Ohio University MFA Playwriting Program
Playwriting professor Erik Ramsey’s play Smith Unearthed will be featured as a staged reading produced by Brick Monkey Theater Ensemble at Stuart’s Opera House, 8 p.m. Friday, December 5th. Admission is free. For more information, visit: http://www.stuartsoperahouse.org/index.php?item=314 or http://www.athensohio.com/events/index.php?page=14&item=2916.
Dana Formby’s play “Inherit the Whole” received a staged reading at the Tony Award-Winning Victory Gardens Theater today. The play was featured as a lab production last May as part of the Seabury Quinn MFA Playwright’s Festival here at OU.
We sadly note the passing of Seabury Quinn, Jr., the original playwriting professor who taught in the OU MFA playwriting program for decades until his retirement in the early 1990’s. Seabury died on Saturday. He will be fondly remembered for his acerbic wit in responding to new plays, especially in recent years — no matter how ill he had become, he always found a way to visit the new play festival named in his honor and generously give his opinion on the work at hand. Many will fondly remember his laugh, which was often just a single, expolsive “Hah!”
Playwriting professor Erik Ramsey’s play Smith Unearthed will be featured as part of the Frostic Reading Series at Western Michigan University, 8 p.m. Thursday, November 13th. For more information and a feature article on the play, visit:http://www.mlive.com/kalamazoo/stories/index.ssf?/base/features-4/12262080609711.xml&coll=7&thispage=1#continue.
2007 MFA graduate Laura Jacqmin’s play “Space” will be featured as part of The Side Project’s “Cut to the Quick — A Festival of Short Works” in Chicago starting November 16. For more information, visit: http://www.theatreinchicago.com/news.php?articleID=429.
Current MFA Playwriting student Cecilia Copeland’s full length play Courting has won a spot in the Stage Left Productions season. Courting will have its professional debut at the Cedar Rapids, Iowa theater where last summer’s floods all but destroyed SLP’s production space. The play was originally developed in the Writers Workshop at University of Iowa under the direction of guest artist Lisa D’Amour. Cecilia plans to be in Cedar Rapids in July for the opening of the show and possibly the early part of the summer to take part in the rehearsal process.
2007 MFA alumni Merri Biechler and Laura Jacqmin have been named as two of eighteen semi-finalists for the Page 73 playwriting fellowships. They were selected out of more than 200 submissions. From the p73 web site: “Page 73 provides artistic and financial resources to one emerging playwright as he or she develops a new play that has not received substantial prior development support. For his/her fellowship year, the P73 Playwriting Fellow receives a cash stipend in the amount of $5,000 and development support in the amount of $10,000.”http://www.p73.org/programs/p73-playwriting-fellowship/
Current MFA Playwriting student Reina Hardy’s full-length play, “Erratica,” will have its professional premiere at Capital Stage Theatre in Sacramento on July 17th, 2009. Capital Stage, which has been called the city’s “Best Professional Theatre,” selected “Erratica” for a full production when it appeared as part of the inaugural Playwrights Revolution Festival in June 2008. The production and the festival are sponsored by a grant from the James Irvine foundation. Hardy will spend the rehearsal period in Sacramento working on the play, which will run through August 16th, 2009. Capital stage website: http://capitalstagecompany.com.
Recently, 2007 MFA playwriting alum Merri Biechler taught at the New South Young Playwrights Festival in Atlanta. She participated in the 2008 WordBRIDGE Playwrights’ Lab at Clemson University this past June. Her play for Young Audiences “Dolley Madison and the Secret History Club”, which was commissioned by the White House Historical Association, received a workshop at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Her play “Occupation” was a finalist in Perishable Theatre’s 14th Annual International Women’s Playwriting Festival. Her play “Bombs, Babes and Bingo” is currently a semi-finalist in the 2009 P73 Playwriting Fellowship. Biechler’s “Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver”, which was originally written while she was an MFA student, continues to gain momentum: in addition to the more than $35,000 the play has received in grant funding over the past two years, it continues to be performed and developed as a teaching tool for medical students and professionals. On October 17 it will be performed for the American Cancer Society Board of Trustees and for the Consortium of Geriatric Academic Programs. In part due to her efforts with this play and additional professional consulting for playwrights on similar projects, Biechler has become a leading expert on theater as a pedagogical tool for medical and social welfare issues.
2007 MFA Alum Laura Jaqmin’s AND WHEN WE AWOKE THERE WAS LIGHT AND LIGHT (a commission from Victory Gardens Theater and the script that earned her the 2008 Wasserstein Prize) will be the first play featured in Northlight Theatre’s 2008-2009 Interplay Reading Series. The play will also be read at Second Stage Theatre in New York this November. SKI DUBAI was produced at Center Stage NY this summer by her company, At Play Productions. With the other three writers in the company, Laura helped write WORK (four intercut monologues about bizarre jobs, including a lobster killer and a citrus dyer) that will be produced in Ars Nova’s A.N.T. Fest this November. ALBERTA/EINSTEIN was read in Steppenwolf’s First Look Repertory in August. PLUTO WAS A PLANET was produced this summer at Around the Coyote in Chicago. SPACE will be produced in the side project’s CUT TO THE QUICK festival of one-acts later this fall, and is set to be published by Playscripts, Inc., in 2009. 10 VIRGINS will be published by Playscripts, Inc. in 2009. Two other ten-minutes, PARKERSBURG (which was produced in Sketchbook 8 at the Steppenwolf Garage this summer, and which will be produced in Estrogenius at manhattan theatre source this fall) and MENUS (which was produced by At Play Productions at the Atlantic Theater this spring) will be published in a forthcoming volume by Smith & Kraus. Jacqmin is now an adjunct faculty member at Carthage College in Kenosha, WI, where she teaches playwriting.
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