terraNOVA Collective Announces 2012 Groundbreakers Playwrights

terraNOVA Collective announces six new playwrights for the 2012 season of their Groundbreakers Playwrights Group which will include Krista Knight (2011 KCACTF Musical Theater Award for Salamander Leviathan), Jennifer Lane (Harlowe at 3LD), Andrea Lepcio (NEA Outstanding New American Play Award finalist for Looking for the Pony), Matthew Paul Olmos (Princess Grace Award finalist), Crystal Skillman (2010 New York Innovative Theatre Award for The Vigil or The Guided Cradle), and Ken Urban (Summer Play Festival at The Public). Visit www.terranovacollective.org for more information on terraNOVA, Groundbreakers, and the 2012 playwrights.

Groundbreakers is terraNOVA Collective's annual developmental playwrighting lab, in which 6 playwrights receive the unique opportunity to work on a specific project with the goal of creating a completed draft. Each playwright brings in their play 3 times over 18 weeks for a round-table reading with professional actors, receiving feedback from the Groundbreakers playwrights group and special guests, along with the artistic staff of terraNOVA Collective. terraNOVA assembles a diverse group devoted to creating theatrical, original, innovative, socially relevant new work for the stage and welcomes submissions of new plays and solo shows in various stages of development that will benefit from collective feedback and further terraNOVA Collective's artistic mission. Through Groundbreakers, terraNOVA has developed over 80 plays and solo shows. Groundbreakers is made possible through public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Dramatists Guild Fund.

KRISTA KNIGHT's plays have been produced by The Ontological Hysteric Theater, Walden Theatre, Hangar Theatre, Brown University, LiveGirls!, Harvest Theatre, Goshen College, The Attic Theatre, The New Perspective Festival, The Pan Theatre, and The Bus Barn Stage Company among others. Commissions include The Assembly, Livegirls!, The Berkeley Rep Theatre School, and Class Act. Krista has been in Residence at Tofte Lake, New York Mills, WordBRIDGE Playwrights Lab, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Interplay in Australia, UCROSS, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Yaddo, and MacDowell. SALAMANDER LEVIATHAN won the 2011 KCACTF Musical Theater Award from the Kennedy Center. It will be part of ANT FEST at Ars Nova on Halloween and will be developed by the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis in June 2012. 2007 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. 2011-2012 Shank Playwriting Fellow at the Vineyard Theatre. BA: Brown University. MA: Performance Studies from NYU. MFA Playwriting: UC San Diego. www.KristaKnight.com

JENNIFER LANE is a New York City-based playwright and fiction writer from Troy, Michigan. Most recently, her play Harlowe was performed at 3LD Art & Technology Center, and was developed under the mentorship of Sarah Ruhl. Other plays include: Psychomachia(which premiered at Theatre 54, directed by Robin Paterson); The Would-Be Room (which enjoyed two runs last year, one in New York City and one in Chicago); and Does Anyone Know Sarah Paisner? (which premiered at the Gene Frankel Theatre). Several of her short plays were workshopped with Anne Bogart and performed at Ensemble Studio Theatre. When she's not writing, she's probably playing video games, futzing with graphic/web design, or running in Astoria park. MFA: Columbia University; BA: Sarah Lawrence. For more information, please visit http://jennifer-lane.net.

Andrea Lepcio's Looking for the Pony was a finalist for the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award and the NEA Outstanding New American Play Award. It was presented in a "Rolling World Premiere" Off-Broadway at Vital Theatre Company in New York City and Synchronicity Performance Group in Atlanta with subsequent productions at Venus Theatre and Detroit Repertory Theatre. Tunnel Visionwas read by Sarah Paulson and Quincy Tyler Bernstine at the LGBT center and workshopped at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. Room 16(book by Andrea Lepcio, music by Stephen Sislen, lyrics by Stephen Sislen and Ben H. Winters) was presented at the Festival of New Artists at Goodspeed Opera House in January 2010 and Broadway Close Up: Bound for Broadway XI hosted by Liz Callaway. Andrea is the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program Director. M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, Carnegie Mellon University. B.A. Human Ecology, College of the Atlantic.

MATTHEW PAUL OLMOS - Sundance Institute Time Warner Storytelling Fellow, two-time Resident Artist at Mabou Mines/Suite, EST lifetime member, BAX Resident Artist, and "Top prize for the Americas" awardee by the BBC 2011 Int'l Playwriting Competition. Semi-finalist: Princess Grace, P73 Fellowship, O'Neill Conference; alt Van Lier (New Dramatists); Playwrights of New York (PONY) nominee. NEA New Play Development reader, NY IT Awards judge, Lark Playwrights' Week Selection Committee/staff. Contributing writer: The Brooklyn Rail, New York Theatre Review; soon-to-be-published essayist: New York Theatre Review's annual book on downtown theater. His i put the fear of mexico in'em has been developed/presented by Sundance, Intar, Working Theatre, LaMicro, Kennedy Center with Inkwell. It was on the syllabus at a Rutger's University undergraduate course taught by Caridad Svich. It world-premieres in April 2012 at Gala Theatre (DC). Also in April, his absurdist comedy Monkey will be presented at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Currently writing a piece based on the behavior of cancer cells and a trilogy about the U.S./México drug wars. www.matthewpaulolmos.com.

CRYSTAL SKILLMAN plays include: Cut, produced by The Management in Spring 2011 which earned a critic's pick from the New York Times; The Vigil or The Guided Cradle, produced by Impetuous Theater Group with The Brick (awarded the 2010 New NY IT Award for Outstanding Script); Nobody & Birthday, originally produced by Rising Phoenix Rep, published by Sam French, which just made their debut in Chicago at The Side Project (Birthday premiered last year in the U.K and in Camden this August). Crystal's adaptation of the best selling indie graphic novel Action Philosophers! returns to The Brick Theater for a limited engagement Oct. 6-16th , Sex and Death in London will be a part of the Cino Night Series with Rising Phoenix Rep on Oct. 23 and Wild will open in Chicago next summer with Kid Brooklyn Productions. 4 Edges will also be read as part of Boomerang's First Flight Series in November, and the Obie Award winning Vampire Cowboys is workshopping Geek, her new play commission, in December. Crystal is represented by Joseph Rosswog at The Gersh Agency.

KEN URBAN's plays have been produced and developed at Summer Play Festival @ The Public, Donmar Warehouse (London), Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Flea, The Chocolate Factory (NYC), Williamstown Theatre Festival, Playwrights Horizons, Irish Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, The Lark, The Huntington, Moving Arts, Theatre of NOTE, and Soho Rep. Awards and Residencies: Weissberger Playwriting Award, Huntington Playwriting Fellowship, Djerassi Artist Residency, Dramatist Guild Fellowship, Writers' Room of Boston Emerging Writers Fellowship, MacDowell Colony Fellowships, SPF/Donmar Warehouse Residency, Lark Romania Exchange. His plays are featured in the anthologies Plays and Playwrights 2002 and New York Theatre Review as well as numerous monologue collections. His feature film adaptation of The Happy Sad is in post-production, directed by Rodney Evans (Brother to Brother). Ken recently wrote an extensive commentary in the new edition of Sarah Kane's Blasted and an entry on Kane in The Methuen Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights. www.kenurban.org

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