Playwrights Foundation and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford University Presents 11th Annual Rough Readings Series

Playwrights Foundation (PF) and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford's 2016/17 Rough Reading Series present early draft readings on January 23 & 24 of THIRD EYE MOONWALK by Jon Bernson, a PF Resident Playwright. The readings of THIRD EYE MOONWALK are on Monday, January 23 2017 - 7:30 pm at Stanford and Tuesday January 24 2017 - 2:00 pm at Custom Made Theatre in San Francisco.

THIRD EYE MOONWALK by Jon Bernson is a guided meditation which takes place in a downtown office building. The audience is addressed as a disciple of the Way of the Moonwalk and is instructed to retrace their path through stories of the skyscraper, which includes spiritual encounters with receptionists, elevators, stairwells, a parking garage and more. The reading will be directed by Jon Tracy.

Jon Bernson is a San Francisco musician, multimedia artist, and interdisciplinary playwright who has released more than twenty albums under the following names: Ray's Vast Basement, Window Twins, THEMAYS, and Exray's (whose music was featured in David Fincher's Academy-Award winning film, The Social Network). He has toured nationally and scored more than a dozen plays and films, including his recent soundtracks for Rajiv Joseph's Gruesome Playground Injuries and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. In 2013 he wrote the play, A Guide to the Aftermath, for StoryWorks, a collaboration between the Center for Investigative Reporting and Tides Theatre that explores the intersection of theater and journalism. Beautification Machine, his sound sculpture collaboration with Andy Diaz Hope, was shown at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, and was presented by Miami Projects 2014 and then acquired by the Nevada Museum of Art. His most recent sound installation at the Sonos Studio in Los Angeles was the result of an unlikely collaboration between the Oakland band Tune-Yards, Berlin-based video artist Jem the Misfit, and P-a-t-t-e-r-n-s, an architecture firm. He is a columnist at Decoder Magazine, co-founder of the Howells Transmitter record label, and resident Sound Designer at Tides Theatre. Bernson also founded the Urban Music Program at the Sunset Beacon Center, where he has taught electronic music and recording to youth for fifteen years. he is currently a Resident Playwright for Playwrights Foundation.

Jon Tracy is a director and playwright throughout the Bay Area. As a playwright, his work includes Pride for Berkeley Playhouse, Chatterbox for Missouri St. Theatre, See How We Are for Impact Theatre, A Christmas Carol for Sonoma County Rep, The Good News, Some Devil Whisper for Darkroom Productions and The Farm, The Salt Plays Pt. 1: In the Wound and The Salt Plays Pt. 2: Of the Earth for Shotgun Players. He is also the cofounder of SF Playhouse's The Sandbox, a Company Member of Playground and Shotgun Players and a grant recipient from Theatre Bay Area and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Readings take place Mondays at Roble Hall, Stanford University, 374 Santa Teresa St, Stanford at 7:30pm, and Tuesdays at Custom Made Theatre, 533 Sutter Street, San Francisco in the afternoon, at 2pM. Rough Readings are open to the public and always PAY WHAT YOU CAN. RSVP to playwrightsroughreadings.eventbrite.com.

For a complete ongoing schedule go to bayareaplaywrightsfestival.org.

"The 2016-2017 Rough Readings Series is an important creative space for writers to dig deep into structure and form, and experiment with new insights outside of the pressures that come from a production, and for audiences, a close-up intimate experience with a new work." remarks Playwrights Foundation Artistic Director Amy Mueller. The series continues monthly December 2016 through May 2017 with seven exceptional new works that are pushing into new theatrical territory, challenging assumptions, and presenting deeply felt dilemmas within our culture and world society. The playwrights include PF Resident Playwrights Jon Bernson & Lisa Ramirez, as well as playwrights Trina Davies, Novid Parsi, and Carlos Murillo. The final two plays of the series will be announced in January.

The Rough Readings Series is produced in partnership with the National Center for New Plays at Stanford, a producing partner of the National New Play Network. Rough Reading Series offers groundbreaking, rising national and local playwrights the rare opportunity to incubate early drafts, which are then performed script-in-hand by some of the Bay Area's top tier professional actors, to accelerate their development, and shine a light on their value, as well as helping to foster a thriving relationship between Stanford University and the greater Bay Area theater community. The series provides theatergoers and professionals alike an intimate opportunity to experience and participate in the early development of a new work, and engage with the playwright. And, importantly, it has positioned uncommon new works to enter the American canon: over the past 10 seasons Playwrights Foundation has launched at least 50 plays from inception to to world premiere productions - recently Lauren Yee's King of the Yees, which is set to premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, and the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles this season, and Dominique Morisseau's Sunset Baby which premiered off-Broadway, and in Chicago in 2016.

2016/17 Winter Rough Readings Series Continues January- May :

OUR MOTHER'S MEAL by Novid Parsi - in partnership with Golden Thread Productions

Monday, February 27 2017 at 7:30PM - Stanford

Tuesday, February 28 2017 at 2:00PM - Custom Made

What's an Iranian mom in East Texas to do? Throughout one long day, while she indefatigably cooks and cooks, her three children traipse back to the family home with their very American attitudes, expectations and conflicts-all foreign to her cultural sensibilities. As the day progresses, she must reckon with an escalating crisis that threatens the foundation of their lives. Straight out of a classical American dramatic genre, Our Mother's Meal retells the American story through a Middle Eastern lens, and in so doing redefines what America truly is.

KILLING OF A GENTLEMAN DEFENDER by Carlos Murillo

Monday, March 13 2017 at 7:30PM - Stanford

Tuesday, March 14 2017 at 2:30PM - Custom Made

IN 1994, the world was shocked when International soccer star Andres Escobar was gunned down in Medellin, Colombia following his disastrous own goal at the FIFA World Cup USA. In 2015, Martin, an ambivalent teaching artist in Chicago is hired to create a play about violence in Chicago with youth from the violence plagued neighborhoods of the city. Caught between his boss' desire for a docudrama and his own belief in metaphor, Martin unearths the Escobar story from the past to tell a city's story in the present. Tragedy ensues.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

NOVID PARSI is an Iranian-American writer whose plays have received productions and staged readings in the United States and the United Kingdom by companies including Golden Thread, The New Group, Paines Plough and the Young Vic, among others. He has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and a semifinalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. Novib was born in New York City, grew up in East Texas, and studied literature at Swarthmore College and Duke University. He lives with his husband in Chicago.

CARLOS MURILLO is a Chicago-based, internationally produced and award winning playwright of Colombian and Puerto Rican descent. He is a recipient of a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award for his work in the theatre. He also received a 2016 Mellon Foundation Playwright Residency at Adventure Stage in Chicago. His body of work has been widely produced throughout the United States and Europe. His best known play Dark Play or Stories for Boys premiered at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and has been performed throughout the US, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Lithuania. Other work has been seen in New York at Repertorio Español, P73, the NYC Summer Playwrights Festival, En Garde Arts, The Public Theater New Work Now! Festival, and Soho Rep, in Chicago at The Goodman, Steppenwolf, Collaboraction, Walkabout Theatre, Adventure Stage and Theatre Seven, and in Los Angeles at Theatre @ Boston Court, Circle X and Son of Semele. His plays have been commissioned by The Goodman, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, Steppenwolf and Adventure Stage and developed by The Sundance Theatre Lab, The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, New Dramatists and others. From 1993 to 1995, Carlos served as the Associate Literary Manager at The Public Theater in New York. Carlos heads the BFA Playwriting Program at The Theatre School of DePaul University, and is a proud alumnus of New Dramatists.

ABOUT PLAYWRIGHTS FOUNDATION

Founded in 1976, Playwrights Foundation is today widely recognized as one of the top playwright development centers in the U.S., and the largest and most comprehensive on the West Coast. We are dedicated to the creative development and career acceleration of contemporary playwrights. We serve emerging and mid-career playwrights, with a special focus on those based in San Francisco Bay Area.

We seek to identify exceptional writers and give them space, time and professional artistic collaborators to explore new theatrical ideas, allowing them to experiment and take risks with structure, form and/or content in an environment that is free from the pressures of the marketplace. Playwrights we have worked with have won every award in the theater including the Pulitzer, the Obie, the National Critics Circle Award, and many more. Over 80% see their work fully produced on regional, national and international stages, including Broadway and London.

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