The Lark Announces 2017 Van Lier New Voices Fellows

The Lark has announced playwrights Brittany K. Allen and Christina Quintana have been selected as the recipients of the 2017 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship.

This year-long residency is designed to help address the lack of inclusion of early career playwrights of color in the theater field. Specifically, the Fellowship supports extraordinary writers of color under 30 and includes a cash award of $15,000, plus a $3,000 health insurance allowance, as well as access to a wide range of Lark resources, including artistic program participation, financial tools and coaching, office and rehearsal space, and staff support.

The 2017 cycle marks this Fellowship's fourth year at The Lark. Past fellows include Reginald Douglas (director: Nikkole Salter's Lines in the Dust at Luna Stage), C.A. Johnson (Waitin' on the Moon), Donja R. Love (Soft or The Dead N***** Poem), Anna Moench (Hunger), Christopher Oscar Peña (awe/struck), and Susan Soon He Stanton (The Things Are Against Us).

The Van Lier New Voices Fellowship program is a critical component in The Lark's acclaimed portfolio of fellowships, designed to engage a diverse community of remarkable playwrights who collectively reflect and reveal the vibrancy of our world.

During their residency at The Lark, Allen and Quintana will be part of a community of artists at various career levels from across the country and around the world. The voices of the 2017 Fellows will be invaluable additions to this community.

"We are absolutely delighted to welcome Brittany and Christina as our next pair of Van Lier New Voices Fellows. Both writers are grappling with a wide range of large cultural forces and synthesizing them to create surprising connections through their work," said The Lark's Director of Scouting and Submissions, Andrea Hiebler. "Brittany has a keen comic voice that celebrates silliness while remaining razor sharp. Her plays are full of compelling characters who are often flailing but always genuinely striving for something substantial. Christina spins lyrical stories that delicately untangle the seemingly disparate threads that tie us together through her playful use of language and musicality. They have such vibrant visions and bighearted approaches to playwriting. We can't wait for Brittany and Christina to add their dynamic perspectives to The Lark community and use these resources to continue expanding and extending their individual artistic paths."

Allen, 26, is a New York-based writer and performer who is drawn to work that is funny, if gutting. She is a student of the advanced improv and sketch comedy writing programs at the Upright Citizens Brigade, and a member of the Obie-award winning young playwrights collective, EST/Youngblood, where her original play Redwood received a staged reading. On what is most exciting to her about receiving the Fellowship, Allen said, "I'm terribly thrilled and grateful to be selected. I'm looking forward to generating new material in this most encouraging of incubators, and revising several existing projects under the guidance and gaze of so many theatre-makers I respect. Thanks (isn't a strong enough word) to The Lark for having faith in me and my work, and empowering this playwright at a crucial moment!"

Quintana, 29, is a New York-based writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots, recently selected as a fellow for the CubaOne Foundation's TuCuba program, connecting Cuban-Americans to the island. Her play Scissoring was a finalist for the Kitchen Dog New Works Festival and for the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. On what she hopes to get out of this Fellowship, Quintana said, "I'm so thrilled to tear into the drafts of a few plays-in-progress during my time as a fellow. The freedom to push these pieces toward the best versions of themselves and generate new work among the Lark community will make this an unforgettable year."

Though this is the Fellowship's fourth year at The Lark, The Edgar and Sally Van Lier Fund at The New York Community Trust has been underwriting similar fellowships since 1991 at other New York City organizations including New Dramatists, Second Stage Theatre, and Asian American Arts Alliance. Ms. Van Lier, the visionary behind the fund, was born into a Hungarian immigrant family at the turn of the century and struggled to launch a career in show business. She got her break in 1923 when she won a beauty contest and was subsequently cast in Florence Ziegfeld's Follies and in his production of Showboat. In later life, the Van Liers-who had no children of their own-took great delight in introducing young people to the arts and providing assistance to those who aspired to careers in the theater but couldn't afford training on their own. To read more about the fund's history, visit www.nycommunitytrust.org/EdwardandSallyVanLier.

MORE ABOUT THE FELLOWS:

Brittany K. Allen is a New York-based writer and performer. Her original plays include Redwood (Finalist: Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, Semifinalist: Playwrights Realm Fellowship, Staged Reading: Ensemble Studio Theatre), Civil Hands, and The Late Greats. Her short works and co-devised pieces have been developed at Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Tank, Ars Nova, The Connelly, New Ohio Theatre, and CAP-21 Studios. She is an affiliated artist with PowerOut Theatre, a friend to the Carroll Simmons performance collective, a former member of The Bats (The Flea Theatre's resident Acting Company), and a member of the Obie-award winning young playwrights collective, EST/Youngblood.

Brittany's fiction and essays have been published in/on Catapult, The Toast, The Nervous Breakdown, BUST, Mercer Street and The Tishman Review (Pushcart Prize Nominee), among other places. She recently attended the Sewanee Writers Conference on the George and Anne Borchardt scholarship for excellence in fiction writing, and received her BFA from NYU-Tisch in 2011, where she studied fiction with Fiona Maazel and Zadie Smith.

Acting-wise, recent credits include Sarah Gancher's The Place We Built (The Flea, dir. Danya Taymor), New Saloon's Minor Character (Invisible Dog) and a newtransladaptation of Moliere's Tartuffe by Amanda Keating (Two-Headed Rep, dir. Molly Clifford). Brittany also studies in the advanced improv and sketch comedy writing programs at the Upright Citizens Brigade, which is to say she is drawn to work that is funny -- if, gutting, too. This gal writes for everyone, but especially women of color (in peril, and empowered). When not theatre-making, she can be found racking up fines and making frenemies at the New York Public Library, Jefferson Market Branch. BFA, NYU-Tisch (Playwrights Horizons TheatreSchool). @Britt_Kathryn

Christina Quintana is a New York-based writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots, recently selected as a fellow for the CubaOne Foundation's TuCuba program, connecting Cuban-Americans to the island. Her piece on the experience, "Es Cuba," will be featured in OnCuba magazine, Spring 2017.

Her plays have been developed and produced in Atlanta, New Orleans, and New York City. Plays include: Evensong (Astoria Performing Arts Center), Flor to Somewhere (Peppercorn Theatre), Scissoring (Finalist Kitchen Dog New Works Festival; Finalist Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition), Enter Your Sleep (FringeNYC/Baby Crow Productions; Elm Theatre New Orleans), and Blank Canvas ("Best Short" in the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival).

She is the lyricist and book writer for Gumbo, a new musical, with music by Brett Macias, which was a selection for the New York Musical Festival (NYMF), received a residency at Musical Theatre Factory, and was a finalist for FWD Theatre Project, Theatre Resources Unlimited's Musicals Series, as well as Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival's "The PitCH."

In 2016, her chapbook of poetry, The Heart Wants, was released from Finishing Line Press. Her writing has also appeared in Front Porch Journal, Glass Poetry Press, Saw Palm, Nimrod International Journal, Raspa Magazine, Foglifter Journal, 7x7.la, and beyond.

She has participated in reading series across the boroughs, including Franklin Electric, Lamprophonic, Queer Art Organics, and Contemporary Voices in Queer Literature at the City University of New York's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), as well as panels and readings outside of the city, including LitFest at the University of Dayton and West Hollywood Public Library's Lesbian Speaker Series with author Lucy Jane Bledsoe. Many of her poems have been performed by the downtown reading series, Emotive Fruition, including "He-lium," featured on the "Elements" episode of NPR's hit show Radiolab.

Quintana is also the recipient of commissions from the Ensemble Studio Theatre(EST)/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Project, Peppercorn Theatre, and Actor's Express, as well as fellowships from Queer/Art and Lambda Literary. She is a proud member of EST's Obie-winning cohort of playwrights, Youngblood, and holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University School of the Arts. For more information, visit cquintana.com.

The Lark is an international theater laboratory, based in New York City, dedicated to empowering playwrights by providing transformative support within a global community. Founded in 1994, The Lark provides writers with funding, space, collaborators, audiences, professional connections, and the freedom to design their own processes of exploration. The guiding principal of The Lark's work is the belief that playwrights are society's truth tellers, and their work strengthens our collective capacity to understand our world and imagine its future.

Last year, The Lark served 929 artists, including 106 playwrights, partnered with more than a dozen theaters and universities, and welcomed 2,618 audience members to 32 public presentations. In the past three years 121 Lark developed plays moved on to 281 productions in 111 cities around the world. In order to provide economic flexibility to writers at different stages of their careers, The Lark has created a portfolio of major playwriting fellowships. The Lark continues to offer a free and open submission process that allows any and all writers to submit to our Playwrights' Week program and maintains free admission to the public for all readings and workshops. Plays substantially developed at The Larkinclude The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, Guards at the Taj by Rajiv Joseph, brownsville song (b-side for tray) by Kimber Lee, Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau, and Sweat by Lynn Nottage.

For more information about the artists, initiatives and plays of The Lark, please visit: www.larktheatre.org.

Pictured: Brittany K. Allen (left) and Christina Quintana (right)

To post a comment, you must register and login.