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Tag: Chicago

Sarah Bowden has a new play in Chicago!

  • September 12, 2016
  • by catherineforever666
  • · alumni · Chicago · Events · News

Check out alum Sarah Bowden’s new play in Chicago this week!

Below is an announcement about it by Rachel Bykowski, current third year playwright and Literary Manager of 20%theater:

“I’m sure some of you have heard that my theatre company 20% Theatre Company Chicago is doing something a little different this season. For our 14th season, we are featuring 20 new plays written by 20 emerging female playwrights. We just wrapped up our Snapshots 10-minute play festival in August and are now kicking off our workshop presentation series with the new play Lively Stones by Sarah Bowden.

Sarah is a fellow Ohio MFA Playwriting alum and currently living in Chicago. When Sarah first shared with me her script for Lively Stones I was blown away by her heartbreaking subtleties in this insightful play as Sarah’s characters demonstrate how no matter if it is the 1600’s or the 2000’s, we as women are still in a battle for the right to have control over our own bodies.”

Here is more about the play: Tired of delivering babies and doling out witch hazel in her living room, midwife Anne Hutchinson pines for Planned Parenthood: circa 1636.  When Massachusetts founder John Winthrop announces his plans to run for governor, Anne agrees to support his election — if he’ll grant her the land to build a women’s clinic in Boston.  Amid mounting campaign promises, she becomes one pebble in a full bucket, and Anne must figure out how to lay her clinic’s cornerstone while stemming the suspicions of the colony’s most important citizen. Lively Stones was a participant in the 2016 DarkRoom.

Congratss Sarah! Come see the Workshop Presentation of Lively Stones starting September 14th!

 

Details

September 14th – 17th, 2016

Berry United Methodist Church (4754 N. Leavitt), Chicago, IL

Wednesday – Saturday at 8:00.

 

More about Sarah

Sarah Bowden is a teaching artist, whose plays have been produced in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Stockholm. Her work has been developed and presented by the Painted Bride Art Center, the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, the Nylon Fusion Theatre, Monkeyman Productions, the Greenhouse Theater Center, the Chicago Madness Collective, and Ohio University. Her full-length The Magnificent Masked Hearing Aid was listed as a semi-finalist in several theatre festivals, including the Capital Repertory Next Act! New Play Summit, the Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte’s nuVoices Festival, the Activate Midwest New Play Festival and the Elgin Cultural Commission Page to Stage Program. The script received Honorable Mention in the American Blues Theater Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Sarah has won the White-Howells English Prize for Drama and the Margaret W. Baker Prize for Fiction, was a finalist in the Route 66 Theatre Test Drive Workshop, and a semi-finalist for the Stage Left Theatre Playwright Residency. She has developed her work as a finalist in the International Thespian Festival’s Playworks program. She has completed internships with Chicago Dramatists, Northlight Theatre, Arden Theatre Company, the Wilma Theater, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and the Adirondack Theatre Festival. Sarah holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Ohio University and B.A. in directing and creative writing from Beloit College, and teaches theatre and composition at Benedictine University and Prairie State College.

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Laura Jacqmin featured in Victory Garden’s Ignition Festival!

  • August 3, 2016
  • by catherineforever666
  • · Chicago · News

Alumni Laura Jacqmin has a new play in Victory Garden’s New works Festival which runs this weekend, August 5th-7th in Chicago!!  The website describes the Ignition festival: the Ignition Festival of New Plays is a national annual festival devoted to fostering a community of support for the development of outstanding new plays and nurturing relationships with emerging and established playwrights.  All readings are free and open to the public.”

Laura’s new play is called “EOM(end of message)” and here is the blurb “When the milestone date on their new video game is suddenly moved up – the week before Thanksgiving – a ragtag team of game developers must camp out at the office for seven days straight, crunching to meet an impossible deadline.”  Looks funn!!

Go check it out if your in Chicago!! Congrats Laura!

 

 

Go see the reading!

Saturday August 6th, Začek-McVay Theater | 7:30pm

The Cast:
Owais Ahmed
Jordan Brodess
Coby Goss
Casey Morris
Kelly O’Sullivan
Alec Silver

Theater Location

2433 North Lincoln Avenue | Chicago, IL 60614
Administration: 773.549.5788 | Tickets: 773.871.3000

 

More about Laura

Laura Jacqmin is a Chicago-based playwright, TV writer and video game writer, originally from Cleveland.

Plays: Residence (40th Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville); January Joiner (Long Wharf Theatre); Ski Dubai (Steppenwolf Theatre); A Third (Finborough Theatre London); Look, we are breathing (Rivendell Theatre Ensemble; Sundance Theatre Lab); Dental Society Midwinter Meeting (Williamstown Theatre Festival; Chicago Dramatists/At Play, 16th Street Theater); Ghost Bike (Buzz22 Chicago). Awards: Wasserstein Prize, two NEA Art Works Grants, ATHE-Kennedy Center David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award, two MacDowell Fellowships, Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.

Television: “Grace and Frankie” (Netflix);  “Lucky 7” (ABC). Video Games: “Minecraft: Story Mode” (Telltale Games). She received her BA from Yale University, and earned an MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University. Founding member, The Kilroys.

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Two Alums are up to exciting things this summer!

  • July 13, 2016
  • by catherineforever666
  • · alumni · News

Both Jacquelyn Reingold and Leean Kim Torske have exciting summer news!  Reingold has a new TV show which she is writing/producing called “BrainDead” currently on CBS.  It premiered Monday, June 13th at 10PM on CBS and is currently running. It was created by the “Good Wife” creators and ,” it centers on the Capitol in Washington, D.C., where alien bugs infect members of Congress.”(Wikipedia)

Leean Kim Torske just started a new theater company in Chicago with Mary Rose O’Connor called The Blue Ring.”  The company is working with a lot of exciting new writers, including OU alum Mark Chrisler.  Their Fractured Atlas page reads, “The Blue Ring produces plays about characters who are lacking in resources, experience, or information and are working through issues reflective of current events.  Our name is inspired by our spirit animal, the blue ringed octopus, which is beautiful, malleable, slightly unexpected, and through evolution has become deadlier over time.”  The Blue Ring has a fundraiser this Sunday night, July 17th in Chicago, go check it out!

 

More about Leean

Leean Kim Torske is a Chicago-based Korean/Norwegian-American playwright and dramaturg from the great state of Wyoming. She earned her MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University and her MA in Literary Studies from the University of Wyoming. Her play Pity Party is featured in Smith & Kraus’s anthology 105 Five-Minute Plays for Study and Performance, publication fall 2016. She is the co-founder and co-Artistic Director of The Blue Ring in Chicago, IL. Leean has been an Artistic Engagement Associate with Steppenwolf Theatre Company since June 2012.

 

More about Jacquelyn

Jacquelyn Reingold writes for theatre and television. She is currently a writer/producer for BRAINDEAD, created by Robert and Michele King, airing on CBS starting June 2016. She wrote for Netflix’s GRACE AND FRANKIE, created by Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris, starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston. Other TV writing includes: NBC’s SMASH (Executive Producer, Theresa Rebeck), HBO’s Peabody Award winning IN TREATMENT (Executive Producer, Warren Leight), writing the “Mia” episodes for Emmy nominated Hope Davis and Gabriel Byrne. Recent plays include: I KNOW in Ensemble Studio Theatre’s One-act Marathon and UP AND DOWN for Christine Jones’ Theatre for One. Other plays include STRING FEVER at Ensemble Studio Theatre, starring Cynthia Nixon and Evan Handler, also produced at Playhouse West in California, and in Washington DC at Theatre J. She wrote an episode of the serialized play, CEDAR CITY FALLS, created and produced by Liz Tuccillo. Her one-acts THEY FLOAT UP, and A VERY VERY SHORT PLAY were produced in ’10 and ’08 at Ensemble Studio Theatre. Another one-act 2B (OR NOT 2B) was produced at The Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2009. Her full length play, A STORY ABOUT A GIRL was part of the JAW Playwrights Festival at Portland Center Stage, Oregon, and was workshopped at The Williamstown Theatre in ’13. Her other plays: GIRL GONE, 2B (OR NOT 2B), ACAPULCO, FOR-EVERETT, DEAR KENNETH BLAKE, DOTTIE AND RICHIE, TUNNEL OF LOVE, JILEY & LEDNERG, JOE AND STEW’S THEATRE, LOST AND FOUND, A.M.L., and FREEZE TAG have been produced or workshopped in New York at the MCC Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Naked Angels, HB Playwrights Theatre, the Drama League at HERE, All Seasons Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, and the Working Theatre; in Los Angeles; at theatres across the country; in London, Berlin, Belgrade, New Zealand, Australia, and Hong Kong.     

 

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Charles Smith has play at the Goodman’s development series in Chicago!

  • November 2, 2015
  • by catherineforever666
  • · Chicago · News

Head of Ohio MFA Playwriting’s program, Charles Smith, has his new play “Objects in the Mirror” going up at Goodman Theater’s New Stages Development series.  The piece runs October 30th through November 15th.  For an exclusive video and more info about this exciting production click here

Here is a brief synopsis of he piece: In 2009, playwright Charles Smith traveled to Adelaide, Australia to see a production of his play Free Man of Color. The production featured a young Liberian actor named Shedrick Yarkpai in the title role. Smith got to know the young actor and learned about his tumultuous journey from war-torn Liberia, through a number of refugee camps in Western Africa, before his final relocation to Australia. Objects in the Mirror was inspired by Shedrick’s remarkable odyssey. It tells the story of a young immigrant’s journey and his search for a new family, identity and a safe place to call home.

Congrats Charles!  Check it out if you’re in the Chicago area!

More about Charles

CHARLES SMITH (Playwright, Objects in the Mirror) Mr. Smith’s Black Star Line was commissioned and produced by Goodman Theatre. As a former member of the Victory Gardens Theater Playwrights Ensemble, Mr. Smith’s world premiere works include Knock Me a Kiss (directed by Chuck Smith); Freefall, Jelly Belly, Denmark, The Sutherland and Cane (all directed by Dennis Začek); Takunda and the Jeff Award-winning Free Man of Color (directed by Andrea J. Diamond). His plays Gospel According to James (also directed by Chuck Smith), Sister Carrie and Les Tois Dumas were all commissioned and produced by Indiana Repertory Theatre. His play Pudd’nhead Wilson was commissioned and produced off-Broadway by The Acting Company after a national tour. His work has also been produced at various theaters nationally and in Australia, and may be obtained through Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing, Northwestern Press, Swallow Press and other publishers. Mr. Smith currently teaches playwriting at Ohio University.

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Bianca Sams play “Rust On Bone” will receive a reading in Chicago with Babes with Blades this weekend!

  • July 7, 2015
  • by catherineforever666
  • · alumni · Chicago · Events · News

Alumni Bianca Sams thesis play Rust on Bone will be read as part of Babes With Blades Fighting Words Series. The reading will take place this Sunday, July 12th at Noon in Chicago! !!!  There will be another developmental reading with the company this September!

Babes with Blades is an awesome woman friendly company that strives to work with female playwrights and tell story stories with strong female protagonists!  Here is their mission: Babes With Blades Theatre Company uses stage combat to place women and their stories center stage. Through performance, script development, training, and outreach, our ensemble creates theatre that explores the wide range of the human experience, and cultivates broader perspectives in the arts community and in society as a whole.  Congrats Bianca on this awesome development opportunity!!  If you’re in Chicago, you best check it out!!

Details

Babes with Blades Theater

Sunday, July 12th, 12pm

Heartland Studio 7016 N. Glenwood

More info on the Fighting Words Series with Babes with Blades

Playwrights selected for the Fighting Words program will receive a set of three readings to facilitate the development of their script. Each play will be assigned a director who will take part in the development process from the start. All readings and moderated talk backs are videotaped and given to the playwright to aid with rewrites.
The first reading is internal and is attended by company members and the director; the playwright is invited but not sponsored. The second reading is an advertised public reading; the playwright is invited but not sponsored. The final reading is an advertised public reading with one choreographed fight and a reception following the moderated talk back; the playwright’s travel expenses will be sponsored up to $400 to attend. The playwright is given approximately two months between drafts for revisions with a schedule provided at the time of selection.

BACKGROUND: Many scripts have completed the Fighting Words program since its inception, and several have gone on to full productions with the Babes.

R.L. Nesvet’s The Girl in the Iron Mask was selected for BWBTC’s 2006-07 season and was produced at the Raven Theatre, March – April 2007. Jennifer L. Mickelson’s The Last Daughter of Oedipus was produced at the Lincoln Square Theatre in August – September 2010, as the opening show in BWBTC’s 2010-11 season. Barbara Lhota’s The Double launched BWBTC’s 2011-12 season with a production in fall 2011. Reina Hardy’s Susan Swayne and the Bewildered Bride opened BWBTC’s 15th Anniversary season, 2012-13, in fall 2012. Eric Simon’s Bo Thomas and the Case of the Sky Pirates and Aaron Adair’s L’Imbecile premiered during BWBTC’s 2013-14 season.

More about Bianca

If the theater is a cultural and social crossroad in our society — a place where disparate ideas and values meet, collide and diverge again, — then Bianca’s plays are violent intersections that force audiences to face their own complex love affair with misery. She writes plays to create understanding between people of all cultural backgrounds by asking them to wrestle with the traumatic things in life that can simultaneously pull us apart and hold us together as humans. ” Because, let’s face it, no matter your cultural or sociopolitical background, shit happens and that fact makes pain a great equalizer.” Bianca’s work examines what happens when characters meet at these perilous crossroads in their lives.

As a female playwright of color, she is drawn to stories that question the roles of women, ethnicity, and family in modern society, that deal with the search for self in the collective identity and which explore underlying connective threads of mankind.  Bianca weaves hot button social issues into her work because growing up in the politically active San Francisco Bay Area instilled a drive to create art that “holds as it ‘twere a mirror up to nature”.  She hopes that through watching a dynamic dramatization of these issues unfold before their eyes, she will engage the audience in a visceral manner that convicts them to do something about it. You can see the fingerprints of  her approach in her full length plays, At The Rivers End, Battle Cry, Rust On Bone, Black. Irish., Just Porgy, Rise Phoenix Rise and Summer Nights & Fireflies.

Awards and honors include KCACTF Lorraine Hansberry (2nd place), Rosa Parks Award (2nd place), Kennedy Center/Eugene O’Neill New Play Conference fellow, Jane Chambers Student Playwright Award/Athe (2nd Place), Scott McPherson Playwright Award, The Playwright Center Core Apprentice (2014), Playwright Foundation BAPF (finalist), Eugene O’Neill NPC (semi-finalist), TRI Research Fellowship at Ohio State University, Nashville Rep/Ingram New Works Lab Playwright-in-residence , Warner Brothers TV Writers Workshop, and T. S. Eliot Acting Fellowship. Click HERE for a copy of Bianca’s Artistic Statement. 

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David Robinson selected for Steppenwolf First Look Series!

  • May 28, 2015
  • by catherineforever666
  • · alumni · News

Ou Alum David Robinson’s play “The Imaginary Music Critic Who Doesn’t Exist” has been selected for the prestigious “First Look Series” at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago!  This is his play that was previously selected for the Eugene O Neill summer residency.  Each year 6 plays are selected.  Here is how they describe the series: Join us this summer for an early look at work in progress from some of the most dynamic playwrights in the field. Now in its 10th season, First Look develops new plays for future production at Steppenwolf and other theaters across the country.

The festival runs this August 11th through the 16th!  Check it out if you’re in Chicago!  Congrats David!

Here’s a synopsis of the play: Lacey is a tattooed rock journalist who runs an influential summer music festival. When a major act drops out, Lacey saves the fest by booking the gifted but controversial MC #Frankie. But Lacey’s coworkers take issue with #Frankie’s misogynist lyrics, threatening to unravel everything she’s built.

You can read the press release here

and to get tickets/more info click here

More about David

David Mitchell Robinson is likely a playwright because growing up in the frosty Twin Cities suburbs requires one to develop a surplus of indoor, isolation-intensive hobbies. So far, his goal to write a play about every place he’s ever lived has resulted in Carapace (Minneapolis), Olympic Village (Atlanta), The Imaginary Music Critic Who Doesn’t Exist (Chicago), and Terminals (airplanes).

These and other plays have been produced, developed, or commissioned by the Alliance Theatre, Center Theatre Group, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Primary Stages, the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Actor’s Express, Forum Theatre, Theater J, B Street Theatre, the Inkwell, Rep Stage, Ohio University, Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, Rorschach Theatre, the Source Festival, Field Trip Theatre, and the Horn Project. Carapace is available through Samuel French.

David has been the winner of the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition and the Scott McPherson Playwriting Award as well a nominee for the PoNY Fellowship, the Lanford Wilson Award, the Terrence McNally Award, and a Suzi Bass Award. He has also been a finalist for such programs as the Jerome Fellowship, the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission, NNPN’s Smith Prize Commission, InterAct Theatre’s 20/20 Commission, the Lark’s Playwrights’ Week, the NNPN Showcase of New Plays, and the Source Festival’s Full Length Plays.

He holds an MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University and a BA in Literature/Theater from the New College of Florida. He currently lives in DC, where he is working on his plays about Baltimore and southeast Ohio.

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Ryan Patrick Dolan interviewed by us about his play in the Seabury Quin Playfest!

  • April 16, 2015
  • by catherineforever666
  • · Chicago · Current Students · Festival · News · Reading

Hey y’all!  Who is getting excited for the Seabury Quinn Playfest this April!!  Our last interview in our series is one of everyone’s favorite OU Second-Year Playwrights, Ryan Patrick Dolan!  Ryan has become well known in the playwriting program for his honest and realll humor, his improv background and of course his love of Chicago!  Read my full interview with him below and learn more about him and his awesome new play at Seabury Quinn, BAIT SHOP.

What was your inspiration for “Bait Shop”?  Did you start off with an image, a person you know etc…

I used to spend my summers in Northern Michigan at a cabin with my family. There was a hardware story in a small, little town called Cedar. We used to buy worms from there to go fishing when I was young boy. I spent every summer there from the age of 3 to 18. My parents got divorced and I didn’t go back for twenty years. Then two summers ago, my dad rented a house, and my big sister and her family, and my little sis, my step-mom, and even my mom all went back to spend a week there. Some stuff had changed, but I was blown away by how much was the same. Some of the same locals still worked the same jobs. Some of our favorite restaurants looked exactly the same. We went on a charter boat once a year fishing on Lake Michigan. The guy who take us, Bob, was this real character. He’s kind of the inspiration for John, although Bobs life is nothing like his. Bob is married and had kids. I remember though as a kid when Bob would talk about partying with the other charter captains and their assistants and sometimes sleep on their boats since they had to go out at 6am the next day. They would drink at a bar called the Bluebird my big sister used to waitress at in college. My sis said she made a ton of money there. The Bluebird hasn’t changed at all. It looks exactly the same. The fishing town is the same. Bob is the same except he’s grayer, but so am I.

Also, the play kicks off with a friend of John’s dying. It’s a real shock to John cause he’s 40. I’ve lost two friends from the improv community in the last couple of years. Both in their 40s. Improv comedians tend to drink and party more than a normal adult. That suspended sense of adolescence smashing into the reality of getting older, and starting to lose friends and realizing life wasn’t going to last forever was something I wanted to explore. I thought the setting in Michigan would be a good place to do it.  Nobody ever thinks they’re old. Everyone thinks they are the same person they were at 22 or 25. Younger people expect older adults to know more things or have things figure out or to have a sense of wisdom. There is wisdom in getting older, but nobody has anything figured out.

 

You  started off in the Chicago Improv scene!  What is a quality/skill you learned from improvisation that has helped your playwriting?

There are so many ways that improvisation has made me a better writer. Writing is really about editing, and doing and watching a ton of improv has made me a good editor when it comes to pacing, and knowing when stuff is too wordy, or the audience is not engaged. When I’m hearing my words in front of an audience, it’s become second nature to me to know when the audience is with the piece and when stuff isn’t clicking. That is a huge advantage when I’m rewriting my work.

It’s made me better with dialogue. I’ve improvised thousands of scenes that started with nothing. It taught me how to build a scene by two characters having to react to the last thing said. Or if someone makes a tangent or changes the course of the conversation in a scene, there’s usually a reason why that change has made, a tactic for the character and the actor playing that character. Also, people bounce around topics sometimes when talking. So you can go on a tangent, and then bounce it back to what someone was originally talking about. Being superfamiliar on how people talk and listen to each other in a way that the audience finds engaging is vitally important to me.

Obviously, I’ve made people laugh a ton, and failed at making people laugh a ton, and watched others do the same. You get to have an innate sense of what is funny on the page, and how it might translate to the stage. If something doesn’t work on stage, however, sometimes it might just be the wait it’s set up in the writing or how it’s delivered. So, having all that background in humor helps me figure out how to fix things much more efficiently, or to know when something isn’t working and know it’s better to cut it and move on.

Some writers are really married to their words and push against changes or suggestions by directors or actors or dramaturgs. I’ve improvised for over ten years. Every show that is successful was because I had to constantly collaborate with everyone else on stage with you. Afterward, we’d always try to figure why things worked and didn’t work. I learned pretty quickly that someone else is always going to have a really good instinct or idea that’s just as good as mine. You have to constantly figure out when to push your thing in improv or know when to give over or learn how to do both. I use that when I collaborate on my script. There are no bad ideas in the rehearsal room. If I know what I’m doing and trust my talent and voice, I always know that the words are going to be mine and I can always come up with something else that’s funny if a scene or a joke needs to go.

Finally, (this much longer than you thought, isn’t it?) the type of improvisation I do in Chicago is called “long form.” Usually, a show will start with three or more different “threads” or scenes that are completely distinct from each other, where the characters do not know each other or share the same world. Then as the show goes along, you start mixing these worlds, and their ideas, characters and themes together. Some of my plays, like “Moraine,” my first year play, jumped back and forth in time in what seemed to be unconnected ways. As the play pushed towards the climax, the audience could figure out how they all connected to tell one cohesive story. This is a real pain in the ass way to create a play, and I don’t always want to create something that way, but it’s cool when I’m able to pull it off.

 

Word on the street is you are a major Katy Perry fan!  If your play was a Katy Perry Song, which would it be and why?

She hasn’t written it yet. She’s waiting to collaborate with me on it.

What is a fun fact most people don’t know about you?

I have a real stupid tattoo that I got when I was 19. It doesn’t bother me, but it’s dumb. Don’t get a tattoo. At some point, you realize they’re not worth it. It doesn’t make you any more original than when you don’t have one.

You’ve read about and now are supa into RYANNNN!  Now Come check out the reading of his play “BAIT SHOP” at the 21st Annual Seabury Quinn PlayFest at 8pm SATURDAY, APRIL 25th at 4pm in Baker Theater!

Here is the blurb for it:

John, 40, has been working at his bait shop in Northern Michigan all his life. He’s got his fishin’, drinkin’, buddies and is livin’ the good life. He’s also been known to enjoy the company of the college-aged waitresses, who come up during the summer to make money. As he befriends a new waitress, Lauren, he receives startling news about a friend. At the same time, Janet, the first of his life, reappears out of nowhere. As John and Lauren’s friendship grows, John has to come face-to-face with his life choices, and the question: is it too late to change his path?

More about Ryan

Ryan Patrick Dolan is a second year MFA Candidate in the Ohio University Playwriting Program under Charles Smith and Erik Ramsey. He has a B.A. in playwriting from Columbia College Chicago where he studied under playwright, Lisa Schlesinger. He writes dark, comedic plays that explore love and loss, passion and destruction. Stylistically influenced by his years of improvisation, acting, and the Chicago Storefront aesthetic, he challenges the American stereotypes of gender, race, and sexuality.

Dolan’s play, “Daddy’s Little Girls,” was named a National Semifinalist for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival’s 10-minute play competition, the THE GARY GARRISON AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING TEN-MINUTE PLAY. In conjunction with KCACTF, “Daddy’s Little Girls” also garnered him one of the eight, nationwide nominations for the National Partners of American Theatre Playwriting Award which recognizes “best-written, best-crafted script with the strongest writer’s “voice.””  His full-length play,“Moraine,” had a reading at the 2014 Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwrights Festival at Ohio University, and at the Trellis Reading Series at the Greenhouse Theater Center. Moraine is being produced at CIC Theater this March and April in Chicago, and is being directed by Mary Rose O’Connor.

Dolan produced four one-act plays written by three other Ohio University playwrights and himself called “10-4: The Truck Stop Plays” at CIC Theater in Chicago in the Summer of 2014. Dolan’s one-act “Burger King,” was directed by Ashley Neal.  Ryan’s play “The Peace of Westphalia” was awarded the first-ever workshop production in the playwriting program at Columbia College. His ten-minute plays have been produced by American Theater Company, and Brown Couch Theater. Ryan was the dramaturg at RedTwist theater for Kimberly Senior’s production of “The Pillowman,” and Keira Fromm’s production of “The Lobby Hero.” Both were nominated for Jeff Awards for “Best Play” and “Best Director.” Ryan is also a 12-year veteran of the Chicago improv scene. He has primarily improvised at iO and Annoyance Theaters, but also has performed and taught workshops at numerous festivals and universities around the country with his groups Revolver and Pudding-Thank-You. He also teaches workshops to Ohio University’s improv group, “Black Sheep.” His acting credits include productions at Steppenwolf Theater’s “Next Up” series, TimeLine Theater, Collaboraction, Strawdog, and Wildclaw Theater.

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Bianca Sams ’14 thesis play “Rust on Bone” will be developed at “Babes with Blades Theater” in Chicago!

  • January 24, 2015
  • by catherineforever666
  • · alumni · News

Bianca Sams’14 play “Rust on Bone” about sexual assault and the military, will received three developmental readings with the awesome female friendly company “Babes with Blades”!

Babes With Blades Theatre Company uses stage combat to place women and their stories center stage. Through performance, script development, training, and outreach, our ensemble creates theatre that explores the wide range of the human experience, and cultivates broader perspectives in the arts community and in society as a whole.

If you are in Chicago, go check it out!

Info

FW 2015 Public Reading Schedule

Quest: 1st public read, Sunday, April 26th at 12pm
Rust on Bone: 1st public read, Sunday, July 12th at 12pm
Quest: Final public read, Sunday, June 28th at 12pm
Rust on Bone: Final public read, Sunday, September 27th at 12pm

All performances will take place at Heartland Studio located at 7016 N. Glenwood in Chicago.

More info About the development program “Fighting Words”:

Playwrights selected for the Fighting Words program will receive a set of three readings to facilitate the development of their script. Each play will be assigned a director who will take part in the development process from the start. All readings and moderated talk backs are videotaped and given to the playwright to aid with rewrites.
The first reading is internal and is attended by company members and the director; the playwright is invited but not sponsored. The second reading is an advertised public reading; the playwright is invited but not sponsored. The final reading is an advertised public reading with one choreographed fight and a reception following the moderated talk back; the playwright’s travel expenses will be sponsored up to $400 to attend. The playwright is given approximately two months between drafts for revisions with a schedule provided at the time of selection.

More about Bianca:

Bianca Sams is an Actor/Writer hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her plays are lyrical investigations of found stories out of todays headlines or the pages of history that ask audiences to face their own complex love affair with misery. She recently finished her MFA in Playwriting at Ohio University. She received her BFA from New York University’s Tisch School, where she earned the distinction of being Tisch’s first ever Triple Major (Acting, Dramatic Writing, Africana Studies). Awards and honors include KCACTF Lorraine Hansberry Award (2nd place), Rosa Parks Award (2nd place), Kennedy Center/Eugene O’Neill New Play Conference Fellow, Jane Chambers/ATHE Student Playwright Award (2nd Place), Scott McPherson Award, TRI Research Fellowship at Ohio State University, and T. S. Eliot Acting Fellowship.

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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.

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Rachel Bykowski has short play in Chicago!

  • September 17, 2014
  • by catherineforever666
  • · Chicago · Current Students · Events · News · Productions

First year playwright and Native Chicagoan, Rachel Bykowski, has an exciting new play The Invisible Ones which will be featured at Fury Theater’s “Short Attention Span Theater Fest.”  With her talent for tackling provocative subject matter and creating rich and addictive poetic language; we know this play will be awesome!  Congrats Rachel!

More info on EVENT:
Six Chicago playwrights were invited to write about their experience of being a local Chicagoan.
Dates: September 18,19,20, 25, 26, 26 at 7PM at Chase Park
Rachel is premiering her newest one act The Invisible Ones inspired by Amiri Baraka’s incredibly play Dutchman which dealt with racial tensions during the 1960’s. Bykowski’s play takes place on the Chicago Red Line and discusses the assumptions people make of others based solely on another person’s appearance and what part of the city they call home. In addition, it explores how Chicago does or does not deal with the now daily violence that plagues the city’s neighborhoods and the repercussions that violence has on its residents.

Click here for even more info on Fury Theater’s Short play Fest

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