Joust Theatre Company Announces Playwrights Selected for 'The Writer's Round Table'

The Joust Theatre Company is thrilled to introduce The Writer's Round Table, a new developmental writers' group comprised of four carefully selected playwrights whose work challenges and/or reimagines systemic norms. These four playwrights will join us in a 9-month developmental process to exchange ideas and develop their plays which will culminate in each play receiving two public workshop performances, presented in repertory in the Spring and Fall of 2018. Specific dates and locations of these workshops will be announced soon. The four plays are:

Some Pictures of the Floating World by Matthew Minnicino: Shiloh is happy. She and her friends in the Word of Joy do nothing but live, love, tell truths, and dream of the day when they will be called up to the Floating World. But when a stranger arrives, full of words from a world they've tried to forget, Shiloh and the others must consider for the first time if they're as happy as they seem. A play about cults, stories, joy, sadness, truth, lies, and why we believe the things we believe.

Matthew Minnicino is a playwright, adapter, teacher, actor, director, and theatre maker from Virginia. He is a member of Pipeline Theatre's PlayLab, an alumnus of Everyday Inferno's Writer/Director Lab, Ensemble Playwright for Letter of Marque; recipient of the 2017 Arts & Letters Prize and Clay E. Delauney Playwriting Prize; residencies with SPACE on Ryder Farm, Sugarglass Theatre at Trinity College-Dublin, Barn Arts Collective; nominee for the Jeffry Melnick New Playwright Award; and an O'Neill Semifinalist. He has written for HowlRound.com, The Dionysian, The Dramatist, Gathering of the Tribes, Serials@TheFlea, Rule of 7x7, and the NY Fringe, Fridge, Shenandoah Fringe, FauxReal, and Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage Festivals. MFA: Columbia. www.mattminnicino.com

ALLDON(R)A by Gina Femia: ALLOND(R)A tells the story of Allonda and her friends as they wrestle their way through the summer - sometimes it's on the playgrounds in the projects of Coney Island, sometimes it's with their feelings and often it's at home. A coming of age story about friendship and heartache, ALLOND(R)A asks how much is too much to fight for?

Gina Femia's plays include The Mermaids' Parade (Semifinalist, Relentless Award, Finalist, Princess Grace), Annie and the Fat Man (Finalist, Leah Ryan Prize, Honorable Mention The Kilroys), ALLOND(R)A (Finalist, American Blue Ink & Doric Wilson Award) & The Violet Sisters (Great Plains Theatre Conference). She's an Alum of EST Youngblood, Pipeline Theatre's PlayLab and New Georges' Audrey Residency & received a commission from Retro Theatre. She was a 2018 P73 Playwriting Fellowship Finalist. www.femiagina.com

The Colony by Gina Stevensen: A young woman named Carrie Buck arrives at a mysterious medical facility. Where is her daughter? What is this place? Why is she here? Based on true events surrounding the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck vs. Bell, The Colony explores the xenophobia and reckless patriotism that swept through America nearly a hundred years ago, and the present-day reverberations of this controversial legacy.

Gina Stevensen is a playwright who embraces magic and myth to tell stories about gender, power, and identity. The Playwrights' Center's Core Writers Program has said her writing, "beautifully captures the specificity of young womanhood." Her plays include The Colony (Finalist, Kennedy Center 2018 MFA Playwrights Workshop), Cruel Sister (Semi-Finalist: Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 2018 National Playwrights Conference), KIDS (Williamstown Theatre Festival 2017), and Book of Esther (Top Ten Finalist: 2017 Jewish Playwriting Contest, Semi-Finalist: 2016 Princess Grace Award). Gina teaches playwriting at Tribeca Performing Arts Center and The Writer's Rock. BFA Drama: NYU Tisch. MFA Playwriting Candidate: Columbia University. www.ginastevensen.com

Rosenstrasse by Jacob Marx Rice: In 1943, at the height of World War II, a group of German housewives staged the only open protest against the Nazi regime. Based on an incredible true story, Rosenstrasse follows three women trying to save their Jewish husbands from deportation to the concentration camps. Ilse, Marta and Doris must overcome their differences and come to terms with their complicity in order to protect those they love.

Jacob Marx Rice's work has been produced and developed at The Flea Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, The New Ohio, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. His play series The Suicidal Comedies - consisting of Chemistry, Coping, and Cracks - has been produced around the country and has won the Kennedy Center's Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, the Excellence in Playwriting Award at the NY Fringe Festival, Producer's Pick at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and Producer's Encore Pick at the Hollywood Fringe. Jacob was a 2017 Playwright Observer at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, is a member of The Shelter, and is currently an MFA candidate at NYU for Dramatic Writing. www.jacobmarxrice.com

THE JOUST THEATRE COMPANY is an artistic ensemble determined to produce relevant, sensitive, and fearless work that captivates audiences by capturing the spirit of facing challenges great and small. Last year's Literary Series included workshop performances of q u e r e n c i a: an imagined autobiography about forbidden fruits by Benjamin Benne, Incorruptible: The Tragical Historie of Maximilien Robespierre by Jacob Marx Rice, Naked: What Women and Their Bodies Represent to America by Clinnesha D. Sibley, and Book of Esther by Gina Stevensen. Other previous productions include The Monthly Joust series, Assistance by Leslye Headland, The Rules by Dipika Guha and Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman. https://jousttheatre.org

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