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:
Category: world premiere
Charles Smith’s Play Discussed on NPR’s Weekend Edition
Liz Lauren/Goodman Theatre
Jeff Chastang’s new play written about in “American Theater” Magazine!
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.
Joseph Gallo has new play in New Jersey this month!
OU Playwriting alum Joseph Gallo has a new one man play “Long Gone Daddy” at Mile Square Theater that will be running July 21st through August 7th in Hoboken, New Jersey!
He also has a recently published play collection Two Plays: My Italy Story and Long Gone Daddy out! The book signing will be at Little City Books in Hoboken (100 Bloomfield Street) on Thursday, July 7 at 7:30 pm. There will be a Q & A afterwards conducted by Chris O’Connor, Artistic Director of Mile Square Theatre.
Congrats Joseph! Go see the play if you’re in the area!
Details on play
JULY 21 – AUGUST 7
Thurs-Sat @ 8pm • Sun @ 3pm
Tickets: $20 • $12 students/seniors
JULY 20 Preview
Wednesday, July 20 @ 8pm
Tickets: $18
Purchase tickets here
Long Gone Daddy chronicles the comic misadventures of becoming a stay-at-home father. From Bruce Springsteen concerts to OBGYN appointments to the Hoboken playgrounds and back again, Gallo’s semi-autobiographical play also wrestles with the memory of his own Dad, a former fireman, and the existential question, “When does a father earn the right to be called Dad?”
Recommended for audiences 16 and up.
More about Joe
Joseph Gallo’s play My Italy Story, which had its New York debut Off-Broadway at the 47th Street Theatre, and was nominated for the Gay Talese Literary Prize, was recently revived at Mile Square Theatre. His full-length plays include Warning: Adult Content (Theatre 54) and Staten Island (Circle Rep Lab), while his solo shows include Whizzy and The Jealousy Piece, both of which premiered in the American Living Room festival at HERE. He co-created, and wrote the text for two dance/theater pieces Tannhauser: A Dance Play and 80% of Love, both of which debuted in New York at the Obie award-winning Ice Factory Festival at the Ohio Theatre; the latter done in collaboration with company Rindfleisch, and subsequently transferred to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. His work has additionally been seen on the stages of the Barrow Street Theatre, the Lark, Pearl Theater, Samuel Beckett Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Penguin Rep, TheaterWorks, 12 Miles West, 78th Street Theatre, Waterfront Ensemble, Atlantic Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse, Delaware Stage Company, Seven Angels Theatre, Orlando Fringe Festival, Manhattan Class Company, the Kennedy Center, Bridge Theatre Company, and at both the Hudson Guild Theatre and Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA in playwriting from Ohio University, and is a current member of the Actors Studio Playwrights and Directors Workshop. He has also worked extensively in the development of both film and television projects, including a film chronicling the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and on the screenplay adaptation of the memoir Woody, Cisco & Me. His original screenplays include My Italy Story, and the pilot episode for the television series Gotham House. He most recently wrote the story Robert Zarinsky for truTV, and the pilot episode for the television series How Did You Meet? Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love My Significant Other! He wrote and directed two short films, M*O*N*E*Y and No Parking, and also did the screenplay adaptation of the Raymond Carver short story Careful. He studied film at New York University, and currently teaches screenwriting at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
Laura Jacqmin has play at the Humana fest!
OU Alumni Laura Jacqmin’s new play Residence is apart of 40th annual Humana Fest season. The festival runs March 2nd-April 10th in Louisville, Kentucky and features plays by such as playwrights as Stephen Dietz and Sarah Ruhl.
Here is a synopsis of Residence:
New mom Maggie returns to her medical sales job, checking into an extended-stay hotel in Arizona as she pursues the commission that will get her out of debt and back on track. When she befriends two hotel employees intent on making her visit a five-star experience, they discover that their lives are all on similarly shaky ground. A funny and sharply-observed play about hanging on when you’re at the end of your rope, and the times when letting go might be the most responsible thing to do.
Here is a nifty video about Laura’s new play! Congrats Laura!! Y’all check check it out if you’re in the area!
More info about the production
Dates-March 2 – April 10, 2016
by Laura Jacqmin
directed by Hal Brooks
316 West Main St. Louisville, KY 40202
Box Office: 502.584.1205 502.371.0956 TDD
Buy tickets here
More about Laura
Laura Jacqmin is a Chicago-based playwright, TV writer, and video game writer, originally from Cleveland. At Actors Theatre: Hero Dad. Regional: January Joiner (Long Wharf Theatre); Ski Dubai (Steppenwolf Theatre); Dental Society Midwinter Meeting (Williamstown Theatre Festival, 16th Street Theater, Chicago Dramatists/At Play). Other theatre: A Third (Finborough Theatre, London); Look, We Are Breathing (Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, Sundance Institute Theatre Lab); Do-Gooder (16th Street Theater); Ghost Bike (Buzz22 Chicago), and more. Jacqmin is the recipient of the Wasserstein Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grants, The Kennedy Center’s David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award, two MacDowell Fellowships, and an Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. Television: Grace and Frankie (Netflix); Lucky 7 (ABC). Video games: Minecraft: Story Mode (Telltale Games). Jacqmin is a founding member of The Kilroys and holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. from Ohio University. Residence was developed by the Cape Cod Theatre Project.
Ohio MFA Playwrights Open One-Act Plays in Chicago
Three current MFA Playwrights and one recent alumnus are opening 10-4: THE TRUCK STOP PLAYS at CIC Theater in Chicago on Friday, August 8th. The plays run through August 30th.
Ryan Patrick Dolan ’16 enlisted three other playwrights Neal Adelman ’15, Tyler Whidden ’16, and recent grad, Anthony Ellison ’14, to write one-acts to take place at a truck stop. The result is four dark comedies with strong, funny female characters.
The directors are four women from the Chicago theater scene: Karisa Bruin, Jeri Frederickson, Ashley Neal, and Mary O’Connor. Each director cast the plays with Chicago actors.
Recent Ohio University student, Cat Abood (pictured above in red), appears in Anthony Ellison’s play. Ellison coached Abood in Ohio University’s improv group, Black Sheep.
More information appears on the play’s website: truckstopplays.wordpress.com or CIC’s website.
NYC: Chantal Bilodeau’s Translation of Mohamed Kacimi’s “Holy Land” Opens 4/18
Ohio MFA Playwriting Alum, Chantal Bilodeau, has a new translation of Mohamed Kacimi’s HOLY LAND by 3rd Kulture Kids Theater Company at HERE Arts Center in New York City opening April 18th.
Bilodeau, who came back to visit the MFA Playwrights this spring, translates French plays in addition to currently working on her English written Arctic Cycle plays.
This is the American Premiere of HOLY LAND, which has been produced worldwide in Paris, Vienna, Prague, London, Milan, Jerusalem, Rio de Janeiro, Stockholm, Hamburg and Avignon Festival.
A city under siege. The landscape is white, dusty and devastated. Carmen has disappeared at a checkpoint. Her daughter Imen must face the soldier’s house searches alone, a soldier who listens to Stravinsky. In the house next door, Alia, the midwife, prepares her coffee as if nothing else matters while Yad, her husband, gets away from it all by smoking tobacco and drinking arak. The only hope seems to reside in Jesus: the cat. A dark and humorous story of 5 characters hanging on to the banality of day-to-day life, at times to the point of insanity, as a way to transcend the atrocities of war.
You can purchase tickets and find more information about the show here.
Buzz22 Producing World Premiere of Jacqmin’s “Ghost Bike”
OU Alum, Laura Jacqmin, is having the World Premiere of her new play “Ghost Bike” produced in Chicago by Buzz22 Theater Company from February 27, 2014 – March 30th, 2014.
Aaron Carter’s Play Debuts in Steppenwolf’s First Look.
This month, alum Aaron Carter’s THE GOSPEL OF FRANKLIN can be see at Steppenwolf (starting tonight!). Aaron’s play is part of Steppenwolf’s First Look Season. OU’s own Associate Professor of Playwriting Erik Ramsey is on board as the dramaturg. Break legs to all involved! Congratulations, Aaron! Visit the link to find all performance dates and to purchase tickets.
For more information check out the play’s page on Steppenwolf’s website.
