Jose Rivera To Be Residents At Lark's 2011-12 Playwrights' Workshop

The Lark Play Development Center announced the 2011-12 Playwriting Fellows receiving residencies in its eleven-year-old Playwrights' Workshop program. The Fellows, selected by a committee of Lark's playwright advisors, represent a broad range of styles, cultural backgrounds, and experience and includes Bathsheba Doran (Kin at Playwrights Horizons), Mona Mansour (Urge for Going at The Public Theater), Dominique Morisseau (Follow Me to Nellie's at Premiere Stages), A. Rey Pamatmat (Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at the Humana Festival), and Writer-in-Residence José Rivera (School of the Americas at The Public Theater). Pamatmat is also this year's Playwrights of New York Fellowship ("PONY") recipient at the Lark.

Led by Arthur Kopit and a group of esteemed co-hosts including Tina Howe, David Henry Hwang, Theresa Rebeck, Mac Wellman, and Doug Wright, the Playwrights' Workshop brings together skilled and visionary playwrights at various stages of their careers to explore ideas and generate new material without commercial pressures. Writers meet every other week to share freshly-drafted pages with a community of actors, directors, designers, and writers.

Lark Artistic Director John Clinton Eisner commented on the value of this working laboratory: "Putting writers who have more production experience in the room with artists new to the scene allows them to experience fresh ideas, demonstrate new approaches, and break boundaries, while the early-career writers benefit from being in the room with those who have more experience in the field."

Carla Ching, one of last year's Playwriting Fellows and the artistic director of Second Generation Theater in New York City, described her experience of the Workshop this way: "I really enjoyed getting to bring in sections of my play, watching really wonderful actors bust them open, and hearing really smart people share their comments. A note that I was given repeatedly by David Henry Hwang helped me to solve the play when I finally applied it correctly. Also, the rigor of bringing in work every two weeks helped me generate one play from scratch, polish another and start a third."

Doran, Mansour, Morisseau, Pamatmat and Rivera join the ranks of more than 80 Playwrights' Workshop alumni, including Thomas Bradshaw (The Bereaved at Partial Comfort Productions, Sheila Callaghan (Dead City at New Georges), Katori Hall (The Mountaintop, opening this fall on Broadway), Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale at the Denver Center Theatre Company), Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo on Broadway), Tommy Smith (The Wife at Access Gallery), and Sarah Ruhl (The Clean House at Lincoln Center).

For more information on the Lark Play Development Center, please visit: www.larktheatre.org.

PLAYWRIGHT BIOGRAPHIES:

Bathsheba Doran - Her critically acclaimed new play Kin received its world premiere in spring 2011 at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Sam Gold. Her play Parents' Evening premiered last spring at The Flea Theater, directed by Jim Simpson, and her play Ben and the Magic Paintbrush premiered in spring 2010 at South Coast Repertory Theater. She is currently adapting The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency as a feature for HBO Films, and is currently writing on season two of the acclaimEd Martin Scorsese/HBO series "Boardwalk Empire." Other plays include: Living Room in Africa (produced Off-Broadway by the award-winning Edge Theater), Nest (commissioned and produced by Signature Theatre in DC), Until Morning (BBC Radio 4), and adaptations of Dickens' Great Expectations (starring Kathleen Chalfant at the Lucille Lortel), Maeterlinck's The Blind (Classic Stage Company), and Peer Gynt (directed by Andre Serban at the Theater of the Riverside Church). Bathsheba is a 2009 recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and three Lecomte du Nouy Lincoln Center playwriting awards. She is a Cherry Lane Mentor Project Fellow and a Susan Blackburn Award finalist. Ms. Doran's work has been developed by Manhattan Theatre Club, O'Neill Theatre Center, Lincoln Center, Sundance Theater Lab, Almeida Theatre (London), and Playwrights Horizons, among others. Ms. Doran's first play Feminine Wash was produced at the Edinburgh Fringe festival while she was a student at Cambridge University, from which she holds a BA and an MA. She then went on to Oxford University, where she received an MA before working as a television comedy writer with the BBC. Ms. Doran moved to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2000, and received her MFA from Columbia University and went on to become a playwriting fellow of the Julliard School. She is currently under commission from Atlantic Theater and Playwrights Horizons in New York City. Her work is available from Samuel French and Playscripts Inc. She lives in New York City.

Mona Mansour - Her play Urge for Going had a production at The Public Theater in April 2011. Previously, the play was read at The Public (New Work Now), Theater J, Golden Thread, and the Ojai Playwrights Conference. Mona completed a year in The Public's Emerging Writers Group, where The Hour of Feeling was read in The Public's Spotlight Series (directed by MarK Wing-Davey). The Hour of Feeling was also read at New York Stage and Film in July 2011. Mona started writing as a performer in the Sunday Show at L.A.'s famed Groundlings Theater. Her play Girl Scouts of America (co-written with Andrea Berloff) had readings at NYTW, The Public (New Work Now), and a production in NYC Fringe 2006. Television writing credits: "Dead Like Me" (Showtime), and "Queens Supreme" (CBS). Current projects include a commission for the third-year graduate acting class at NYU, as well as a piece on journalist Anna Politkovskaya for NYC's Continuum Theater. A Core Writer of Minneapolis' Playwright Center, Mona was named "One of 50 to Watch" by the Dramatists Guild, and is most proud of having curated, with Lisa Kron, Nuff Said, a piece for gay, lesbian, and transgender youth that was performed at Dance Theater Workshop in NYC. Honorable Mention, Middle East America Playwright Award.

Dominique Morisseau - She is a writer and actress, and is currently a member of the 2011 Public Theater Emerging Writer's Group and the 2010-2012 Women's Project Playwrights Lab. Her play, Follow Me to Nellie's, was developed at the 2010 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and produced at Premiere Stages in July 2011. Her produced one-acts include: Third Grade (FTT Festival), Black at Michigan (Cherry Lane Studio/DUTF), Socks, Roses Are Played Out, and Love and Nappiness (Center Stage, ATH). Dominique's commissions include: love.lies.liberation (The New Group) and Bumrush (Hip Hop Theater Festival). Dominique is currently developing a three-play cycle on her hometown of Detroit, entitled "The Detroit Projects." The first play in the series, Detroit '67, was developed at The Public Theater and was a finalist for the 2011 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. Dominique has worked as an actress with BET/Viacom, the Lark, Women's Project, McCarter Theater, NYSAF, and MCC Theater. Her work has been developed with the Kennedy Center, African Continuum Theater, and Classical Theatre of Harlem, and published in the New York Times bestseller Chicken Soup for the African-American Soul. Dominique is a Jane Chambers Playwriting Award Honoree, a two-time NAACP Image Award Recipient, a nominee for the Wendy Wasserstein Playwriting Prize, and a runner-up for the 2011 Princess Grace Award.

A. Rey Pamatmat - He was awarded the 2010 Princess Grace Fellowship for Playwriting. His play Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them began its rolling world premiere at The Actors Theatre of Louisville's 2011 Humana Festival before productions at New Theater, Actors' Express, Mu Performing Arts, and B Street. His full-length plays have been produced by Second Generation (Thunder Above, Deeps Below) and the Vortex Theatre (Deviant), and his shorts have been produced by Actors Theatre (This is How it Ends, Ain't Mean, and 1,260-Minute Life), Vampire Cowboys (Red Rover), and HERE (High/Limbo/High). His work has been developed at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, The Public, Victory Gardens, Playwrights' Horizons, the Magic, Ars Nova, Ma-Yi, Rattlestick, E.S.T., the Lark, New Dramatists, NNPN, and the National Asian-American Theater Conference. He has been commissioned by South Coast Repertory, Actors Theatre, E.S.T./Sloan, Mabou Mines, and Vampire Cowboys. Rey is a member of the Ma-Yi Writer's Lab, and has been a NYFA Playwriting Fellow, an artist-delegate to the first U.S. Social Forum, and a Truman Capote Literary Fellow. Other plays include: Beautiful Day, New, Picture 24, and Pure. BFA: NYU, Drama. MFA: Yale School of Drama, Playwriting.

José Rivera - He is the two-time Obie Award-winning author of Marisol, Cloud Tectonics, References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, and Boleros for the Disenchanted, and many other plays. Currently in the works are Human Emotional Process, The Hours are Feminine, Lessons for an Unaccustomed Bride, The Book of Fishes, and a new translation of Kiss of the Spider Woman. Rivera was nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and a Writers Guild Award for his screenplay The Motorcycle Diaries, directed by Walter Salles. His screenplay of Kerouac's On the Road, also directed by Salles, will premiere fall/winter 2011. Celestina, based on his play Cloud Tectonics, will mark his debut as a feature film director.

BACKGROUND ON THE LARK:

The Lark Play Development Center, now in its 18th year, is a laboratory for new voices and new ideas. The Lark brings together actors, directors, playwrights and the community to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of theaters, universities, community-based organizations and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally. The Lark is led by its co-founder and Artistic Director John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director Michael Robertson.

Plays developed at the Lark frequently go on to full productions at theaters around the globe. Katori Hall's The Mountaintop is scheduled to open on Broadway on October 13. David Henry Hwang's Chinglish is bound for Broadway this fall after its run at Chicago's Goodman Theater this summer, and Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo ran on Broadway from March 31 to July 3, starring Robin Williams.

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