Ensemble Playwrights Update
Claudia Allen is currently
adapting her play HANNAH FREE into a screenplay, adapting a novel by Willa
Cather for the stage, and sending around a new darkly absurdist comedy,
O’BEAST. Another new play, HARD FROST, is also in the works, as is a musical
version of Claudia’s MOVIE QUEENS. Her Jeff-nominated adaptation of Stuart
Dybek’s I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN is being published by Dramatists Play Service.
Claudia teaches playwriting at the Victory
Gardens Training
Center and expects to be a guest
artist at Northwood University in Michigan
this year.
Lonnie Carter’s THE ROMANCE
OF MAGNO RUBIO, part of the Victory Gardens 2004-05 season, has just finished
an extended run in Honolulu
at the Kumu Kahua Theatre. Last year's
production of MAGNO, seen at the Cultural
Center in NYC and also at the LA
Theater Center (where it opened the Latino Theater Festival), is traveling to Sibiu Romania
to be part of its international Theater Festival this June. ORGANIZING ABRAHAM LINCOLN, optioned by the
Guthrie Theater and the Playwrights' Center in 2005, was just performed at Temple University
as part of a union fund-raising drive for striking Embassy Suites workers in Philadelphia.
Steve Carter, recipient of
the Living Legend Award form the National Black Theater Festival, continues
consulting and teaching eight young playwrights. His NEVIS MOUNTAIN DEW is currently being
produced at Town Street Theater in Los
Angeles; two concert readings of SPIELE ’36 OR THE
FOURTH MEDAL will be produced this June by Michelle Swanson and Larry George at
the National Time Trials for the Olympic Track and Field Team. EDEN
continues to be produced all over the world.
Gloria Bond Clunie’s LIVING
GREEN will receive its world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater in the 2008-09
season. The play was also honored with an award and reading in May at the 2008
New Professional Theatre Writers Festival in New York. Her play QUARK was one of
two finalists in the 2007 STAGE International Script Competition for best new
science and technology play sponsored by the Professional Artists Lab and the
California NanoSystems Institute. SHOES will be featured this summer in Atlanta at the American
Alliance for Theater & Education Conference.
Dean Corrin was recently
awarded a Faculty Fellowship by the DePaul
University Humanities
Center to support work on
a new play. His play, BATTLE OF THE BANDS, is included in Victory Gardens
Theater Presents: Seven New Plays from the Playwrights Ensemble. He is
the president of the board of directors of the Sansculottes Theater Company.
Nilo Cruz is working on an
opera about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. He is also writing a new play
for South Coast Repertory. His anthology Two Sisters and Other Plays was
recently published by TCG.
Joel Drake Johnson's most
recent play FOUR PLACES just completed an extended run at Victory Gardens. This summer, THE FALL TO EARTH will be produced
at The Penguin Repertory, staring Tony Award winner Michelle Pawk. Joel is currently working on THE FIRST GRADE,
his third Steppenwolf Commission, and A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED for Victory Gardens.
John Logan has just completed
the first draft of a new play. He recently produced and wrote the screenplay
for SWEENEY TODD and is currently working on a movie about the modern media for
Will Smith and director Michael Mann.
Douglas
Post’s musical
adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS was recently produced
in Shanghai, China. His plays EARTH AND SKY, MURDER IN GREEN
MEADOWS, and DROWNING SORROWS will be produced this summer in California,
Michigan, and Georgia, respectively. He is currently teaching at Northwestern University
and remains the Chicago Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild of
America.
Nick Patricca’s play, THE
DEFIANT MUSE, which enjoyed its world premiere at Victory
Gardens’ Biograph Theater in October of 2007, has been
accepted for publication by the Dramatic Publishing Company (Woodstock,
IL; London, England; Melbourne,
Australia).
Nick is also happy to announce that the award winning Mexican author Moisés
Zamora (Second Prize 'VI Opera Prima,' Madrid;
First Prize, 'Border of Words Bi-national Prize,' Mexico-USA) is translating THE
DEFIANT MUSE into Spanish for production in Mexico.
James Sherman’s new play,
RELATIVELY CLOSE, opens as the twelfth play that Sherman
has premiered at Victory
Gardens under the
direction of Dennis Zacek.
Recent productions of other plays by James Sherman include BEAU JEST in London and Toronto,
AFFLUENZA! in New York and Philadelphia, JEST A SECOND! in Long Beach
and Tampa, ROMANCE IN D in East Islip and Kenosha, FROM DOOR TO DOOR in
Los Angeles, and THE GOD OF ISAAC in Louisville. His play, HALF
AND HALF, is being published by Samuel French, Inc. marking the tenth play that
Sherman has had published in a professional acting edition.
Charles Smith is currently working on the book for the commissioned musical
adaptation of the David Goodis novel, Shoot the Piano Player. He is also
finishing a play commissioned by Northwestern Press, BEYOND THE SPECTRUM OF THE
SUN, about the chemist, Percy Julian. This summer he will begin developing a
new work for Indiana Repertory Theatre supported by an award from the Joyce
Foundation about the 1930 lynching in Marion Indiana. And he was recently
awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2008. More
information about his work can be found at http://www.csplays.com/.
Jeffrey Sweet's The Value of
Names and Other Plays, an anthology of nine plays (eight of which were produced
by Victory Gardens), has just been published by
Northwestern University Press and is available at a discount from
Amazon.com. COURT-MARTIAL AT FORT DEVENS is in pre-production for New York and Philadelphia,
and WITH AND WITHOUT, THE VALUE OF NAMES, and BLUFF are scheduled for
production in various cities. Jeff looks forward to the premiere of CLASS
DISMISSED at Victory
Gardens in March 2009.
He is a member of the council of the Dramatists Guild. www.jeffreysweet.com
Kristine Thatcher has temporarily
set aside the pen in order to produce other people’s new plays. She is the
artistic director of the BoarsHead Theater. Last season she produced and
directed Paul Slade Smith’s UNNECESSARY FARCE, and next season she will produce
his play HYMN AND CAROL. She is also working with playwright Joe
Zettelmaier who has written ALL CHILDISH THINGS.
