Check out 1st Year playwright Skye Robinson Hillis’ full-length play AND VASTER, now available as a recording through Play4Keeps, an off-shoot of the venerable Ashland New Plays Festival! Listen right here, and discover what Play4Keeps is all about.
Skye Robinson Hillis is a playwright, director, and dramaturg in based Chicago. As a playwright, her work has been seen at The Route 66 Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, A Red Orchid Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop, Artistic Home, Prologue Theatre Company, Polarity Ensemble Theatre, Columbia College, and the City of Chicago’s In the Works Play Lab at the Pritzker Pavillion in Millenium Park. Her play AND VASTER was awarded a residency at the New Works Lab at Stratford (2015), winner of the Ashland New Plays Festival (2015), and winner of the Holland New Voices Award at the Great Plains Theatre Conference (2017). AND VASTER was also named a semi-finalist for The Princess Grace Award. As a director and dramaturg, she has worked for Hartford Stage, Goodman Theatre, Court Theatre, A Red Orchid, Remy Bumppo, Stage Left, and more.
Check out this piece in American Theatre by OHIO alum Jerald Raymond Pierce about our own Charles Smith and his long-time friend and collaborator Chuck Smith. Apparently Chicago is big enough to feature two award-winning theater professionals named Smith, Charles, yet also small enough that it isn’t often that one is confused for the other… Just one of the many things that makes Chicago unique as a theatre town: Chuck Smith, Charles Smith, and a South Side Friendship.
Charles Smith’s plays have been produced Off-Broadway and nationally by theaters such as Indiana Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, New Federal Theatre, The Acting Company, People’s Light & Theatre Company, Penumbra, Crossroads Theatre Company, Penguin Repertory Theatre, Ujima Theatre Company, The Colony Theatre, St. Louis Black Rep, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Jubilee Theatre, Ensemble Theatre in Houston, Robey Theatre Company, and Berkeley Repertory Theater. His most recent play, Objects in the Mirror, received a developmental production at Goodman Theatre in 2016 and returned as part of the 2016-17 season. (Listen to a discussion of the play on NPR’s Weekend Edition.) His play, Black Star Line, was commissioned by and also produced by Goodman. Nine of his plays received their world premiere productions at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago. Three of his plays, The Gospel According to James, Sister Carrie, and Les Trois Dumas, were all commissioned and produced by Indiana Repertory Theatre. Les Trois Dumas was also produced by People’s Light & Theatre, and by Independent Theatre in Adelaide, South Australia. His play Pudd’nhead Wilson, commissioned and produced by The Acting Company, enjoyed a twenty-two city national tour before being produced Off-Broadway. His plays Takundaand City of Gold enjoyed tours of the west coast. His work has also been produced for the HBO New Writers Project, the International Children’s Theater Festival in Seattle, and The National Black Theatre Festival. He is author of two Emmy Award-winning teleplays, Fast Break to Gloryand Pequito. His other plays include, Freefall, The Sutherland, Jelly Belly,Young Richard, Cane, and Free Man of Color, which was also produced in Australia, New York, Los Angeles, and around the United States after receiving a Joseph Jefferson Award. He has received the John W. Schmid Award for Outstanding New Work, two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, an Illinois Arts Council Governors Award, Princess Grace Fellowship, the Cornerstone National Playwriting Award, the Joyce Award, The National Black Theatre Festival’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, the Theodore Ward National Playwriting Award, two Black Theatre Alliance Awards for New Work, the NBC New Voices Award, and numerous other AUDELCO, Jeff, NAACP, and Black Theatre Alliance award nominations. For more information about his plays, visit http://www.csplays.com.
OU Alum Sarah Bowden has been up to some exciting stuff in Chicago! Check out her play “Tin Noses” in the Chicago Theater Marathon on July 23rd at 11am! Congrats Sarah!! Woooot!
More about the play:
TIN NOSES is an exploration of representation, disability, Hollywood, and superhero action figures. When movie star Max is cast as a wounded World War I vet in an upcoming prestige pic, he must learn how to perform disability for the camera. Who better to help shape his physicality than ex-flame and hotshot choreographer Hannah? And her colleague Austin, who lost the role to Max, and who lives with spastic hemiplegia. Yup, this won’t get awkward at all.
Here is some info on the Marathon:
The Chicago Theatre Marathon is a weekend-long, marathon event celebrating the diversity of the Chicagoland theatre community. The Marathon aims to acknowledge the variety of characteristics and categories of identity that make individuals unique, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender or gender expression, socio-economic status, age, physical, mental and learning abilities, religious beliefs and political views. Additionally, this year’s rallying cry will be “I am Indomitable,” and will reflect on how artists in Chicago can fully embody that word. This curated series will provide a platform to recognize the uniqueness of individuals, populations, groups and their experiences while cultivating a sense of commonality and shared goals for our community.
The Chicago Theatre Marathon will take place at the new home of Strawdog Theatre Company, at 1802 W Berenice Ave, Chicago, IL 60613. There are two performance spaces: The black box theatre and the lobby.
More about Sarah
Sarah Bowden is a teaching artist, whose plays have been produced in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Stockholm. Her work has been developed and presented by the Painted Bride Art Center, the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, the Nylon Fusion Theatre, Monkeyman Productions, the Greenhouse Theater Center, the Chicago Madness Collective, and Ohio University. Her full-length The Magnificent Masked Hearing Aidwas listed as a semi-finalist in several theatre festivals, including the Capital Repertory Next Act! New Play Summit, the Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte’s nuVoices Festival, the Activate Midwest New Play Festival and the Elgin Cultural Commission Page to Stage Program. The script received Honorable Mention in the American Blues Theater Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Sarah has won the White-Howells English Prize for Drama and the Margaret W. Baker Prize for Fiction, was a finalist in the Route 66 Theatre Test Drive Workshop, and a semi-finalist for the Stage Left Theatre Playwright Residency. She has developed her work as a finalist in the International Thespian Festival’s Playworks program. She has completed internships with Chicago Dramatists, Northlight Theatre, Arden Theatre Company, the Wilma Theater, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and the Adirondack Theatre Festival. Sarah holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Ohio University and B.A. in directing and creative writing from Beloit College, and teaches theatre and composition at Benedictine University and Prairie State College.
Bianca Sams has a reading of her play “Battle Cry” in Chicago with 20% theater. It will be at the Berry United Methodist Church at 8pm from March 8th-11th, Wednesday-Saturday. 20% theater has also done works by alums Sarah Bowden and current playwright Rachel Bykowski.
Here is what the play’s about: “In March of 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin dreams of going to college to become a lawyer to fight for Civil Rights. One day, while taking the bus to school, the driver tells Claudette to give up her seat. When Claudette refuses, she is harassed by the police officers, and put on trial for violating the segregation laws. Her refusal to give up her seat sparked a protest against the bus company and sets in motion one of the greatest moments in the Civil Rights movement.”
Go see it if you’re in Chicago! Congrats Bianca!! Keep on rockin’ it!
click here to buy tickets and learn more about the show!
More about Bianca
Bianca Sams is an Actor/Writer hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her plays are lyrical investigations of found stories out of today’s headlines or the pages of history, that ask audiences to face their own complex love affair with misery. She recently finished her MFA in Playwriting at Ohio University. She received her BFA from New York University’s Tisch School, where she earned the distinction of being Tisch’s first ever Triple Major (Acting, Dramatic Writing, Africana Studies). Awards and honors include KCACTF Lorraine Hansberry (2nd place), Rosa Parks Award (2nd place), Kennedy Center/Eugene O’Neill New Play Conference fellow, Jane Chambers Student Playwright Award/Athe (2ndPlace), Scott McPherson Award, The Playwright Center Core Apprentice (2014), Playwright Foundation BAPF (finalist), Eugene O’Neill NPC (semi-finalist), TRI Research Fellowship at Ohio State University, Nashville Rep/Ingram New Play Lab Playwright- In-Residence, and T. S. Eliot Acting Fellowship. She is represented by Echo Lake Management.
Current student Rachel Bykowski has an original article on Howlround called, “Yes, All Men (Need To Listen): Making Rooms for Womanhood in American Theater” that explores why female playwrights need to be heard.
Here’s an excerpt:
“It’s really not surprising to see the gap between male and female playwrights when the majority of the gatekeepers to the American stage are men. A study by the Wellesley Centers for Women and the American Conservatory Theatre show that since 2013 women have never held more 27 percent of leadership positions for the American nonprofit theatre. The study goes on to note only fifteen women served as artistic directors or executive directors in the seventy-four LORT theatres.
With men in the driver seat of the American theatre, can we as women truly tell stories that may cast men as the bad guys? Or is the privileged fragility of the male ego silencing our voices and only allowing women to come along for the ride as long as we behave like good, little girls?”
Rachel Bykowski, a Chicago native, writes plays to raise awareness about social issues. Specifically, much of her writing features women and analyzes gender roles, rape culture, and male privilege. Rachel’s full-length play TIGHT END was selected by the National New Play Network to be workshopped at the Kennedy Center for the MFA Playwrights’ Festival. TIGHT END will be receiving its world premiere production with 20% Theatre Company Chicago in May of 2017. Rachel was one of six graduate students at Ohio University to be awarded a Named Fellowship, The Trisolini. The Trisolini will allow Rachel to work with Ohio University’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department to research violence against women perpetrated by male privilege for the 2016-2017 academic year. This research will be showcased in her thesis play VOODOO DOLL during the 2017 Seabury Quinn Playwrights’ Festival at Ohio University. Other playwriting credits include her full lengths: ORIGINAL RECIPE workshop production (DePaul University,) GOT TO KILL BITCH staged reading (Cock and Bull Theatre,) GLORY VS. THE WOLVES staged reading (20% Theatre Company and Women and Children First Bookstore,) and A GIRL NAMED CHARLIE staged reading (Ohio University). Rachel’s ten minute plays have been produced with various companies around Chicago and the Midwest including 20% Theatre Company, Fury Theatre, Commedia Beauregard, and Actors’ Theatre of Louisville Apprentice Company. Rachel received her BFA in playwriting from the Theatre School of DePaul University and is currently attending Ohio University for her MFA in Playwriting. Rachel is a proud company member and Literary Manager for 20% Theatre Chicago. For more information, check out her website www.rachelbykowski.com
Check out alum Sarah Bowden’s new play in Chicago this week!
Below is an announcement about it by Rachel Bykowski, current third year playwright and Literary Manager of 20%theater:
“I’m sure some of you have heard that my theatre company 20% Theatre Company Chicago is doing something a little different this season. For our 14th season, we are featuring 20 new plays written by 20 emerging female playwrights. We just wrapped up our Snapshots 10-minute play festival in August and are now kicking off our workshop presentation series with the new play Lively Stones by Sarah Bowden.
Sarah is a fellow Ohio MFA Playwriting alum and currently living in Chicago. When Sarah first shared with me her script for Lively Stones I was blown away by her heartbreaking subtleties in this insightful play as Sarah’s characters demonstrate how no matter if it is the 1600’s or the 2000’s, we as women are still in a battle for the right to have control over our own bodies.”
Here is more about the play: Tired of delivering babies and doling out witch hazel in her living room, midwife Anne Hutchinson pines for Planned Parenthood: circa 1636. When Massachusetts founder John Winthrop announces his plans to run for governor, Anne agrees to support his election — if he’ll grant her the land to build a women’s clinic in Boston. Amid mounting campaign promises, she becomes one pebble in a full bucket, and Anne must figure out how to lay her clinic’s cornerstone while stemming the suspicions of the colony’s most important citizen. Lively Stones was a participant in the 2016 DarkRoom.
Congratss Sarah! Come see the Workshop Presentation of Lively Stones starting September 14th!
Details
September 14th – 17th, 2016
Berry United Methodist Church (4754 N. Leavitt), Chicago, IL
Wednesday – Saturday at 8:00.
More about Sarah
Sarah Bowden is a teaching artist, whose plays have been produced in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Stockholm. Her work has been developed and presented by the Painted Bride Art Center, the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, the Nylon Fusion Theatre, Monkeyman Productions, the Greenhouse Theater Center, the Chicago Madness Collective, and Ohio University. Her full-length The Magnificent Masked Hearing Aidwas listed as a semi-finalist in several theatre festivals, including the Capital Repertory Next Act! New Play Summit, the Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte’s nuVoices Festival, the Activate Midwest New Play Festival and the Elgin Cultural Commission Page to Stage Program. The script received Honorable Mention in the American Blues Theater Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Sarah has won the White-Howells English Prize for Drama and the Margaret W. Baker Prize for Fiction, was a finalist in the Route 66 Theatre Test Drive Workshop, and a semi-finalist for the Stage Left Theatre Playwright Residency. She has developed her work as a finalist in the International Thespian Festival’s Playworks program. She has completed internships with Chicago Dramatists, Northlight Theatre, Arden Theatre Company, the Wilma Theater, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and the Adirondack Theatre Festival. Sarah holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Ohio University and B.A. in directing and creative writing from Beloit College, and teaches theatre and composition at Benedictine University and Prairie State College.
Alumni Laura Jacqmin has a new play in Victory Garden’sNew works Festival which runs this weekend, August 5th-7th in Chicago!! The website describes the Ignition festival: the Ignition Festival of New Plays is a national annual festival devoted to fostering a community of support for the development of outstanding new plays and nurturing relationships with emerging and established playwrights. All readings are free and open to the public.”
Laura’s new play is called “EOM(end of message)” and here is the blurb “When the milestone date on their new video game is suddenly moved up – the week before Thanksgiving – a ragtag team of game developers must camp out at the office for seven days straight, crunching to meet an impossible deadline.” Looks funn!!
Go check it out if your in Chicago!! Congrats Laura!
Go see the reading!
Saturday August 6th, Začek-McVay Theater | 7:30pm
The Cast:
Owais Ahmed
Jordan Brodess
Coby Goss
Casey Morris
Kelly O’Sullivan
Alec Silver
Theater Location
2433 North Lincoln Avenue | Chicago, IL 60614
Administration: 773.549.5788 | Tickets: 773.871.3000
More about Laura
Laura Jacqmin is a Chicago-based playwright, TV writer and video game writer, originally from Cleveland.
Plays: Residence (40th Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville); January Joiner (Long Wharf Theatre); Ski Dubai (Steppenwolf Theatre); A Third (Finborough Theatre London); Look, we are breathing (Rivendell Theatre Ensemble; Sundance Theatre Lab); Dental Society Midwinter Meeting (Williamstown Theatre Festival; Chicago Dramatists/At Play, 16th Street Theater); Ghost Bike (Buzz22 Chicago). Awards: Wasserstein Prize, two NEA Art Works Grants, ATHE-Kennedy Center David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award, two MacDowell Fellowships, Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.
Television: “Grace and Frankie” (Netflix); “Lucky 7” (ABC). Video Games: “Minecraft: Story Mode” (Telltale Games). She received her BA from Yale University, and earned an MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University. Founding member, The Kilroys.
OU Alumni Dana Lynn Formby is once again honored on the Kilroy list! Her play “The Labeler” was one of honorable mentions. This list was a tool created by the all female LA activist group of writers who were looking for ways to promote gender parity in the theater. They said so many gatekeepers were saying there were no good plays by female artists, so they got gate keepers to vote on the most exciting unproduced plays by women. Dana also had a play on the list last year.
Here is a little synopsis of “The Labeler”: Two sisters, one “successful” one “…not so much”, must agree on the best way to lay their mother to rest. One sweet boon is she left them a piece of her in the form of a podcast, downloadable on iTunes. This is a hilarious, heartbreaking, suspenseful play that examines what it means—and what it takes to finally say goodbye.”
The play had development at Chicago Dramatists and was a semi-finalist for the Blue-Ink Prize at American Blues Theater.
Congrats Dana! Hope this place finds a good, friendly home!
About Dana
Dana Lynn Formby is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists. Her play JOHNNY 10 BEERS’ DAUGHTER was listed on the Kilroys’ Honorable mention list for 2015. Her play AMERICAN BEAUTY SHOP was read at Steppenwolf’s First Look 2014. It was also nominated for Kilroy’s 2014’s “The List.” Her plays have been produced, workshopped, and read by Pegasus, Chicago Dramatists, Mortar Theatre Company, Steep, PICT, Victory Gardens, WordBRIDGE, Florida Studio Theatre, The Alliance Theatre of Atlanta, The Kennedy Center, and New York Theatre Workshop. Her short play A DECK OF MONSTERS was featured in Goodman’s New Play Bake-Off. Her play UNTIL DEATH was produced in 2015 at Concordia University Chicago in association with Chicago Dramatists. She is represented by The Robert A. Freedman Dramatic Agency in New York. She was a Finalist for the 2015 Princess Grace Award in playwriting.
Tanya Palmer, Merri Biechler Kara Corthron will be the three mentors that will be giving feedback to the MFA playwrights at the Seabury Quinn Playfest this year! Tanya Palmer is the director of new play development at the Goodman . Laura Jacqmin is an OU alumni and award winning playwright whose work has been featured at the Humana Fest and Williamstown Theater festival! Kara Corthron is a NYC based playwright who is a current resident at New Dramatists and whose work has been featured at New Georges and the Women’s Project Theater. We are so excited about our mentors this year! Check out the Seabury Quinn playfest this April!
More about the mentors!!
Tanya Palmer is the director of new play development at Goodman Theatre, where she coordinates New Stages, the theater’s new play program, and has served as the production dramaturg on a number of plays including the world premieres of Smokefall by Noah Haidle, Robert Falls and Seth Bockley’s adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, Another Word for Beauty by José Rivera with music by Hector Buitrago, The Happiest Song Plays Last by Quiara Hudes, The Long Red Road by Brett C. Leonard and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ruined by Lynn Nottage. Prior to her arrival in Chicago, she served as the director of new play development at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where she led the reading and selection process for the Humana Festival of New American Plays. She is the co-editor, with Amy Wegener and Adrien-Alice Hansel, of four collections of Humana Festival plays, published by Smith & Kraus, as well as two collections of 10-minute plays published by Samuel French. Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, she holds an MFA in playwriting from York University in Toronto. She lives in Evanston, IL with her husband and two children.
Photo by: Jody Christopherson
Kara Lee Corthron’s plays include Julius by Design (Fulcrum Theater), Etched in Skin on a Sunlit Night (InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia), AliceGraceAnon (New Georges), Holly Down in Heaven (Forum Theatre, DC area), Spookwater, Listen for the Light, and Welcome to Fear City. Kara is also the author of the young-adult novel, The Truth of Right Now, forthcoming from Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse, January 2017—the first of a two-book deal. Awards/Honors: member of New Dramatists (class of 2022), 2014-2015 Naked Angels/New School Issues Project Resident Playwright, Boomerang Fund for Artists Grant, Berkeley Rep 2014 Ground Floor Lab Residency, 2012-2014 Women’s Project Lab Time Warner Foundation Fellowship, The Vineyard Theatre’s 3rd Annual Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, the Princess Grace Award, two NEA grants, the Helen Merrill Award, Lincoln Center’s Lecomte du Nouy Prize (three-time recipient), the Theodore Ward Prize, the New Professional Theatre Writers Award, four MacDowell fellowships, residencies at Skriðuklaustur (Iceland), Djerassi, Hawthornden (Scotland), the Millay Colony, and Ledig House, and Fulcrum Theater (a company Kara helped launch with its inaugural production) received a 2013 Obie Grant. Her work has been sometimes produced and mostly developed at places like the African Continuum Theatre (DC), Ars Nova, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Berkeley Rep, CenterStage (Baltimore), Electric Pear, E.S.T., Haulbowline Theatre Group (Cork, Ireland), Horizon Theatre (Atlanta), the Kennedy Center, Midtown Direct Rep, Naked Angels, New Dramatists, New Georges, The Orchard Project, P73, Penumbra, PlayPenn Conference, The Shalimar, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference (Guest Artist, 2012), South Coast Rep, TheatreWorks (Palo Alto), the Vineyard Theatre, Voice & Vision, and the Women’s Project. TV: writer for NBC’s Kings (2008-2009). Kara’s also working on a graphic novel with cartoonist, Shawn Ferreyra. She has taught at various institutions including Primary Stages’ Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA), Ohio University, NYU-Tisch, Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, and Temple University. Juilliard alumna, New Georges Affiliated Artist, and member of Interstate 73 (2007-2008), the Ars Nova Play Group (2010-2011), ‘Wright On! Playwrights Group (co-founder), Blue Roses Productions, the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America. www.karaleecorthron.com
*Ohio University Alumnus, Laura Jacqmin, was scheduled to appear, but was unable due to illness. We hope to have her back for a future Seabury Playwrights’ Fest!
Skye Robinson Hillis is a playwright, director, and dramaturg in based Chicago. As a playwright, her work has been seen at The Route 66 Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, A Red Orchid Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop, Artistic Home, Prologue Theatre Company, Polarity Ensemble Theatre, Columbia College, and the City of Chicago’s In the Works Play Lab at the Pritzker Pavillion in Millenium Park. Her play AND VASTER was awarded a residency at the New Works Lab at Stratford (2015), winner of the Ashland New Plays Festival (2015), and winner of the Holland New Voices Award at the Great Plains Theatre Conference (2017). AND VASTER was also named a semi-finalist for The Princess Grace Award. As a director and dramaturg, she has worked for Hartford Stage, Goodman Theatre, Court Theatre, A Red Orchid, Remy Bumppo, Stage Left, and more.
Tanya Palmer
