Category: Press

Alum Qui Nguyen Featured in L.A. Times

March 30, 2019
by Erik Ramsey
· alumni · New York · News · Press · Productions · Qui Nguyen · TV · world premiere

QuiNguyen2015 On April 5th, at South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa, California, OHIO MFA playwriting alum Qui Nguyen — a pioneer of “geek theatre” — will open his new play Poor Yella Rednecks. The play is a sequel to his highly lauded Vietgone, and commissioned by SCR and Manhattan Theatre Club.

Qui is a co-founder of the Obie Award-winning Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, known as the first and only professional theatre company to be sponsored by New York Comic Con.

Poor Yella Rednecks is the sequel to Nguyen’s Vietgone, which premiered at South Coast Rep in 2015. Rednecks begins previews Saturday and opens a week later. The plays, co-commissioned by SCR and Manhattan Theatre Club, follow the love story of Nguyen’s mother and father, Tong and Quang, who met in the Fort Chaffee refugee camp in Arkansas after they escaped Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. Poor Yella Rednecks, which Nguyen lovingly nicknamed Vietgone 2, zeroes in on the challenges the couple face as blue-collar immigrants, recently married and starting a family. (L.A. Times, March 28, 2019)

Qui writes for TV and film, in addition to continuing to be one of the most sought after playwrights in the country:

“I started in TV, then I went to Marvel, and then I went back to TV for a while and did AMC and Netflix, and now I’m back in film for Disney,” he says. “I feel like I’m late to the game, so I’m hungry to succeed.” (L.A. Times, March 28, 2019)

Writing for likes of Marvel and Disney hasn’t slowed his pace as a playwright: major theaters such as Center Theatre Group in L.A., Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Atlantic Theater Company and Playwrights Horizons in New York continue to commission him.

For more about Qui’s climb to national recognition:

New York Times profile of Qui in 2016
NBC News on Vietgone in 2017
L.A. Times review of Vietgone at South Coast Rep in 2015

And more about his latest play, Poor Yella Rednecks, opening next week:

L.A. Times review of Poor Yella Rednecks in 2019

What is “Geek Theatre”?

American Theatre takes a stab at defining “Geek Theatre”

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Jeff Chastang’s new play written about in “American Theater” Magazine!

March 31, 2017
by catherineforever666
· News · Press · Productions · world premiere

Recent alum Jeff Chastang’s thesis play Dauphin Island was written about in “American Theater Magazine”! The article talks about the development process of the play and is a fun read!

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Rominger, the actors, and the dramaturg all stayed on board for the play’s next iteration. The development process from SWP to the main stage season was supported by a TCG Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, a grant which allowed Chastang and the creative team to dive back into the play before mounting the world premiere at Alabama Shakes.

“We did a discontinuous week in the fall, and that gave him more time to work on the piece in a stress-free situation,” says Rominger of the grant. “What an honor to actually work with the playwright and find and craft their story.”

Chastang says the process of picking up the play with the same actors and team has given him the ability to shape the play in new ways and tweak the dialogue.

“There is something really beautiful about Jeff’s writing—he writes these marvelously complicated, messy, and beautifully flawed characters,” adds Rominger. “His dialogue is just so lovely and rich.”

In addition to another ASF production in the books, the world premiere production will mark another achievement for Chastang: After the play opens, he will finally get to visit Dauphin Island.

Read full article here Congrats Jeff!

See the play at Alabma Shakes!!

Dauphin Island

A world-premiere production by Jeffry Chastang.

March 23, 2017 – April 9, 2017

Suspicion and fascination dovetail when (en route from Detroit to a new job on Dauphin Island) Selwyn Tate interrupts the self-imposed isolation of Kendra in the Alabama woods — dramatizing the risks involved when two displaced souls intertwine. Developed by the Southern Writers’ Project.

Dauphin Island is a recipient of the 2016-2017 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award.

Buy tickets here

Alabama Shakes Festival- 1 Festival Drive, Montgomery, AL 36117

More about Jeff

Michigan-born Jeffry Chastang was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Roger L. Stevens Award for his first play FULL CIRCLE, which was produced by Detroit’s Plowshares Theater Company. Plowshares also produced his second play …CONTINUED WARM, which was named Best New Play by the Oakland Press. He was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF) to write BLOOD DIVIDED, a play marking the sesquicentennial of the Civil War in Montgomery, Alabama. BLOOD DIVIDED also received an Edgerton Foundation New Plays Award. Jeffry’s play PREPARATIONS was developed in ASF’s Southern Writers Project. As an actor his professional credits include FENCES, THE OLD SETTLER and A SOLDIER’S PLAY.

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Qui Nguyen featured in the NY Times!

October 10, 2016
by catherineforever666
· alumni · New York · Press · Productions

Qui’s play “Vietgone” is currently playing in NYC at Manhattan Theater Club and he was just featured in the NY Times! Congrats Qui! Go see the play in NYC!

Here’s an excerpt:

“Vietgone” may seem to be a drastic departure. The playwright calls it a “romantic comedy” about how his parents met at a refugee camp in Arkansas in 1975, having immigrated right after the Vietnam War. It’s a story that Mr. Nguyen grew up hearing and knows well, but it has also been filtered through his pop-culture-filled and irreverent sensibility.

“When my parents told me stories about Vietnam, they told me the real stories, what actually happened,” he explained. “But what I imagined was kung fu movies. Because the only things I ever saw [growing up] that had a lot of Asian people in it, were kung fu movies.”

So there is kung fu in “Vietgone,” and ninjas. As in Mr. Nguyen’s other works, everyone speaks in a modern voice and raps — and no one speaks with “an Asian accent,” part of his fight against minority stereotypes.

Read the full article here

More about Qui

Qui Nguyen is a playwright, TV/Film writer, and Co-Founder of the OBIE Award-winning Vampire Cowboys of NYC. His work, known for its innovative use of pop-culture, stage violence, puppetry, and multimedia, has been called “Culturally Savvy Comedy” by The New York Times, “Tour de Force Theatre” by Time Out New York, and “Infectious Fun” by Variety.

Scripts include Vietgone (South Coast Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Rep), She Kills Monsters (The Flea, Buzz22 Chicago/Steppenwolf, Company One); Begets: Fall of a High School Ronin (Waterwell); War is F**king Awesome (Sundance); Krunk Fu Battle Battle (East West Players); Bike Wreck (EST); Trial By Water (Ma-Yi Theater); Aliens vs Cheerleaders (Keen Teens); Soul Samurai; The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G (Ma-Yi Theater & Vampire Cowboys); and the critically acclaimed Vampire Cowboys productions of Six Rounds of Vengeance, Alice in Slasherland; Fight Girl Battle World; Men of Steel; and Living Dead in Denmark.

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Silence Madness

September 19, 2015
by rpdolan
· Hero Slider

MFA Playwright’s National Activism and Research

March 10, 2015
by Erik Ramsey
· Current Students · News · Press

Ohio University MFA Playwriting Student Catherine Weingarten is in the national news this week spearheading a charge to improve the world-wide conversation about body positivity. She has teamed up with Endangered Bodies to ask Facebook to remove an emoji that one can choose to self-describe as “feeling fat.” The Washington Post, ABC News, People, Huffington Post and many others (links below) have interviewed her about the Change.org petition, “Fat is Not a Feeling.” From the petition:

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world right now. With 890 million users each day, it has the power to influence how we talk to each other about our bodies. I dream that one day the platform will actively encourage body positivity and self-esteem among its users, but for now, all I ask is that it stop endorsing self-destructive thoughts through seemingly harmless emojis.

Her national advocacy is not surprising given her approach to playwriting. In fact, such activism is part and parcel of her research and voice as a playwright. From Catherine’s artistic statement:

“Catherine’s plays delve into the societal pressure placed on young women to be both impossibly good looking as well as ridiculously intellectual, humble, kind as can be, but sexy… Media pressure is always present in Catherine’s work and the characters can barely function without checking in…”

Links:

http://www.people.com/article/facebook-fat-option-status-update-petiton

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/06/facebooks-feeling-fat-emoticon-is-fueling-a-fight-over-digital-body-shaming/

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/facebooks-feeling-fat-emoji-leaves-users-flat/story?id=29501954

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/petition-facebook-remove-feeling-fat-status-_n_6819142.html

http://www.thepostathens.com/culture/graduate-playwright-catherine-weingarten-helps-spearhead-petition-to-remove-feeling/article_22795f28-c6b7-11e4-878e-63a01392712c.html

Endangered Bodies: http://www.endangeredbodies.org/

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Aaron Johnson ’16 featured in Post Article about OU dramaturgy opportunities!

February 26, 2015
by catherineforever666
· Current Students · News · Press

Aaron Johnson’16 was interviewed recently by Meryl Gottlieb for a story for the Athens Post about new developments in the Ohio University School of Theater’s dramaturgy program. With the arrival of a new faculty member, Dr. Matthew Cornish, the whole dramaturgy program is going through an exciting revamp!

Aaron Johnson worked as a dramaturg this fall on Charles Mee’s play bobrauschenbergamerica at OU, directed by Dan Dennis. The play is an experimental collage piece about the artist Robert Rauschenberg and the community that surrounded him and encouraged him.

In the MFA playwriting program, most playwrights dramaturg one production in the school of theater. Being a dramaturg on a production usually requires writing a program note and source book, attending rehearsals and being an advocate for the play.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

“Cornish said he mostly uses playwrights in the practicum because they should be asking the same kinds of questions about their own work that dramaturgs do of any work. “As a playwright, it really helps me develop and focus on consistency,” said Aaron Johnson, the dramaturg for Fall Semester’s bobrauschenbergamerica and a second-year graduate playwright,. “Every good playwright should ask ‘What’s important in this world, and what’s the meaning behind it?’ Why am I writing it?’”

Click to read Full Article

Here is Aaron’s Program Note for bobrauschenbergamerica:

bobrauschenbergamerica is not a play about Robert Rauschenberg’s art come to life: his art is already life. For his “Combine” paintings from the 1950s and early ‘60s, Rauschenberg utilized found objects, mostly garbage picked off the streets of New York. Everyday items including cardboard boxes, oil drums, tires, bathtubs, street signs, and car doors permeate the paintings, leaping off the canvas and jutting out onto the floor. Rauschenberg repurposed the meaning of these objects, allowing spectators to experience them in a new way; his Combine paintings inhabit, as Rauschenberg said, “the gap between life and art.

Charles Mee’s play also works to occupy this gap, integrating found texts—just like Rauschenberg’s found objects. Mee samples works of literature, personal interviews, and stories from other writers to create the world of his play, taking passages from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and quoting an interview with Phillip Morrison, an astrophysicist who inspired the character Allen. By mixing these found texts with Rauschenberg’s work, Mee creates a “collage” play: an expansive and diverse combination of images and ideas, some belonging to Rauschenberg, some belonging to Mee, some belonging to others, and some that just feel random, as if pulled from the trash.

So where does the gap between life and art lie? In the unexpected. In the everyday objects we take for granted. In noticing that things may be more significant than we first realize.

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Rachel Bykowski ’17 featured on Theater Communication Group’s “Diversity and Inclusion” blog series

October 2, 2014
by catherineforever666
· Chicago · Current Students · Essays · News · Press

Rachel Bykowski,our Chicago based first year MFA playwright, gives a thoughtful interview for TCG about her experience being a female playwright and her hope for more opportunities in the future for female identified writers.

Here’s an awesome quote from the interview:

“Theatre is not exclusive; it is inclusive. It is important for men to hear these conversations in order for them to understand how important parity is and how it strengthens their theatre community. While working with an all women theatre company, I have had the opportunity to engage in conversations with men who share our ideas and dream of true gender parity in theatre. The theatre companies, ensembles, and productions that have been created based off of conversations like that, are truly some of the most dynamic pieces of art I have ever witnessed and only strengthen the community at large because everyone is working together toward the same goal.”

Read the full interview here

Other Ohio MFA playwrights who have participated in this TCG “Diversity and Inclusion Series” series include Catherine Weingarten’17 and Cecilia Copeland.