NNPN Announces Rolling World Premieres by Karen Hartman and Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm
By: Rebecca Russo May. 18, 2017
National New Play Network, the country's alliance of nonprofit theaters that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays, announces its 70th and 71st Rolling World Premieres: Br'er Cotton by Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm and Project Dawn by Karen Hartman. The two plays will receive a total of 6 NNPN RWP productions, with each play seeing at least three distinct productions in a discrete 12-month period.
ABOUT BR'ER COTTON
Lynchburg, Virginia. The former site of a thriving cotton mill is now an impoverished neighborhood. Deeply affected by all the recent killings of young black men like himself, Ruffrino, a 14 year old "militant," incites riots at school and online. More and more at odds with his mother and grandfather, the boys' anger grows beyond containment while the family home literally sinks into the cotton field, and no one seems to notice but him.
Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm is a current member of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard and a recent MFA Playwriting graduate from the Catholic University of America. His play Hooded: Or Being Black for Dummies received its World Premiere at Mosaic Theatre in Washington, D.C. this year and will be followed by the NNPN Rolling World Premiere of his play Br'er Cotton at Kitchen Dog Theatre in Dallas, TX. His work has been developed with the Signature Theatre, Theatre J, Theatre Alliance, Endstation Theatre, The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. He was named a "Person to Watch" by American Theatre Magazine and a "Rising Star" by Variety. He was a finalist for the inaugural Relentless Award and London's 503 Theatre Award. He was named winner of bot the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award at KCACTF 2016. theatrethirsty.com
ABOUT PROJECT DAWN
Philadelphia is home to a revolutionary court designed by a passionate and shockingly funny group of women. Every day these lawyers, judges, parole officers, and staff work to transform the lives of women repeatedly convicted for prostitution. In this daring and vital new play in which seven actresses portray multiple participants and members of the court, Karen Hartman probes the thin lines between freedom and slavery, activism and obsession for women on both sides of the law. Inspired by Hartman's extensive first-hand research inside Project Dawn Court, this play is the first world premiere from the nationally renowned New Play Frontiers Residency & Commission program at People's Light.
Karen Hartman has four productions of three world premiere plays in the 2016/17 season: ROZ AND RAY at Seattle Repertory Theater and Victory Gardens, THE BOOK OF JOSEPH at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and PROJECT DAWN at People's Light. In 2014-15, Ms. Hartman held the Playwright Center's McKnight Residency and Commission for a nationally recognized playwright. Hartman's personal and political essays have been published in the New York Times and the Washington Post. A New Dramatists alumna, Ms. Hartman grew up in San Diego and graduated from Yale University and the Yale School of Drama. She lived in Brooklyn until 2014, when she became Senior Artist in Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle. For information about her other plays: karenhartman.org
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