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Spotlight on 3rd Year Inna Tsyrlin

  • April 14, 2019
  • by ouplaywrights
  • · Festival · News · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

The 25th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival is almost here! The featured, Thesis Productions of our Third Year MFA Playwrights debut this weekend, April 18th-20th, in Kantner Hall on the Elizabeth Evans Baker Stage. To celebrate the opening of the featured productions, and leading up to the festival staged readings on the 25th, 26th, and 27th, we will be featuring daily spotlights on Ohio University’s nine MFA Playwrights.

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Name: Inna Tsyrlin
Pronouns: she/her
Hometown: Melbourne, Australia
Undergrad: Bachelor of Commerce, Monash Australia
Favorite Play: I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright
I Am My Own Wife, has taught me that as a writer I shouldn’t ever judge my characters and that one character can be many things.
Favorite TV show: Catastrophe
Favorite Movie: The Godfather
Favorite Book: Eugene Onegin by Aleksander Pushkin
“Fun fact”  related to Stitched with a Sickle and a Hammer: 
My play is based on a real event, but I haven’t stuck to the facts. The beauty of theatre is you get to imagine/re-imagine what could have been and then bring that to life on stage.
Another factoid: My play, although set in 1944, is responding to the current US-Russian relations and shows just how many connections there are between the two nations. My hope is that my play sparks a curiosity toward Russia beyond the current political and media circus.
New Play Exchange: Inna Tsyrlin

See Inna’s Thesis Production of Stitched With a Sickle and a Hammer
directed by Anne McAlexander

8:00 p.m. – April 19th & 27th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall
2:00 p.m. – April 20th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall

Aleksandra, a political prisoner at a GULAG camp and part of the camp’s theatre troupe, is forced to aid Soviet authorities disguise the existence of the camp in front of a visiting American delegation. She prepares for two roles: the character on stage – Nina from Chekhov’s The Seagull – and the role of an actor who isn’t imprisoned. In the face of totalitarian power, inside and outside the camp, Aleksandra must decide whether to comply with the regime that has taken away her freedom or commit an act of counterrevolution.

#SQPlayFest #SQPlayFest25
Twitter: @ohioplaywriting

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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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American Theatre: Charles Smith and his long-time friend & collaborator Chuck Smith

  • March 1, 2019
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · Chicago · Faculty · News

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.

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Cristina Luzárraga’s LA MUJER BARBUDA wins Inaugural ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition

  • February 5, 2019
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · alumni · Awards · New York · News

Cristina LuzCongrats to alum Cristina Luzárraga (MFA ’18) ! Her play La Mujer  Barbuda, part of last year’s Seabury Quinn Jr Festival, was chosen by esteemed judges such as David Lindsay-Abaire, Donald Margulies, and as the inaugural ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition. According to the ScreenCraft announcement:

“We are excited to announce the winner of the 2018 ScreenCraft Stage Play competition. Selected from nearly 700 entries, La Mujer Barbuda by Cristina Luzárraga has been named the winner…

La Mujer Barbuda explores the intersecting lives of two women, separated by time and space, and united in the struggle to thrive as a mother in a man’s world. Maggie is an American airline pilot and new mother. When she tries to pump breast milk in the cockpit, she almost perishes in a plane crash. Magdalena is a 17th-century Italian weaver and new mother. When she suddenly grows a beard and nurses a baby at age fifty-two, she sets off a domestic and civil crisis. The judges responded to the unique premises and gripping scenes as the parallels between the two lives unfurled.”

Cristina was also recently initiated as an EST Youngblood:

Cristina 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 (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…

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Alum Bianca Sams Joins The Kilroys!

  • December 12, 2018
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · alumni · News

Alum Bianca Sams has been selected as one of the next wave of The Kilroys. The Kilroys describe themselves as  “a gang of playwrights, directors and producers in LA and NYC who are done talking about gender parity and are taking action. We mobilize others in our field and leverage our own power to support one another.” From their announcement:

The Kilroys, a collective of playwrights and producers dedicated to furthering the voices of female and trans playwrights, has announced the new members in its coalition. They are Jaclyn Backhaus, Hilary Bettis, Jennifer Chambers, Claudia de Vasco, Emma Goidel, Christina Ham, Jessica Hanna, Monet Hurst-Mendoza, Obehi Janice, Hansol Jung, Chelsea Marcantel, Caroline V. McGraw, Bianca Sams, and Gina Young.

The Kilroys were founded in 2013 by 13 women to tackle the lack of gender parity in the theatre. Their main advocacy effort in that time has been an annual list , inspired by the Black List, of underproduced plays by women, trans, and non-binary playwrights. Another of their activist efforts included sending cakes to theaters around the country whose season lineups had gender parity.

And this from the Kilroy’s website:

New Year, New Kilroys! For the past five years The Kilroys, an LA-based collective of playwrights/producers, continuing the fight to achieve gender balance in the American theater, have been advocating for equal representation on our American stages, and have released an annual list of under-produced plays by woman, trans, and non-binary writers. Despite some measurable progress, we still have a long way to go before we strike that balance. So, as we approach 2019, we are beyond thrilled to introduce a fresh new gang of fearless badass leaders. These women will seize our reins and continue the fight for equality, creating random acts of disruption along the way, while the OG Kilroys will serve as an advisory board supporting the current class.

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Interview with 1st Year MFA Jordan Ramirez Puckett about Her Seabury Reading: A Driving Beat

  • April 26, 2018
  • by ouplaywrights
  • · Current Students · Festival · News · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

The 24th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival officially opens tonight! The featured, Thesis Productions of our Third Year MFA Playwrights debut this weekend in Kantner Hall on the Elizabeth Evans Baker Stage. To celebrate the opening of the featured productions, and leading up to the festival staged readings on the 26th, 27th, and 28th, we will be featuring daily interviews with the current playwrights about their work. We’ve interviewed the 3rd Year MFA Playwrights, Philana, Cristina, and Natasha on their Featured Thesis Productions, and the 2nd Year MFA Playwrights, Inna, Katherine, and Trip about their Staged Readings. Our interview series concludes today, wrapping up the 1st Year MFA Playwrights, Jean, Liv, and finally: Jordan!


First Year MFA Jordan Ramirez Puckett (pictured below!) was interviewed by Second Year MFA Katherine Varga about her play, A Driving Beat.

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Katherine Varga: Your play features characters from Ohio taking a road trip to California. You recently moved from California to Ohio. Were any parts of the play inspired by your own cross-country journeys?

Jordan Ramirez Puckett: Yes, definitely. Part of the reason why my husband and I drove, rather than fly, from California to Ohio is because I knew I wanted to write this road trip play. For me, the most shocking moment on our road-trip was when we were pulled over by the border patrol in Texas. As soon as they let us go, I turned to my husband and said, “That’s going in the play”.

Katherine: Your character Mateo oftentimes speaks in poetry, sometimes in Spanish. Why did you choose to incorporate Spanish poetry into your play, and what was your approach to writing in a different language?

Jordan: I had written all of these rhymes in English before I realized how important it was to show the role that Spanish plays in Mateo’s life throughout the play. Mateo definitely wanted to rhyme in Spanglish, I just needed to figure out how to write them for him. I didn’t want to directly translate what I had written from English to Spanish. I thought about what he would want to express in Spanish, that maybe he couldn’t say in English, and tried to write that.

Katherine: What most scares you about this play?

Jordan: I relate to Mateo so much. He is the embodiment of a part of my personality and being on stage. But at the same time, I am very aware that I am not a brown teenage boy growing up in Athens, Ohio. And there is a lot of fear surrounding that, writing a protagonist who doesn’t look like you. I know that we have been forced to move differently through the world because of how we are perceived and I just hope that I have done him justice.

Katherine: What do you hope audiences will walk away from your play feeling and/or thinking about?

Jordan: I think the play is largely about the assumptions we make about ourselves and others because of our outward appearances. I hope that the audiences take that with them as they move through the world. And I hope the play makes the audience want to call their moms. That’s the barometer by which I judge most of my plays: how many people call a parent/loved one because they saw my play.

Katherine: What’s your favorite line or moment from the current draft?

Jordan: When Diane gets back to the hotel room after her date. I don’t want to say what happens here. But yeah, I might be a little too proud of that immediate brief interaction between her and Mateo. It’s funny and sweet and reminds me of my relationship with my mom.

Katherine: If you could take an epic road trip with anybody, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Jordan: This is such a hard question. On our road trip to Ohio, we listened to the Hamilton soundtrack more than four times, much to my husband’s chagrin.   So, I think if Lin-Manuel Miranda were down to duet some of my favorite Hamilton tunes, he would definitely be my pick.


Jordan Ramirez Puckett is a playwright and lighting designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She often writes about being caught between two identities and our intrinsic need for human connection.  She received Abingdon Theatre Company’s Christopher Brian Wolk Award for her play, Restore.  Her other plays include Las Pajaritas (2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist), Inevitable (production at San Francisco Playhouse), The American Traitor (production at Playwrights Center of San Francisco), and Gringo Baseball (staged reading at Goodman Theatre in Chicago).  She has designed lights for the world premieres of Bauer by Lauren Gunderson, 77% by Rinne Groff, and 1 2 3 by Lila Rose Kaplan, among others. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and the former Associate Artistic Director at San Francisco Playhouse.


A Driving Beat

by Jordan Ramirez Puckett
1:00 pm, Saturday April 28th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

2,000 miles, a cross-country car ride
adopted son and mother travel side by side
white woman, brown son in the same space
9 states to the hospital, the teen’s birthplace
4 days, if all goes according to plan
5 nights, of doing all that they can
to find his birth mom, identity, or home
but by the end of their journey
will any answers be known?

Tickets for the Stage Readings are FREE and open to the public. 


The MFA Playwrights and Faculty are proud to congratulate Jordan Ramirez Puckett as the recipient of the 2018 Scott McPhearson Playwriting Award

SCOTT MCPHERSON PLAYWRITING AWARD

In 2000, George Sherman, retired Ohio University professor emeritus of theater, established an endowment to create the Scott McPherson Playwriting Award to honor the all-too-brief life of OU graduate, Scott McPherson. Scott, who graduated from OU in 1981, was a renowned actor and playwright.  He is best known for his critically acclaimed, award-winning play, Marvin’s Room.

Scott, who died of AIDS in 1992, often spoke eloquently, both in his writing and in interviews, of the personal and familial ravages of chronic illness and the need for loving support and connection with lovers, family, and friends.  Upon establishment of the award, George Sherman wrote, “Scott was the least envious, most generous, amusing and supportive friend you could hope to have even if you happened to be another writer.  He had his own ambitions, of course, but they never depended on someone else’s failure.  He was there to support and encourage, if that’s what you needed; critique, if that’s what you requested, but always in a way that encouraged; therefore, it seems fitting and appropriate that an award designed to encourage new young talent should be made in his name, accomplishing the twin goals of remembering him for what he did and, as significantly, for who he was, and hopefully, through this award, who he shall continue to be.”

Marvin’s Room was first produced by the Goodman Theatre in 1990.  It has also been produced at the Hartford Stage in Hartford, Connecticut, Playwrights Horizons and Minetta Lane in New York City, and at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.  It recieved the Drama Desk Award, the Oppenheimer Award, the Obie Drama Award, the John Whiting Foundation Award for Writing, the Joseph Jefferson Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award.  It was also made into a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, and Hume Cronyn.  He finished the screenplay only weeks before he died.

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Interview with 1st Year MFA Liv Matthews about Her Seabury Reading: She Moves In Her Own Way

  • April 25, 2018
  • by ouplaywrights
  • · Current Students · Festival · News · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

The 24th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival officially opens tonight! The featured, Thesis Productions of our Third Year MFA Playwrights debut this weekend in Kantner Hall on the Elizabeth Evans Baker Stage. To celebrate the opening of the featured productions, and leading up to the festival staged readings on the 26th, 27th, and 28th, we will be featuring daily interviews with the current playwrights about their work. We’ve interviewed the 3rd Year MFA Playwrights, Philana, Cristina, and Natasha on their Featured Thesis Productions, and the 2nd Year MFA Playwrights, Inna, Katherine, and Trip about their Staged Readings. Next, we’ll learn more about the three 1st Year MFA Playwrights and their first full-length readings as part of the festival at OU!


First Year MFA Liv Matthews (pictured below!) was interviewed by Second Year MFA Inna Tsyrlin about her play, She Moves In Her Own Way.

_MG_2819

Inna Tsyrlin: Your play, She Moves in Her Own Way has the world of ballet collide with the world of basketball, what inspired that?

Liv Matthews: I love dancing. I love watching it, I love being in classes, I love going out dancing. It’s been a part of my life artistically and socially since elementary school. Many of my full-length plays involve a moment of dance, and it was just a matter of time before I wrote a full out “dance play.”

Playing sports was never my thing but both of my younger siblings played basketball growing up and were very good at it. When I was in high school, I saw my brother catch the ball before it went out of bounds. He was on his toes, in relevé like a dancer, and after that moment I couldn’t help but see basketball and ballet being similar in terms of gracefulness, discipline, and swiftness. Also, basketball and the culture surrounding it is very intense and filled with conflict, and before I really considered it similar to dance, I always connected it to theatre. “What story is happening on the court or in the bleachers? Who’s the victor in the end? What impact does this loss have on the other team?” I’ve wanted to write a story about basketball for awhile and I can thank my siblings for that.

The play was also based on a Madness I did with Shon Middlebrooks and Erik Armstrong (both featured in my reading) that involved family and basketball. Those characters are wildly different now but I developed the play from those original five pages. When I began to outline the play, my protagonist, Alex, was a secondary character but she was causing so much conflict that I decided to form the play around her. She wants to dance but basketball is holding her back. I wanted a way to make these opposing forces blend together, and I remembered their physical similarities.

Inna: Are there any similarities between the characters of She Moves in Her Own Way and you? Any pieces of you in your characters?

Liv: I love to dance like Alex. I was never determined to consider myself a “dancer” the way Alex is, or the way I would call myself a playwright, but that enthusiasm for dance is definitely present. I also connect with her willingness to try something different and defy expectations. If someone has told her she can’t do something, she takes it as the very reason to do it and push through… Like a few characters in the play, I do enjoy basketball and see the beauty in it. And while Josh seems to be the character I’m least like, I did spend a lot of time reading and seeing Shakespeare in high school (by choice).

Inna: You take ballet classes, how has that helped you in writing this piece? Are there any parallels between ballet and playwriting?

Liv: While most of my dance experience is in tap and jazz, I took ballet because of the comparison I saw physically between ballet and basketball. When done well, they both seem very effortless, but I know dancers and basketball players train very aggressively in the basics, or what my brother would call “the fundamentals.” When learning the fundamentals of ballet in class, it puts me closer to Alex and what her possible experience is going through certain moves. I’m mentally taking notes. “When I do a développé eight times at the barre, Alex’s thighs may burn like this. If I do piqués across the floor, this is what her feet look like afterwards. When I botch a pirouette or bust out two, Alex could feel embarrassed or on top of the world.” I take these notes and apply them to my play.

Basketball, ballet, and playwriting are grounded in structure and learning the fundamentals, but knowing the rules and executing them in one’s own personal style is when they become exciting.

Inna: Your protagonist, Alex, listens to Tchaikovsky although her coach thinks she listens to Drake. Anyone on your playlist who might be a surprise? Anyone on your playlist that you want Alex to listen to?

Liv: I always say I’m not a big country music fan but I’m from the South, so it was always playing somewhere. In high school, I ended up knowing the lyrics to  “Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum and I still really like that song. I’ve been a fan of Drake for a long time, and that song is like a country version of his song “Marvin’s Room.” It all comes together somehow.

Alex would listen to Cardi B when her parents aren’t around. Like me, she’s been listening to “I Like It” on repeat.

Inna: If you are hosting a dinner party, and anyone in the world could be at the table, who would you invite? Where would you host it? What are you making for dinner? What party game would you play?

Liv: While I was writing this play, I watched a few ballets and documentaries for inspiration, and I was very drawn to José Martinez, a former etoile for the Paris Opera Ballet, and Wendy Whelan, a former principal dancer of the New York City Ballet. They’re very strong and passionate when they dance and I want to know everything they know. I’d host it back home in Florida near a lake because the weather is nice. There’s a seafood soup I like to make so I’d whip that up for them. And no party games. They make my anxiety spike. Just good conversation and music.

Liv Matthews is a playwright from Central Florida. Her ten-minute play, “Home Going,” was produced by Playwrights’ Round Table in Orlando and is published in The Best 10 Minutes Plays of 2015 by Smith and Kraus. She has worked at the Alliance Theatre, first as a literary intern and then as the Kenny Leon Fellow. Her short play co-written with Dre Camacho, “White Picket Fence,” was produced by Working Title Playwrights in Atlanta. Her full-length plays explore family dynamics, the complexities of young women and teens, and the oddities and magic of the Sunshine State. And there’s often at least one dance number! When not writing, Liv can be found working through Chrissy Teigen’s cookbook Cravings, dancing to Beyoncé, and watching Desus and Mero on Viceland.


She Moves in Her Own Way

by Liv Matthews
1:30 pm, Friday April 27th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

Three seconds on the clock. Rolling Hills Middle School is down by two. All eyes are on point guard Alex Williams. She dribbles, pliés, and shoots the ball. It pirouettes in the rim and Alex’s mind leaps across time to her coach and former Atlanta Hawks player Anthony Prince. As the athletes wait for the ball to land, Alex’s journey through basketball and dance begins a duet with Anthony’s distant rise to NBA stardom.

Tickets for the Stage Readings are FREE and open to the public. 

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Interview with 1st Year MFA Jean Egdorf about Her Seabury Reading: How to Bake a Genoise Sponge without Breaking Any Eggs

  • April 24, 2018
  • by ouplaywrights
  • · Current Students · Festival · News · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

The 24th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival officially opens tonight! The featured, Thesis Productions of our Third Year MFA Playwrights debut this weekend in Kantner Hall on the Elizabeth Evans Baker Stage. To celebrate the opening of the featured productions, and leading up to the festival staged readings on the 26th, 27th, and 28th, we will be featuring daily interviews with the current playwrights about their work. We’ve interviewed the 3rd Year MFA Playwrights, Philana, Cristina, and Natasha on their Featured Thesis Productions, and the 2nd Year MFA Playwrights, Inna, Katherine, and Trip about their Staged Readings. Next, we’ll learn more about the three 1st Year MFA Playwrights and their first full-length readings as part of the festival at OU!


First Year MFA Jean Egdorf (pictured below!) was interviewed by Second Year MFA Trip Venturella about her play, How to Bake a Genoise Sponge without Breaking Any Eggs.

_MG_2815Trip Venturella: Your play centers on Melissa, a young woman with a popular online cooking show, who is aided by the figures of Sylvia Plath and Julia Child. If you had two spirits to help you with a cooking show, who would they be and why?

Jean Egdorf: The inspiration to make a Julia Child-esque character is pretty self-indulgent. Who wouldn’t want to have the spirit of Julia Child in the kitchen with them? I’ve spent hours watching her old cooking and baking episodes on PBS. Her energy and passion for cooking is so infectious; it would not only make cooking amazingly fun (more so, I already love being in the kitchen), but I bet the amount I’d learn from her would be tremendous.

The second spirit I’d want in my kitchen is still alive, but I’d choose Alton Brown. I love how he combines science with cooking, it’s so obvious yet so ingenious. I’m personally pretty haphazard in the kitchen when it comes to measurements (science? schmience!), and I bet my recipes would improve if I had someone reminding me why the science really matters. I have a line in my play about the chemical reactions that happen during baking, and if Alton Brown were there, he could actually explain them. I think in both these answers my secret desire is to be around people I’d learn a lot from.

Trip: I love that you’re working with Sylvia and Julia, by the way. What was the inspiration for using those figures in particular?

Jean: In our first semester, we had an assignment in a class from MFA Alum and School of Theatre Superstar Merri Biechler to come up with three seemingly disparate ideas that could come together for a project. I really wanted to write a play about baking, and I had always wanted to write a play somehow involving Sylvia Plath, so wondered: how would those two ideas come together? How do they connect? And then I remembered that Sylvie Plath committed suicide by gas poisoning after sealing off her kitchen and sticking her head in an open oven (sorry, morbid, I know). But suddenly how she was connected to a story about baking became clear… because I wasn’t going to just write a story about baking, but baking connected to dealing with mental illness. If Sylvia represented the side of the play dealing with mental illness, then Julia Child popped up as the clear choice to represent baking.

Trip: While often quite funny, your play deals with heavy topics: mental illness, depression, suicide. What do you hope audiences will learn about these topics once they’ve walked away from your play?

Jean: I think that mental illness, like many other conditions, is a part of the person living with it; how each individual lives with and manages that illness is a subjective process. Therapy and medication are important tools in that process, so I hope I don’t undermine their role in effective treatment, but I think that both as approaches raise interesting questions about what mental illness looks like for every individual and what “getting better” may mean for someone seeking to manage their symptoms. For Melissa, her mental illness is a part of her; in trying to override or remove that part of her life, what might she have to sacrifice instead? While I want to engage the audience with mental illness and how society as a whole tends to view it, I don’t know that I’m specifically looking to teach the audience anything concrete beyond being open to see the experience of mental illness as unique as the individual living with it, because this is only one young woman’s journey.

Trip: Melissa, like all of us, contains multitudes. What different creative personalities exist in you? How do you balance them in your own life, and your own writing?

Jean: So you know those right-brain/left-brain personality tests that pop up on social media every few months? My Facebook is a sea of right-brain people. Most of the people I know are in theatre or the arts in some capacity. So, right-brained makes sense, we’re all in the arts. But I’m an outlier. I’m consistently left-brained. My second favorite thing to write after plays is academic, critical essays of literature (citing peer reviewed journals, picking apart single lines of multi-hundred word novels, finding connections between other canonical works and theories, the works). I’m uber-analytical in everything I do, probably to a fault, but I think my penchant for analyzing minute connections is what makes my artistic style my own.

I’m also a stage manager, so of course superhuman detail-focus and organization are part of my success in that career. But even as a stage manager, my love for the work was for my role in the storytelling process. Overseeing the artistic integrity of a production and pulling the puppet strings which execute all the tiny pieces that create a cohesive collaboration is thrilling; I think that the intimate understanding of a play that is required from a stage manager has a lot of overlap with the effective construction of a story by a playwright.

Trip: On that topic, what dialogue are you attempting to have with Plath and Child’s work (poetry, cooking) in your play?

Jean: I cut the specific line (kill your darlings…), but I had Melissa say at some point that poetry is a lot like a recipe, only with images and language instead of ingredients. Melissa’s engagement with baking is very poetic; I think she sees putting a recipe together as artistic a craft as writing poetry, and so her language to describe her recipes reflects that. Both Julia Child and Sylvie Plath were incredibly passionate and committed to their crafts, and I think that’s the spirit I wanted them to bring most to the play.

Trip: For a long time you lived in Creede, Colorado; population 400. How have you adjusted to livin’ the fast life in the big city of Athens, OH?

Jean: I love small towns. I’m not a city girl. I lived in Denver for a decade, and that was too much. My hometown in New Mexico is also smaller than Athens, so the majority of my life has been spent in places where businesses close before midnight, the closest Walmart is 45 minutes to over an hour away, where there’s only one bar, where kids (and dogs…) roam around the streets in general safety without parental supervision, where you can look up in the sky at night and see billions of stars thanks to an utter lack of light pollution. Again I’m in a weird minority: Athens feels big to me. The size to traffic ratio is all off. I’m actually looking forward to the summer when we hit “the off season” with the student body majority gone.

But it is really convenient to be able to buy groceries at off hours of the night and order a pizza at two in the morning.

Also, did you know there’s a lot of oxygen here?! I’ve never in my life lived this close to sea level (prior to this, the lowest elevation I ever lived in was in the Mile High City itself… 5280 represent!). Breathing normally is weird.


Jean Egdorf was born and raised in a small town in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Her plays often feature young women from a small town, and her work is often influenced by the deserts and isolation of the southwest. Jean is a member of the Actors’ Equity Association and has worked for the past decade as a stage manager and dramaturg. Her full-length plays include The Flood and Poetic License Will Be Taken. Her short plays have been produced in Colorado, and her short dramaturgical essays have been published for the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Jean worked six seasons with the Creede Repertory Theatre (CRT) where she co-developed the CRT Company Generated Ten-Minute Play Festival, now entering its fifth year, and currently serves as a member of CRT’s Headwaters New Play Festival reading committee.


How to Bake a Genoise Sponge without Breaking Any Eggs

by Jean Egdorf
1:00 pm, Thursday April 26th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

Hello, bakers! Thank you for joining me for this very special episode of Melissa B’s Genoise. Today we’re making the trickiest cake there is: the genoise sponge. I better be able to perfect this recipe if I’m going to make it studying pastry at Le Cordon Bleu! My mom and my therapist think I’ll crumble under the stress, but I’m sure with help of my friends, Ms. J and Sylvie, neither me or my cake will fall apart.

Tickets for the Stage Readings are FREE and open to the public. 

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Interview with 2nd Year MFA Trip Venturella about His Seabury Reading: The Water Baby

  • April 23, 2018
  • by ouplaywrights
  • · Current Students · Festival · News · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

The 24th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival officially opens tonight! The featured, Thesis Productions of our Third Year MFA Playwrights debut this weekend in Kantner Hall on the Elizabeth Evans Baker Stage. To celebrate the opening of the featured productions, and leading up to the festival staged readings on the 26th, 27th, and 28th, we will be featuring daily interviews with the current playwrights about their work. We’ve interviewed the 3rd Year MFA Playwrights, Philana, Cristina, and Natasha on their Featured Thesis Productions, now learn a little more about the upcoming staged readings presented by the 2nd and 1st Year MFA Playwrights!


Second Year MFA Trip Venturella (pictured below!) was interviewed by Third Year MFA Natasha Renee Smith about his play, The Water Baby.

tripp

 

Natasha (Nat) Renee Smith: This is the second play you’ve written about this family. What is it about their story that speaks to you?

Trip Venturella: Is “I’m lazy” an acceptable answer? Probably not.

I started writing something last May that involved a story crashing to the ground. I didn’t quite know what it meant at the time, but I new I needed a vehicle to examine the promises and security that vanish when a powerful story collapses. I decided on an intergenerational tale, one that would take place over several decades. I have also been interested in stories from my own family. How has my family’s relationship to the United States changed from when my Great-Great Grandparents sailed over to today? How might we view what my ancestors said and did when they first arrived in the United States today? To be fair, there is virtually nothing in the story of Theo Tombras that resembles the stories of my family. What I am interested in is the way a dream can betray you, and how you recover from that.

Nat: You use a lot of mythical elements in your playwriting. Why do you think you’re so drawn to that type of storytelling?

Trip: I like you calling my writing “mythical!” I have always been interested in the fables, myths, and stories onstage because they give me a chance to explore interior world externally. If we watch a play to see human stories – a protagonist overcoming their worst fears, or two lovers trying to be together despite the odds – mythic elements provide an avenue to externalize the psychological turmoil of the people onstage. There are other techniques to achieve the same ends, expressionistic, naturalistic, and surreal, but myth has the advantage of being grandiose. I like stories that have a wide sweep, a bit of a religious feel to them, so I think that’s why I’m drawn to that type of storytelling.

Nat: What parallels do you notice between 1930s America and today?

Trip: They are numerous. First, a major economic calamity defined that entire decade, much as it has this decade. The specifics of the economy is very different between then and now – inequality is much worse today, for example – but I think there is a similar sense of exertion as we’ve lifted ourselves up out of the wreckage created by unchecked financialization. Second, and this is something mostly forgotten, the late 20’s and 30’s were a time of intense xenophobia. Immigrants from Southern Europe, as well as their decedents, were not yet accepted as full citizens. The Immigration Act of 1924 had slowed immigration to a trickle, and that, on top of the desperation of the depression, created a country that was openly hostile to immigrants. Finally, the Hoover administration was one of the most incompetent administrations in American history. Not only did they worsen the effects of the Depression by imposing tariffs and adhering to the gold standard, but they scapegoated Mexican-Americans as a convenient nemesis during the downturn. The idiotic polity resulting from said scapegoating was the Mexican Repatriation Program. The federal government deported between one and two million people. The majority of them were citizens.

So, as you can see, there are several parallels, and they are the reason I became interested in this time period for this play. Contemporary events are often discussed as if they have no precedent, but I think if we don’t look at today’s world in the context of history, we end up repeating the same mistakes. I, personally, would rather not have this decade, or the next decade, or any decade after that, end the way the 1930’s ended.

Nat: One of the ideas of this play is how our consciences can viscerally affect us. Have you ever had something like that happen in your life?

Trip: I’m a fairly conscientious person, so I try not to get into situations where my conscience is bugging me, but I can provide an example that will make me look lame, but provides evidence for why I write about conscience so often. A while ago, my family and I had stopped off the highway at a brewery in Western Massachusetts. It was a fairly large brewery with a restaurant attached, with all the trappings – good burgers, board games in a loft above the bar, signature beer glasses, and whatnot. Now, we are a large family and all of us are adults, so we spent a considerable amount of money on drinks and food. Some members of my family (who shall remain nameless but who, as a hint to our readers, gave birth to me) took this as license to slip some of the brewery’s signature beer glasses into their purse and walk out the door with them. I considered this to be both bad and wrong. I realize that the beer glasses probably cost fifty cents apiece, and we undoubtedly spent enough money there for the brewery to purchase an entire phalanx of beer glasses, but damn if I did not feel deeply guilty walking out of that brewery. In retrospect, it is kind of nice to have those glasses as a memory of that trip with my family (yes, I kept one of them), nicer than it would have been to not experience the pang of guilt I felt walking out of the brewery. I think I write about conscience so much because I’m interested in the judgements we have to make while it bears down on us, and the consequences of those decisions in retrospect. What if the decision our conscience is telling us to make is really the wrong one? What if we are really supposed to take those beer glasses? As I enjoy looking things at their inverse, so I enjoy looking at our conscience as it is refracted through time. And no, I’m not endorsing stealing beer glasses from breweries.

Nat: What relationship in this play fascinates you the most?

Trip: I think the heart of the story is the conflict between Theo, a man who isn’t who he says he is, and Alexandra, a woman seeking a new life in America. Both of them have their reasons for believing in the “American Dream,” and their disillusion with it is experienced as disillusionment with each other. They both want better things for themselves, but the way they seek those better things put them at odds, until it finally crashes to the ground. When it does, though, what comes out of the wreckage? Come see “The Water Baby,” and find out!


Trip Venturella’s full-length plays include Killer Maples: The Musical! (Yelling Man Theatre), Shahid, and The Water Baby (both OU Seabury Quinn Playfest). He has acted, directed, and written with the human rights group ANHAD: Kashmir, Delhi University in New Delhi, Floating Space Theatre Company in Sri Lanka, and served as the Director of Development of Apollinaire Theatre Company in Boston. His work as a dramaturg includes Stupid F*cking Bird (Ohio University Theatre Division), and this summer, Next to Normal (Tantrum Theater). His essays on the intersection of art and urban planning have appeared in HowlRound.


The Water Baby

by Trip Venturella, directed by Ernesto Ponce
4:00 pm, Saturday April 28th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

The year is 1930, and Theofanis Tombras has returned from his tour of duty in the Marines with an unnamed baby in tow. He finds a country bruised by economic crisis; Alexandra, his arranged fiancée, stranded across the ocean; and an unlikely opportunity offered by an old friend. As a better life beckons, it becomes clear to his young family that Theo will sacrifice nearly anything to sustain his growing ambition, and contain the specters of his past.

Tickets for the Stage Readings are FREE and open to the public. 

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