The Farm Theater Awards Playwright Enid Graham With the 2024/25 College Collaboration Project Commission

The Farm Theater has awarded playwright Enid Graham (Ruth at the 2018 National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center; 2015 National Playwrights' Conference finalist for What Martha Did) with their 2024/25 College Collaboration Project Commision. Enid will collaborate with students at Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, TN (first time participating in The Farm's College Collaboration Project) and Centre College in Danville, KY (sixth time participating in the College Collaboration Project) to write and produce a new play, as part of the 2024-25 season. University of the South will present their production in February of 2025. Centre College's production will go up in April of 2025. 

The College Collaboration Project has multiple schools commission an early career playwright to write a play that each school will independently produce throughout the academic year. The faculty, students, and playwright collaborate throughout the year in the development of the text. The script will be a full-length play with a minimum of five characters. The majority of the characters will be under thirty years of age so that undergraduate actors can successfully play the roles. The play will reflect the students' thoughts on the theme suggested by the playwright. 

This will be The Farm Theater's twelfth installment of the College Collaboration Project. Past seasons have featured playwrights Lindsay Joy, Micheline Auger, Morgan McGuire, Jan Rosenberg, Kimberly Belflower, Erin Mallon, Judith Leora, Lia Romeo, Jake Brasch, and Dipti Bramhandkar. Lindsay Joy's In The Event of My Death, which was developed in the first year of the program, was produced Off-Broadway by Stable Cable and had a sold out run. The 2017/18 collaboration commission, In the Cotton by Morgan McGuire was awarded the Mark David Cohen National Playwriting Award by the Kennedy Center. Kimberly Belflower's play John Proctor is the Villain received its World Premiere in March 2022 at the Studio Theatre in D.C. and was featured on The Kilroy's List. 

Enid Graham

is a writer and actress living in New York City where she is a 2022 graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Program at Juilliard. Most recently, her play A Long Time Ago in a Dark Yard at Night was performed in a 2022 reading series at the Hudson Stage Company, and her short play for Zoom, Do Not Go, My Love was performed in an online reading series, also at Hudson Stage. Golden was presented in audio format for The Falconworks Theater Company. In 2019, What Martha Did received a preview production in the Launch Pad series at UCSB. Her play Ruth was recently seen at the 2018 National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center, the New TACTics 2017 New Play Festival in NYC, and the Sacred Monsters Summer Reading Series in Los Angeles California. What Martha Did was a finalist for the 2015 National Playwrights' Conference and a semi-finalist in the Blue Ink Playwriting Festival in Chicago. Other plays include: Smoke (2022 NPC finalist), Pathological Venus (2020 finalist NPC), Something Unrecognizable, The Plans I Have for You, and The Astonishing and Improbable Adventures of Ann Lee, and Tenderness and Gratitude Number Four. As an actress, her credits include numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, and Honour (Tony Award nomination), and Television/Film including The Sinner, Boardwalk Empire, Margaret, The Glorias, Dawn in HBO's Mare of Easttown, and Jo Madi in Rabbit Hole for Paramount Plus.

The Farm Theater The name is inspired by the "farm" system of baseball whose role is to provide experience and training for developing players. The Farm Theater develops early career artists that may not have the support system afforded others, through workshops, productions, and mentoring. The centerpiece of our programming is The College Collaboration Project. This program is in its eleventh year and has so far commissioned twelve playwrights, worked in collaboration with twenty colleges, and been featured in American Theatre Magazine and Southern Theatre Magazine. The Farm Theater has produced numerous solo shows including Artistic Director Padraic Lillis' show on suicide awareness Hope You Get To Eleven or What are we going to do about Sally? which was awarded Best Solo Show and Planet Advocate Award at the Planet Connections Theatre Festival. In 2017 The Farm Theater partnered with Planet Connections Theatre Festival to produce Alex Riad's The Floor Is Lava. The play was awarded Best New Play and Best Production of a New Play and The Farm Theater was awarded The Planet Advocate Award for raising money and awareness for Girls Who Code. The Farm Theater also hosts a popular podcast, The Bullpen Sessions, which features working artists talking about how they built their careers. www.thefarmtheater.org