The Playwrights Realm Announces 2016 INK'D Lineup

The Playwrights Realm, led by Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing DirectorRoberta Pereira, presents the line up for INK'D, their annual festival of new plays. Running May 17-20 at 7pm, The Realm will present staged readings of new work by 2015-16 Writing Fellows Sam Chanse, Lauren Feldman, Jonathan Payne, and David Zax. INK'D exemplifies The Realm's ever-expanding commitment to providing holistic support to playwrights as they strive to make a life in the arts.

Born out of a desire to create more ongoing support systems for early-career playwrights, INK'D is the culminating event of The Realm's Writing Fellowship, which provides four playwrights with a $3,000 stipend, monthly script meetings, and professional development sessions with industry leaders. The Fellows develop their plays in two workshops over the course of nine months. In both workshops, the playwrights work with directors and actors to explore and investigate their plays, as well as a design consultant who helps illuminate the visual and aural worlds of the pieces. Some of these design elements then come to fruition as part of the INK'D Reading Festival. Former Fellows include Amy Herzog, JC Lee, Sarah Gancher and Mfoniso Udofia.

"I've been knocked out by the scope and ambition of the four plays this year. Sam, Lauren, Jonathan and David have all written pieces that wrestle with some of the biggest questions of our time, from violence in the inner city to terrorism abroad, from global inequality to how (and whether) to sustain a long-term partnership," says Playwrights Realm Literary Director Kate Pines, "These are four powerful, brave writers. It has been a privilege to work with them this year, and I look forward to seeing their contributions to the field for years to come."

INK'D runs from May 17-20 at 7pm at the Ford Foundation Studio Theatre at Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd St, New York. Tickets are free, and can be reserved by visiting playwrightsrealm.org/inkd. Please call (212) 255-3089 for more information.

This season The Realm has produced two acclaimed Off Broadway shows, Charles Isherwood for The New York Times described Anna Zeigler's A Delicate Ship as a "lovely drama," claiming Zeigler's, "quietly lyrical language has a luminous beauty." Sojourners, Mfoniso Udofia's American debut, was called "deeply beautiful" by WNYC and described as an "incisive exploration of the choices immigrants must make to become Americans."

INK'D 2016 Schedule

Another Kind of Silence
By Lauren Feldman
Directed by Will Davis
ASL Direction by Lewis Merkin
Sound Design Consulting by Miles Polaski
Tuesday, May 17 at 7pm

Evan struggles over her novel. Chap secretly sketches her. When the two women's lives intersect, they are hurled into a passionate whirlwind tempered only by the fact that both are already in committed relationships with someone they love. A bilingual play in English and American Sign Language, Another Kind of Silence follows four people as they wrestle with questions of long?term partnership, the elusiveness of desire, and the mysteries of the changing self. Featuring Danielle Davenport, Julie Fitzpatrick, Korey Jackson, Athena Kazantsis, John McGinty, and Alexandria Wailes.

Lauren Feldman is a playwright (Another Kind of Silence; Amanuensis; The Egg-Layers; A People; Fill Our Mouths; Grace, or the Art of Climbing), a devised-work collaborator (And If You Lose Your Way, Or A Food Odyssey; Lady M; The Apocryphal Project), a dramaturg, an adjunct professor of playwriting (Bryn Mawr College), and a creator-performer of theatrical contemporary circus (Tinder & Ash). She has been nominated for the New York Innovative Theatre Award, Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, Barrymore Award, Carbonell Award, and the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. A graduate of both the Yale School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus Arts, Lauren is also a New Georges Affiliated Artist and a member-mentor of The Foundry. Hailing from Miami, Florida, she has lived in seven cities and is now in Philadelphia. www.laurenfeldman.com

The Room Where I Was Held
By David Zax
Directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch
Scenic Design Consulting by Anshuman Bhatia
Wednesday, May 18 at 7pm

Josh, played by Brian Miskell, just arrived home from Afghanistan, having survived a kidnapping by the Taliban while chasing a story. Josh's parents, overjoyed to have him home, tiptoe around the many questions they'd like to ask. But when Josh's war-correspondent girlfriend arrives for a visit, familial tensions simmering below the surface break into a boil, and we learn the truth about why Josh took on his most dangerous assignment, and at what cost.

David Zax spent the first decade of his writing career as a journalist, writing for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Slate, and other publications. His writing for the stage and screen has yet to be produced, which makes him inordinately pleased and humbled to join such august company as a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow. He wrote the first draft of The Room Where I Was Held in NYU's MFA program, where he studied with Janet Neipris and Annie Baker, and it has since won The Goldberg Prize and was a finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. He also holds an MA from the Columbia Journalism School and a BA from Yale. He was a member of the improv comedy team "The Utilitarians," which performed once. More at: www.davidzax.com, @davidzax.

The Other Instinct
By Sam Chanse
Directed by Sarah Krohn
Scenic Design Consulting by Jason Simms
Thursday, May 19 at 7pm

In a clinic in Gujarat, India, women are living out their days shuttled from ultrasounds to crochet workshops to Skype dates with the couples eagerly awaiting the babies they are paying the women to carry. Such is the world of international commercial surrogacy. Tara, a first time surrogate for an eager Bay Area couple, sees this as her one shot to improve her life and achieve her dreams. But will surrogacy actually deliver for her? Featuring Nilanjana Bose, Mahira Kakkar, Tiffany Villarin and Bhavesh Patel.

Sam Chanse's work includes The Other Instinct, Fruiting Bodies (2015 Kilroys List), What You Are Now, gilgamesh & the mosquito (with Bob Kelly), about that whole dying thing, Lydia's Funeral Video (published by Kaya Press), and Asian American Jesus. A writing fellow of the Playwrights Realm, she is also a 2015 Sundance/Ucross Playwright Fellow and MacDowell Fellow, and a member playwright of Ma-Yi Writers Lab, Ars Nova Play Group, Lark Playground, and the Civilians R&D group. Commissions include Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan, Ma-Yi/the Flea, Second Generation, Leviathan Lab, and the SF Arts Commission. Her work has also been developed with Ma-Yi, The Lark, The Claque, Labyrinth, Yale Institute of Musical Theatre, ANT Fest, FringeNYC, and Tofte Lake Center. She received her MFA in playwriting from Columbia University, and in musical theater writing from NYU. She offers much & heartfelt thanks to the Realm and her fellow writers for this year. Website: www.samchanse.com.

The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll'd
by Jonathan Payne
Directed by Jade King Carroll
Scenic Design Consulting by Kate Noll
Friday, May 20 at 7pm

It's Christmas in The Oblong, but Karma's got no time for merriment. Penniless but determined, she's on the hunt for her missing foster brother, Terrell. Her quest leads her deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Terrell's life and the violence of The Oblong. Performed by Christopher Livingston, Andy Lucien, Nedra McClyde, Donnell Smith, and Kara Young, The Revolving Cycles explores an American inner city: those who survive the brutal culture of isolation and violence, and those who perish.

Jonathan Payne recently received a 2015 Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship. His previous play, The Briar Patch, received the 2014 Holland New Voices Award from the Great Plains Theatre Conference. His work has been produced and developed at the Tristan Bates Theatre (UK), Ars Nova, Fringe Festival NYC, Horse Trade Theater Group, Fire This Time Festival, The Bushwick Starr, and Theatrikos Theatre Company. He is a proud member of the Ars Nova Play Group, a Dramatist Guild Fellow, and a core cohort of the devised theatre group Impossible Bottle. He is a recipient of the Rosa Parks Award for Borne to the Ocean (2011) and the John Cauble Short Play Award for Slavery (2002) from the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival. He received a BA from the GSA Conservatoire (UK) and an MFA in Playwriting from Tisch School of the Arts

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