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Category: Productions

Spotlight On: Skye Robinson Hillis (OU MFA ’21)

  • April 13, 2021
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · Chicago · Current Students · Events · Festival · News · Productions · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

As we begin the 27th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival, we’ll be giving the spotlight to our third-year MFA playwrights. Third-year writers graduate soon after their thesis productions headline the festival.

by Steven Strafford 

Skye Robinson Hillis is good with words. Whether it be in her plays, or a well-crafted joke over Zoom chat or text message, she knows how to string the words together for great effect. (Often making the writer of this article laugh out loud. And a personal side note: Skye was extremely helpful to me in my adjusting to life in Athens. She always made time for my questions. I am grateful for the care she showed for me. I will miss her jokes and insightful help on my work.) 

Skye’s play, The Martha Mitchell Effect is one of our two featured productions this year.

We thought it might be fun to let Skye, in her own words, answer a few questions in interview format for her spotlight piece.

Here is that interview:

Where are you from? What parts of “home” show up in your writing?

Born and raised outside Boston, but also partially raised in southeastern Pennsylvania, and after moving there in 2008 for school, I now consider Chicago home. Basically zero parts of home show up in my writing because I usually prefer to write outside my own personal experience.

What first made you want to write plays? 

Dialogue. I tried to be a screenwriting major for a while in undergrad until I learned that nobody cares what your characters have to say in film, only what they do and how it looks. 

What is it you hope people leave the theater thinking about with your work and/or specifically this play?

Who are your inspirations? Playwrights? Other writers? 

Noel Coward, Edward Albee, Lillian Hellman, Pinter, Tracy Letts, Sarah Ruhl.

What’s a favorite theatrical moment for you as an audience member? A moment that stays with you?

All of the Goodman’s Camino Real directed by Calixto Bieto.

What was the inspiration for your featured play this year?

About two years ago I was listening to the Slow Burn podcast, the first season of which is about Watergate, which is where I learned about Martha Mitchell. I’ve been low-key obsessed with the notion of gaslighting for years and especially the gaslighting of woman of note, so from that point on I couldn’t stop thinking about her. This led to a women of Watergate rabbit hole that I still have not climbed out of. 

Skye’s bio: 

Skye Robinson Hillis (she/her) is a playwright/director/teacher/dramaturg based in Chicago. A two time semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award, her work has been seen at the Kennedy Center’s ACTF, Creede Repertory, The Route 66 Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, A Red Orchid Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop, Artistic Home, 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 in 2015, winner of the 2015 Ashland New Plays Festival, and winner of the Holland New Voices Award at the Great Plains Theatre Conference in 2017. As a director/dramaturg, she has worked for Hartford Stage, Goodman Theatre, Court Theatre, A Red Orchid, Remy Bumppo, Stage Left, and more. Her other plays include BURY THE REST, ESCAPE VELOCITY, THE ORDINARINESS OF EVERYTHING ELSE, THE RUNNING MATE, INTO PLACE, and SELFISH.

The Martha Mitchell Effect: In his infamous interview with David Frost, Richard Nixon said that “without Martha Mitchell, there would be no Watergate.” And yet the name Martha Mitchell, once ubiquitous, has faded into the background of history. Bringing her story to the forefront, The Martha Mitchell Effect illustrates the world of the courageous women involved in breaking the Watergate scandal and explores their lasting impact on this country today.

Reserve tickets now for this streaming production at The Martha Mitchell Effect website for April 16, 17, 22, 24. And be sure to check out the full slate of new MFA plays streaming during the festival here.

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Spotlight On: John Hendel (OU MFA ’21)

  • April 13, 2021
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · Festival · News · Productions · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

As we begin the 27th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival, we’ll be giving the spotlight to our third-year MFA playwrights. Third-year writers graduate soon after their thesis productions headline the festival.

by Steven Strafford

John Hendel’s play, Be Head is one of our two featured productions this year.

John Hendel is a mensch. For people who don’t know Yiddish, a mensch is a person of integrity and honor. John Hendel not only wants his play to be great, he really wants your play to be great. He is, at his very nature, a helper. Add to that, his ability to consistently turn out off-beat, humorous, sometimes unsettling pieces that always challenge the intellect, and you’ve got an amazing member of the playwriting program. You’ve got John Hendel. 

If that wasn’t enough, this year John has been lead producer of PlayFest. He has shepherded the playwrights through a brand new online format. He has solved problems on the fly, and while putting out fires and building an impactful event for the playwrights and all involved, he has created a wonderful play for you all to enjoy. He is the embodiment of what this program strives to be: a community of playwrights who come together to buoy each other up while discovering an executing our own voice in theatrical writing. John will be missed.

John’s bio:

John Hendel is a playwright most recently from Los Angeles. His plays include Pulling Off Procreation (Or Is It Wrong to Keep Fucking if the Baby Starts Crying?) (2013 Cincinnati Fringe Festival, winner: Founders’ Pick of the Fringe), Wearhorse (2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival), Fame Confusions and The Greatest Play Ever (If You Don’t Think So, You’re a Basket of Farts) (NY Artists Unlimited International Cringe Fest, 2009 and 2010, respectively). He has twice been a PlayLab writer at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, AK. His work online includes his 64 Plays in 64 Days project, as well as writing about movies and television. He received his Playwriting BFA from Ohio University.

Be Head: 

Hear ye, hear ye, and huzzah! The king has been executed! Allegra, a peasant, has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join the new Revolutionary Council. All she must do is eradicate the monarchial spirit by destroying the king’s head. But Allegra’s ambitions and desire to be heard make sharing power difficult, especially with the daffy elites who lopped the king’s head off. Through dreams, necromancy, and the occasional iambic pentameter, BE HEAD explores whether any old time is the right time for revolution.

Reserve tickets now for this streaming production at the Be Head website for April 15, 17, 23, 24. And be sure to check out the full slate of new MFA plays streaming during the festival here.

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What I did last summer (2019): Skye Robinson Hillis

  • September 20, 2019
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · Current Students · News · Productions · Reading

For Skye, the summer of 2019 was spent working as the Box Office Manager at the Weston Playhouse in Vermont, which produces six shows over three months’ time in two venues. The highlight of her summer, however, was workshopping her full-length play Into Place as a part of the Headwaters New Festival at Creede Repertory Theatre in Colorado. Additionally, her play The Ordinariness of Everything was named a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award.

Read any of her short plays and full-lengths here: https://newplayexchange.org/users/1125/skye-robinson-hillis

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2018 Alums Cristina Luzárraga and Philana Imade Omorotionmwan Are Jerome Fellows

  • July 5, 2019
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · alumni · Athena Project · Awards · Br!nk New Works Festival · Jerome Fellowship · La MaMa · Many Voices Fellowship · News · P73 Fellowship · Playwrights' Center · Reading · ScreenCraft Stage Play Award Winner · TV

Cristina Luzárraga (Jerome Fellow, 2019-20) and Philana Imade Omorotionmwan (Jerome Fellow, 2018-19), are two recent OHIO MFA Playwriting alums representing back-to-back years of the Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. The fellowship is often considered career-changing for early-career playwrights; as the PWC press release notes:

Jerome and Many Voices Fellows spend a year in residency in the Twin Cities, working in an individualized and hands-on way with the Playwrights’ Center artistic staff—some of the most experienced and connected theater professionals in the country. In addition to an $18,000 stipend, fellows receive $2,000 in play development funds to workshop new plays with professional directors, dramaturgs, and actors. The Center also builds connections between the playwrights and producers of new work.

Luzárraga (just beginning the Jerome), and Omorotionmwan (just finishing), were in the same graduating class (2018) and often politely competed for awards, fellowships and grants. As far as the Jerome Fellowship is concerned — the two continue to finish in a dead heat, always with very different voices and approaches to their work.

Cristina LuzCristina Luzárraga grew up in New Jersey and still resides there, believe it or not. She’s an alum The Second City Conservatory in Chicago, the town where she once (foolishly?) dabbled in comedy performance of all kinds. Her work has been developed at Towne Street Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, The New Colony, and Tantrum Theater. Her full length plays include Critical Distance, Millennialville, and La Mujer Barbuda (Inaugural ScreenCraft Stage Play Award Winner; 2018 Princess Grace Award finalist). Her short plays have been published in anthologies by Smith and Kraus. She co-wrote and adaptation of Aphra Behn’s The Rover that was produced by Ohio University where she recently earned an MFA in playwriting… Then there’s this, of course, when you need a good laugh…

philana-better-picPhilana Imade Omorotionmwan (o-more-o-tune-wha) is currently based in Minneapolis, MN as a 2018-19 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center. Her plays include Before Evening Comes, The Defiance of Dandelions, Fireflies, and Strong Face, or Misogynoir. Her work has been developed and/or presented at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Br!nk New Works Festival, La MaMa Experiments Series, and Athena Project Festival. She has been a semifinalist for the Relentless Award, P73 Fellowship, and Many Voices Fellowship, as well as a two-time Heideman finalist, and a finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship, the Theatre503 Award, and the Playwrights Realm’s Scratchpad Series. Her short plays have been produced by Ensemble Studio Theatre, Pillsbury House + Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Source, Stay Awake! Theatre, Little Black Dress Ink, 20% Theatre Company Chicago, and Ohlone College. Her poems have appeared in New Delta Review and African American Review. Philana earned a BA in English at Stanford University, where she began writing plays under the mentorship of Cherríe Moraga and also dabbled in spoken word. Philana completed an MFA in Playwriting in May 2018. She is at work on a television pilot about her experiences as a teacher in public charter schools. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild. philanaplays.weebly.com

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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

QuiNguyen2015On 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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Skye Robinson Hillis’ play AND VASTER, now available at Play4Keeps

  • March 26, 2019
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · Chicago · News · Productions

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.

_MG_4237Skye 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.

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“Dauphin Island” to be done at Detroit Rep in 2018!

  • July 15, 2017
  • by catherineforever666
  • · alumni · News · Productions

Jeffry Chastang’s play Dauphin Island is on fire! It was recently at AlabamaShakes and now will be apart of Detroit Repertory Theater’s 2017/18 season.

The play will run at Detroit Rep, Jan 11th to March 18th, 2018 and will be its Midwest Premiere! For more details click here. Congrats Jeff!! Very exciting to see this beautiful, haunting play get so much recognition!

More about the play:

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

Go see it at Detroit Rep!!

More about Jeff

Jeffry Chastang Michigan-born Jeffry Chastang received his MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University. His thesis play Dauphin Island reached semifinalist status with the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference selection committee.  Jeffry 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 Jeffry’s professional credits include Fences, The Old Settler and A Soldier’s Play.

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Aaron James Johnson has short play going up in Michigan July 14th!

  • July 5, 2017
  • by catherineforever666
  • · 10-minute plays · alumni · Events · News · Productions · Reading

Recent alum and overall friendly dude Aaron James Johnson is part of the Inaugural Detroit Playwrights Lab and they have a  showing of short plays Friday, July 14th! The facebook event says:  Seven 10-minute plays and excerpts from plays written by some of Metro Detroit’s finest up-and-coming playwrights. Join us for an unforgettable evening of original theater. Doors open at 6:30 pm. Free admission! And free, enclosed parking is adjacent to the theater.

I facebook messaged him and he gave me more dets!! Aaron said-“My play Step-nasty is being directed by Harold Hogan and I’m directing An Old Neighbor by Sean Paraventi.”

Now if I were you, I would get your butt down to the theater cause who can resist a play called Step Nasty written by an OU alum?? I think no one!

 

Details

Facebook event

Friday, July 14th, 7pm

Location: Detroit Repertory Theatre

13103 Woodrow Wilson St, Detroit, Michigan 48238
 

More about Aaron

Aaron Johnson hails from the land of cheese in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  He received his Bachelor of the Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he majored in English with an Emphasis in Creative Writing and in Theatre and Drama.  While not officially specializing in playwriting in his undergrad, Aaron took the only playwriting course offered twice and completed his creative writing thesis as a play instead of fiction or poetry writing which the school usually requires.  During his time at UW-Madison, Aaron completed three full length plays, multiple One-Acts, and numerous short plays which were all workshopped and some eventually produced at the university in staged readings.  In his Theatre and Drama major he specialized in props and was props master for a number of university shows including Ti-Jean and his Brothers and Eurydice.  Working his summers during college as a technical writer, Aaron decided to take a year off from school and work full time but the call of academia was too much for him to resist though as he is currently pursuing his MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University.  Aaron’s writing tends to take the complex and unnoticed topics of today’s culture and bring them to light by using them to create dramatic conflict and then ultimate understanding.  Using these undiscovered topics and coupling them with a realistic style will grow people’s curiosity and actively induce them to gain knowledge about today’s world.

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Check out a reading of Catherine Weingarten’s play “Are you Ready to Get PAMPERED!?” in NYC July 15th!

  • July 3, 2017
  • by catherineforever666
  • · Events · New York · News · Reading

Recent alum Catherine Weingarten has a reading of her trashy summer camp play “Are You Ready to Get PAMPERED!?” Saturday, July 15th at 6pm in Brooklyn. The reading is produced by Off With Her Head Productions and it’s apart of their Uncorseted Reading Series which promotes new plays about women and female empowerment. The reading also features OU BFA acting alum Leah Kistler!

Check it out if your in NYC!

 

More about the play:

For a long time Hester has lain awake at night, excited about the summer she can follow her mother’s footsteps and become a Pampered Camp counselor! The only problem is that Lake Pampered is a popular-fun-sexy exclusive all girl’s summer camp and Hester is a loser! The play was inspired by Catherine Weingarten’s experience as a summer camp counselor. The play asks messy questions about girl culture and expectations we put on young women to get hotter as Hester struggles to find her own in a pampered, prideful, popular and sexy world.

Details:

SAT JULY 15TH AT 6PM. CAFE FORTE. CROWN HEIGHTS.

Facebook event

 

More about Catherine

Catherine Weingarten is currently pursuing her MFA in Playwriting at Ohio University, studying under Charles Smith and Erik Ramsey.  She graduated from Bennington College in 2013 studying under Sherry Kramer.  She has taken workshops in playwriting with Samuel D. Hunter, Kara Lee Corthon and Branden Jacob-Jenkins. Catherine’s summer camp play “Are You Ready to Get PAMPERED!?” had a reading at 59E59 with Less than Rent and also was part of Dixon Place’s Bingo Lounge.  Some of her other plays include: Pineapple Upside Down Cake (KCACTF:national semi-finalist), Janis and the Big BAD World (Semi-finalist at Wide Eyed Productions), A Roller Rink Temptation (NOLA Fringe), This Car Trip Suckss ( Piper Theater Productions Emerging Artist Reading Series), Karate Hottie (OU Seabury Quinn Play Fest) Love Potion Number Slut (Tiny Rhino) and You Looked Hot When You Stole that Dress from Walmart (Fresh Fruit Festival.)  She has been involved with Abingdon Playwrights Group as well as New Perspective’s Women’s Work Short Play Lab.  She is the recipient of the Scott McPherson award given to a graduate playwright at Ohio University that is a kind and supportive collaborator in the program. catherine-weingarten.squarespace.com

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Charles Smith’s Play Discussed on NPR’s Weekend Edition

  • June 3, 2017
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · Chicago · News · world premiere

objects_01_wide-af9f795118f04eaf31f2c07a9b3a66bce388f8e4-s800-c85
Daniel Kyri plays Shedrick Yarkpai in the Goodman Theatre production of Objects in the Mirror.
Liz Lauren/Goodman Theatre

Charles Smith’s Objects in the Mirror is featured in today’s Weekend Edition by NPR (June 3rd, 2017). Listen at the link below:

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/03/531207534/this-play-was-inspired-by-a-real-refugee-s-shakespearean-dilemma

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