GA, was developed and workshopped in 2012 at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and was a finalist for the 2015 Primus Prize. Age of Bees premiered at MadLab Theater in 2012 (and was named Best Original Work by the Other Papers "Best of 2012" list), and was subsequently produced in 2015 at the Tesseract Theater in St. Louis. Age of Bees is now available through Original Works Publishing.
Guillermo Reyes has produced and published a variety of plays including the comedies, Men on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown and Mother Lolita as off-Broadway productions with Urban Stages in New York, Chilean Holiday and Saints at the Rave at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, among other plays produced across the country. Men on the Verge debuted in Los Angeles at the Celebration Theater and won the L.A. Ovation Award for Best World Premiere Play which went on to win the New York Outer Critics' Circle Award for Best Solo Performance for Felix Pire during its off-Broadway run. His play Deporting the Divas won the Drama-Logue Award for Original Play and was a finalist in the Pen Center West Awards for Drama. The play, A Southern Christmas, won first prize in the National Latino Play Competition sponsored by Arizona Theater Company and it was produced by Playwrights Theater of New Jersey. Playwrights Theater also produced his other plays Miss Consuelo and Sunrise at Monticello, and a short play contribution to The Immigrant Project which was published by the Dramatic Publishing Company. In Phoenix, he founded Teatro Bravo where he premiered and directed various new plays throughout the 2000's. In 2010, he published a memoir with the University of Wisconsin Press, entitled Madre and I: A Memoir of our Immigrant Lives, chronicling his immigration from Chile and growing up in the D.C. area and in Hollywood, CA. He's a professor at Arizona State University in the School of Film, Dance and Theater.
Nandita Shenoy is a writer-actor based in New York City. Her full-length play, Washer/Dryer will be produced this winter at EastWest Players in Los Angeles. Another play, Lyme Park, was produced by the Hegira in Washington, DC. Her one acts Marrying Nandini, By Popular Demand, Rules of Engagement, and A More Perfect Date have received full productions in New York City from Green Light Productions, New Perspectives Theater, New Ground Collective, and Eating Theater respectively. She is also the recipient of the Father Hamblin One Act Commission Prize from the Abingdon Theater. Nandita's plays have been read at the Kennedy Center, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Second Generation, Salaam Theater, the Bleecker Street Theater, The Lark Play Development Center, and by the Red Harlem Readers. She is the President of the Board of Directors for Rising Circle Theater Collective. Nandita holds a Bachelors Degree in English literature with a distinction in the major from Yale University.
Anna Ziegler is an award-winning playwright whose play PHOTOGRAPH 51 won London's 2016 WhatsOnStage award for Best New Play. It was selected as a "Best of the Year" play by The Washington Post (twice) and The Telegraph. Her play BOY was nominated for the 2016 John Gassner Award by the Outer Critics Circle. In 2017, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Manhattan Theatre Club and The Geffen Playhouse premiered her play ACTUALLY (winner of the Ovation Award in Los Angeles for Playwriting of an Original Play), and The Roundabout Theatre Company produced THE LAST MATCH. Her work has also been produced on the West End (PHOTOGRAPH 51, starring Nicole Kidman, winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress) and at The Old Globe, Seattle Rep, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Magic Theatre, Playwrights Realm, City Theatre, and many more, and developed at the Sundance Theatre Lab, The O'Neill Playwrights Conference, NY Stage & Film, Soho Rep and the Cape Cod Theatre Project, amongst others. She holds commissions from The Roundabout, The Geffen Playhouse, Second Stage Theater, Seattle Rep, and Empire Street Productions. Anna is developing a television series for HBO and a screenplay for Scott Free Productions. Oberon Books has published a collection of her work entitled Anna Ziegler: Plays One.
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