Donna Hoke & Kate Kremer Top Firehouse Theatre's 2015 New American Play Festival

Firehouse Theatre is pleased to announce the winners of our 2015 New American Play Festival.

The first place play is Donna Hoke's BRILLIANT WORKS OF ART. Hoke weaves taunt and often lyrical dialogue with a provocative story revolving around a romantic triangle among a law student, her struggling artist boyfriend, and an older and highly successful investment banker. The play contemplates the accommodations we are willing and unwilling to make when it comes to love, art, and money.

The second place play is Kate Kremer's OPERA OF THE TELEPHONE AT DELPHI. Set in a call center at a fictional non-profit theatre institution that produces musicals, Kremer seamlessly alternates between comedy and drama as she examines in great and poetic detail the characters who make a living trying to sell subscriptions and cultivate donors.

The two plays were selected from over 70 entries by a panel of readers comprised of professional theatre artists. Both plays will be given staged readings as part of Firehouse Theatre's SEASON OF RADICAL CHANGE. Dates will be announced soon.

Western New York regional representative for the Dramatists Guild, award-winning playwright Donna Hoke's work has been seen in 34 states and on five continents. Her full-length plays include THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR (currently playing in its third year in rep in Romania), SEEDS (Artie award winner), FLOWERS IN THE DESERT (AACT top 20 finalist), and SAFE (winner of the 2014 Todd McNerney National Playwriting and Naatak National Playwriting Contests, and the 2015 Great Gay Play and Musical Contest). Donna is also a New York Times-published crossword puzzle constructor; author of Neko and the Twiggets, a children's book; and founder/co-curator of BUA Takes 10: GLBT Short Stories. For three consecutive years, she was named Buffalo's Best Writer by Artvoice, the only woman to ever receive the designation.

Kate Dakota Kremer is a playwright and dramaturge. Her other plays include Porch Play, Nocturne, and Blue Mountain Prohibition, a translation/adaptation of Alejandro Casona's Prohibido suicidarse en primavera. Her plays have been produced and/or developed by StageFemmes, Three Cat Productions, New Ground Theatre, and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. Kremer's fiction has appeared in Red Branch Journal and Every Day A Century, and her non-fiction in the TCG Circle Salon, Encore Magazine, the Kenyon Review blog, and the Seattle Repertory Theatre blog. She has worked in literary departments at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, and has appeared onstage in productions and readings for the Endangered Species Project, the Great River Shakespeare Festival, and New Ground Theatre. She writes an ongoing blog series for HowlRound on the new avant-garde.

ABOUT FIREHOUSE - Under the new artistic leadership of Joel Bassin, Firehouse's theme for 2015-2016 season RADICAL CHANGE. Change is everywhere. It's a constant in our lives and we cope with it in many ways. Richmond is on the cusp of change. The world is in a state of perpetual change. Drama hinges on reversal and recognition -- on something changing -- and theatre aspires to transform us with new perspectives and insight.

We're changing the way that we produce work, with an overhaul of the traditional five play season. We'll be programming in three different series -- PLAYS, FRINGE, and STUDIO. We're expanding the idea of theatre to include PERFORMANCE of all kinds, and we're creating a thriving hub of creative activity where artists and audiences can collectively engage in a diverse range of LIVE collective experiences.