8th Annual Rita And Burton Goldberg MFA Playwrights Festival Comes to Hunter College

Wednesday, May 8, 2019 kicks off the eighth annual Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwrights Festival at Hunter College. Under the leadership of Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Hunter's MFA Playwriting Program features intensive, hands-on writing workshops that foster a tight-knit, supportive community of artists committed to challenging assumptions about what theater is and will become.

The festival is the culmination of Hunter's MFA Playwriting Program, and features readings of new full-length works by Hunter's 2019 MFA playwrights - Omar Vélez Meléndez, Hayley Stahl, Adin Lenahan, Sandra A. Daley-Sharif, and Zoë Erwin-Longstaff - and an evening of short works and excerpts by the first-year MFA playwriting students. The readings will take place May 8-11 at the Frederick Loewe Theatre (68th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues).

Tickets are free and available on a first come, first served basis. Reserve tickets HERE.

Gregory Mosher is the Patty and Jay Baker Chair of Theatre at Hunter College. Professors for the 2018-19 academic year include Adam Bock, Christine Scarfuto, Maria Striar, and Anne Washburn. The festival is generously sponsored by the Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program.

Wednesday, May 8 at 7:30pm

WE BUILT OUR HOMES NEAR KINGDOMS OF ANIMALS AND MAGIC by Omar Vélez Meléndez

Directed by David Mendizábal

Welcome to sunny Florida! Eric is Puerto Rican and feels weird about it. His daughter, Kira, is #chill with it and absolutely NEEDS to investigate her heritage. But what if the island is no longer there? What would you do if your home, the happiest place on Earth, a world of Enchantment with many shades and colors, was blown away? Or what if it came to you?

Thursday, May 9 at 7:30pm

COMPANY by Hayley Stahl

Directed by Knud Adams

It's the kind of polyphonic choral piece that hurts to listen to. Everyone is out of key, someone quits halfway through, and strange echoes abound. The soloist wants to keep going but no one can understand why.

Friday, May 10 at 3:00pm

INTRODUCING THE FIRST YEAR HUNTER MFA PLAYWRIGHTS

Join us for a selection of short works and excerpts written and directed by Hunter MFA first-year playwrights Renae Jarrett, Nick Kaidoo, Jenny M. Krick, and Danny Tejera.

Friday, May 10 at 7:30pm

WHITEHARE by Adin Lenahan

Directed by Tony Speciale

Levi Leavitt's life is falling apart around him: a marriage in shambles, a child incarcerated, a sister-in-law who appears out of nowhere, and the eerie presence of a monster born from the internet. A comic-gothic-melodrama about the traumas living just below the surface of a small house in Mascouten, Illinois...bear witness to the secrets, the repression, the horror, to Whitehare!

Saturday, May 11 at 2:00pm

JAROCK MASH-UP by Sandra A. Daley-Sharif

Directed by Victor Malana Maog

JaRock Mash-Up: A collision of DanceHall, f%cking Christopher Columbus, rape, pillage (Sorry..., colonization!), Bodacious girls choppin' de grass, a duppy that watches, and a family's search that takes them beyond Jamaica's Belvedere Mountains.

Saturday, May 11 at 7:30pm

SUBJECT: RE: FAMILY DRAMA by Zoë Erwin-Longstaff

Directed by Machel Ross

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come: the Erwin patriarch is dead. But certain family members are weeping too hard and for the wrong reasons, all because Zoë, the wayward granddaughter, got drunk and stumbled on a dark family secret. Based on Ibsen's The Wild Duck, a play about life-lies and a deranged quest for truth told through group texts and mass emails that probably should have never been sent.

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