Showcase by PDC Playwrights in Residence at Plays & Players Set for 8/20

The PDC Playwright Residency Showcase at Plays & Players will take place on August 20th from 6-9 PM at Plays & Players (1714 Delancey Place, Philadelphia PA). The event will feature Joy Cutler, Quinn Eli, and Greg Romero. Residency program developed and produced by Daniel Student, Plays & Players Producing Artistic Director and Wally Zialcita, PDC Executive Director.

For more information: www.playsandplayers.org or www.pdc1.org

About PDC Playwright Residency
The PDC Playwright Residency at Plays & Players aims to provide artistic development for Philadelphia's next generation of professional playwrights. This pilot season of the Residency supported three local writers--Joy Cutler, Quinn Eli, and Greg Romero--who represented the highest potential for further growth and exploration. The results of their work will be on display in the PDC Playwright Residency Showcase, including scenes from new plays developed in the residency, personal sharing of the impact of the residency on each playwright's artistry, and a participatory theatrical exercise that asks the audience to all become playwrights for the day. All attendees are requested to bring with them a small personal object, able to fit inside a pocket of their clothes (or inside a closed palm). Ideally, it is an object that expresses themselves in some way.

The founders and producers of the PDC Residency at Plays & Players are Daniel Student, Plays & Players Executive Committee member and local freelance director and Wally Zialcita, PDC Executive Director and local playwright. Along with Rebecca Wright, local freelance director and former InterAct Theatre Company Literary Director and Dramaturg, they served on a panel that reviewed 27 writing samples and statements of purpose. Interviews were conducted with many of the leading candidates. Applications were open to PDC members only.

PDC and Plays & Players have previously collaborated on the Philadelphia Bake-Off and New Play Festival (now PIFA New Play Festival), the First Friday New Play Reading Series, and post-show discussions of premiere productions by local playwrights.

About the Resident Playwrights

Joy Cutler lives in the Fairmount area of Philadelphia. She has worked as a playwright and performer with the San Francisco performance ensemble, Elbows Akimbo and with Berlin theater companies, The Berlin Playactors and Out To Lunch Theater Group. She has written and performed solo work in Berlin, Amsterdam and NYC and co-created with Priscilla Be the Berlin performance duo, The Flying Buttresses. Her radio plays; Shag, If You See Legs, Don't Bowl and Reaching Beatrice were broadcast on the New York City radio station, WBAI between 1998-2000. Joy moved to Philadelphia in 2007, where her short plays, The Frogg Prince, The Craving, and The Stormy Hanky were performed in the 2009, 2010, and 2011 Philadelphia Bake-Off and New Play Festival (now PIFA New Play Festival). The Frogg Prince went on to be produced at the International School in Jakarta, Indonesia, and will be rising again in the 2011 Philadelphia Fringe Festival in The Undead. Joy's script, Nightshift(ing) was performed at West Chester University in a one-act play festival in February, 2011. Joy has a BFA from The California College of Art and an MA in Experimental and Interdisciplinary Art from San Francisco State University.

Quinn D. Eli is a member of Philadelphia Dramatists Center (PDC) and InterAct's Playwrights Forum. His one act play, "Hazardous," will be co-produced this fall by Tiny Dynamite Productions and Philadelphia Theatre Workshop. His short play, "Small Portions," appears in 2010's Best American Ten-Minute Plays, published by Smith & Krause. Other works include "Senile Agitation," produced by Horse Trade Theatre; "The Sex Tape Play," developed by Philadelphia Theatre Workshop; "My Name is Bess," produced by Trustus Theatre; and "Hot Black/Asian Action," a satire about sexual and racial stereotypes that premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival. The two-time recipient of Fellowships in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Eli lives in Haverford, PA.

Greg Romero lives in West Philadelphia and is a playwright/theater artist, originally from Louisiana, whose plays include The Most Beautiful Lullaby You've Ever Heard, The Milky Way Cabaret, The Shelter, The Mishumaa, Dandelion Momma, American Potlatch Road-trip, Radio Ghosts, and Tugboat Headache, and have been produced in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Louisville, Phoenix, New Orleans, and many other places. Romero's site-specific projects and participatory live-events include Material v. Memory (a walking tour through a dozen perishable events staged throughout West Philadelphia), The Dream Listener (in which individuals met in the library of Plays & Players Theater to tell him their dreams), and Marco Polo (staged in the bathrooms of Actors Theatre of Louisville during The Humana Festival for New American Plays). Romero enjoys an ongoing collaboration with electronic music composer Mike Vernusky on "electro-theater" performance works that have been produced live in New York, Philadelphia, Austin, and Phoenix, while also receiving airplay in Toronto, Canada as part of New Adventures In Sound Art's Deep Wireless Festival and in Zürich, Switzerland as part of Digital Art Weeks, produced by Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich. Romero has been a finalist for the Heideman Award, a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award, nominated for the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Theater Artist, and was selected as the first-ever Resident Writer of the ArtsEdge Residency, created by The Kelly Writers House and The University of Pennsylvania. His works are published by Heinemann Press and Playscripts, Inc. Romero received a BA in Liberal Arts from the Louisiana Scholars College and an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Texas-Austin where he held the James A. Michener Fellowship. Romero currently teaches at Drexel University and is a Phanstormer for the Philadelphia Phillies.

About PDC
PDC is a growing membership community of playwrights, collaborating artists and audience members dedicated to creating and nurturing new work. PDC develops resources, stimulates creative partnerships and participates in the ongoing national dialogue about how and why theater is created. Membership in PDC grants access to a variety of development programs for both works and artists; members also enjoy the opportunity to post a personal profile and writing samples on the PDC website, and they are offered access to professional networking opportunities with both fellow members and their peers in the extended Philadelphia theatre community through events, through PDC mailing lists, and through other Web-based resources. To sign up for membership or for more information, visit www.pdc1.org.

About Plays & Players
Plays & Players is at once 100 years old and 3 years old, having recently changed from a community theatre to a professional theatre. P&P engages and involves the local community by producing new and classic theatrical productions with local artists; crafting collaborative opportunities with other performing arts companies; offering adult and family focused educational programs; and preserving, restoring and enhancing our historic Plays and Players Theatre. Plays & Players: community taking center stage for 100 years and counting. Please visit us at www.playsandplayers.org.

 

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