SPEAKERS' CORNER New Play Development Plays-In-Progress 29-Hour Equity Workshops to Continue

Gingold Theatrical Group, now in its 17th Season, is continuing its new play development with the Plays-In-Progress AEA-approved Showcases of this year's SPEAKER'S CORNER Writers Group. This season, writers Aeneas Sagar Hemphill, Divya Mangwani, Marcus Scott and Mallory Jane Weiss are developing works in response to prompts from the revolutionary activist humanitarian writings and precepts of George Bernard Shaw. These Actors Equity Association approved 29-hour workshops culminate with a presentation as an opportunity for each playwright to assess where they are with their work and to determine the next steps to be taken. These invitation-only presentations will take place at ART-NY Studios (520 8th Avenue). Space for each final presentation is extremely limited and reservations must be made, so to request the opportunity to attend any of these events email info@gingoldgroup.org.

This year's final two showcases will be:

There Goes The Neighborhood

by Marcus Scott, Directed by Dev Bondarin
Friday June 3^rd at 7pm
Phillip Burke, Savanna Calder, Broderick Clavery, Anthony Godd, Ashley
Jossell, Olivia Kinter, Monique Robinson, Cliff Sellers
Stage Manager: Elliot J. Cohen.

Karma Sutra Chai Tea Latte

by Aeneas Hemphill, Directed by Arpita Mukherjee
Sunday, June 5th at 5pm
Rajesh Bose, Shawn Jain, Mahima Saigal, Salma Shaw, Khyati Sehgal, Imran Sheikh
Assistant Director: Sarah Vishnev
Stage Manager: Elliot J. Cohen

This season's two previous showcases, Vigil-Aunties by Divya Mangwani, directed by Arpita Mukherjee, and Howl From Up High by Mallory Jane Weiss, directed by Lily Riopelle, were held in May.

"Among the many programs we've developed over the last 17 years, developing new plays with the intent to produce and publish, has always been the most ambitious dream of all of us at Gingold. While we continue to produce our annual full Off-Broadway productions of plays by George Bernard Shaw, we plan to add at least one new play to our schedule to share with our devoted patrons," said David Staller.

Named after the corner of London's Hyde Park where George Bernard Shaw and other political speakers have delivered speeches since 1855, GTG's SPEAKERS' CORNER brings together six to ten writers each year who will spend the year exploring a specific Shaw play and writing individual new plays in response to that text and Shaw's forward thinking humanitarian ideals. Speakers' Corner members meet bi-monthly, and GTG will host showings of the works that Speakers' Corner develops at the end of the season. The group's members were identified through an open application process under the guidance of Becker, GTG Artistic Director David Staller, and this season's Speakers' Corner Readers and Advisory Committee: Ilana Becker, Stephen Brown-Fried, Ralph B. Peña, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Sharon Washington, along with Speakers' Corner alumni Hank Kim, and Lorenzo Roberts.

WRITERS:

Aeneas Sagar Hemphill (he/him) is an Indian-American playwright and screenwriter based in NYC and DC. Weaving through many genres, his work builds new worlds to illuminate our own, investigating the ghosts that haunt our lives and communities with passion, pathos, and humor. He was a 2019 Resident Artist with Monson Arts Center and 2017-2018 Playlab fellow at Pipeline Theatre, as well as semi-finalist for the 2019 Princess Grace Award, semi-finalist for the 2019 Mabou Mines Resident Artist Program, and finalist for the 2017 Many Voices Fellowship. His plays include: Black Hollow (Argo Collective, Dreamscape Theatre), The Troll King (Pipeline), Childhood Songs (Monson Arts), The Republic of Janet & Arthur (Amios), The Red Balloon (Noor Theatre), A Stitch Here or There (DarkHorse Dramatists, Slingshot Theatre), A Horse and a Housecat (Slingshot Theatre). MFA Playwriting, Columbia University.

Marcus Scott is a dramatist & journalist. Selected work includes Tumbleweed (finalist for the 2017 Bay Area Playwrights Festival; semifinalist for the 2022 Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference, the 2022 Blue Ink Playwriting Award & the 2017 New Dramatists Princess Grace Fellowship Award), Sibling Rivalries (finalist for the 2021 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference; semi-finalist for the 2022 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, the 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award & the 2021 New Dramatists Princess Grace Fellowship Award) and Cherry Bomb (recipient of the 2017 Drama League First Stage Artist-In-Residence). He was commissioned by Heartbeat Opera to adapt Beethoven's Fidelio (Librettist/Co-writer; The Met Museum; NY Times Critic's Pick). Recently developed at Gingold Theatrical Group (Speaker's Corner), Zoetic Stage (Finstrom Festival Of New Work), Queens Theatre (New American Voices series) and The Road Theatre Company's Under Construction 3 Playwrights Group and Cohort 2 of the Southern Black Playwrights Lab at the Mojoaa Performing Arts Company. Scott is a 2021 NYSAF Founders' Award finalist and a 2021 Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award semi-finalist. His articles appeared in Architectural Digest, Time Out New York, American Theatre Magazine, Playbill, Elle, Out, Essence, The Brooklyn Rail, among others. MFA: GMTWP, NYU Tisch.

In addition to Speakers' Corner, GTG's on-going play development also includes PRESS CUTTINGS, which, in recognition of Shaw's career as a theatre critic, supports the development of new plays written by theatre journalists. Press Cuttings has commissioned new plays by Jeremy McCarter, Robert Simonson, and David Cote, and, in June of 2017, presented an AEA workshop of David Cote's Otherland directed by May Adrales.

This fall, GTG returned to live, in person performance with the acclaimed revival of Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession starring Robert Cuccioli, David Lee Huynh, Alvin Keith, Nicole King, Raphael Nash Thompson, and Tony® Award winner Karen Ziemba as Mrs. Warren, which recently completed its acclaimed Off-Broadway engagement at Theatre Row, directed by David Staller. Terry Teachout, reviewing Mrs. Warren's Profession in The Wall Street Journal, declared "Mr. Staller, who knows everything there is to know about Shaw, has not only staged the play but edited the text with his accustomed skill. All the more reason, then, to praise David Staller, the artistic director of Project Shaw, a long-running series of semi-staged concert readings of the playwright's 60-odd shows. In addition to Project Shaw, Mr. Staller's Gingold Theatrical Group presented fully staged small-scale off-Broadway versions of Heartbreak House in 2018 and Caesar and Cleopatra in 2019, and now they're doing Mrs. Warren's Profession. The production is completely satisfying... Sprinkled with tart, school-of-Wilde epigrams ('There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses') and overflowing with glittering talk, it's a foolproof vehicle for six accomplished actors and a director who, like Mr. Staller, knows better than to let the play become a static chat-fest. Instead, he keeps the actors moving and the pace brisk, and the results are immensely pleasurable."

GINGOLD THEATRICAL GROUP creates theater that supports human rights, freedom of speech, and individual liberty using the work of George Bernard Shaw as our guide. All of GTG's programs are inspired by Shaw's humanitarian values. Through full productions, staged readings, new play development, and inner-city educational programs, GTG brings Shavian precepts to audiences and artists across New York, encouraging individuals to breathe Shaw's humanist ideals into their contributions for the future. Shaw created plays to inspire peaceful discussion and activism and that is what GTG aims to accomplish. GTG's past productions include Man and Superman (2012), You Never Can Tell (2013), Major Barbara (2014), Widowers' Houses (2016), Heartbreak House (2018), and Caesar & Cleopatra (2019). Founded in 2006 by David Staller, GTG has carved a permanent niche for the work of George Bernard Shaw within the social and cultural life of New York City, and, through the Project Shaw reading series, made history in 2009 as the first company ever to present performances of every one of Shaw's 65 plays (including full-length works, one-acts and sketches). GTG brings together performers, critics, students, academics and the general public with the opportunity to explore and perform theatrical work inspired by the humanitarian and activist values that Shaw championed. All comedies, these plays boldly exhibit the insight, wit, passion and all-encompassing socio-political focus that distinguished Shaw as one of the most inventive and incisive writers of all time. Through performances, symposiums, new play development, and outreach, as well as through our discussion groups and partnerships with schools including SUNY Stony Brook, Regis, the De La Salle Academy, and The Broome Street Academy, GTG has helped spark a renewed interest in Shaw across the country, and a bold interest in theater as activism. Young people are particularly inspired by Shaw's invocation to challenge the strictures society imposes, to embrace the power of the individual, to make bold personal choices and to take responsibility for these choices. GTG's new play development lab, Speakers' Corner, created to support playwrights inspired by Shaw's ideals, is now in its second cycle. Through monthly prompts and feedback, writers develop work inspired by or in response to a specific Shaw text. Plays developed through Speakers' Corner will be nurtured in workshops and readings with the expectation that GTG will publish or produce them. GTG encourages all people to rejoice in the possibilities of the future. All of GTG's programming is designed to inspire lively discussion and peaceful activism with issues related to human rights, the freedom of speech, and individual liberty. This was the purpose behind all of Shaw's work and why GTG chose him as the guide toward helping create a more tolerant and inclusive world through the exploration of the Arts.

For more information about the Workshops or any of Gingold Theatrical Group's projects, please call 212-355-7823, email info@gingoldgroup.org, or visit online at www.gingoldgroup.org.

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