Tag: news

Mark Chrisler’s new play “Endangered” in Chicago this Winter!

December 29, 2015
by catherineforever666
· alumni · Events · Festival · News

OU Alumni Mark Chrisler’s new play, ENDANGERED will be in Chicago this January and February! The play will be apart of the 27th annual Rhino fest in Chicago and will be produced by Prop Thtr. The play also features an OU acting alumni, Heather Chrisler!

Here is the play synopsis for ENDANGERED: Dave lives with his mother. He plays a lot of video games. And he’s been transformed into an unstoppable, marauding, murderous rhinoceros. Having exhausted all other plans to stop him, the government turns to Lillian Mountweasel, Dave’s former high-school crush. Her mission: date him. A play about the horny, the horned and the horrible.

Here is a brief summary about the festival: This year’s Rhinoceros Theater Festival will be based solely around the work of Eugene Ionesco, particularly his 1959 play, Rhinoceros, to be staged in a full production by Curious Theatre Branch co-founder Beau O’Reilly, with six weeks of new theatrical work by invited artists and companies that will engage with and reconsider this elusive writer of Absurdist theater.

Each year, Curious Theatre Branch curates and produces the Rhinoceros Theater Festival, which provides production and exhibition opportunities to hundreds of artists, drawing thousands in attendance each year. The longest-running multi-arts fringe festival in Chicago, the Rhino features works in theater and performance from Chicago companies and national artists alike.

If you are in Chicago, go check out this awesome new play! Congrats Mark!

DATES AND VENUE

When

7 p.m. Saturday, January 23
7 p.m. Saturday, January 30
7 p.m. Saturday, February 6
7 p.m. Saturday, February 13
7 p.m. Saturday, February 20
7 p.m. Saturday, February 27

Where

Prop Thtr • 3502 N. Elston, Chicago

To get more info and tickets to the show click here !!!

More about Mark

Mark Chrisler’s plays have been produced and developed at ACT, The Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, The Stella Adler Studio, The San Francisco Playhouse, Ilkhom Theatre, The Side Project, Prop Thtr, The New York International Fringe Festival, Curious Theatre Branch and many more. He received his MFA in dramatic writing from Ohio University and his BA in theater arts from Northern Illinois University. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, including a Newberry Library Fellowship, a special Orgie Award, a NAPAT New Play Award and the Best Emerging Playwright of 2010 award from The Chicago Reader. He lives in Chicago with his wife, where he serves as a resident playwright for Found Objects Theatre Group, an Artistic Associate for Prop Thtr and teaches playwriting for Silk Road Rising Theatre. His plays are available through Broadway Play Publishing and Smith & Kraus.

“Climate Change” Madness coming this Friday!

November 29, 2015
by catherineforever666
· Madness · News

The final madness of the fall semester will be produced by third year playwright, Tyler Whidden! His prompt is Climate Change Madness and it is in collaboration with the Climate Change Theater Action! He has asked the playwrights to write plays in conversation with climate change . For this special madness it will be live streamed and there will also be four guest pieces by artists affiliated with this environmental activist theater project including: by OU alumni Chantal Bilodeau, Darrah Cloud, Debra Zoe Laufer, and Koffi Kwahule.

Show is December 4th, 9pm and 11pm, in the Hahne Black Box theater. Admission is free. We recommend you get there 45 to 60 minutes ahead of time to assure yourself a seat.

CCTA is a “series of worldwide readings and performances intended to foster discussion around climate change.” At last glance, there were over 100 varying events planned worldwide during the months of November and December leading to a finale on December 11 in support of COP21 (United Nations 2015 Paris Climate Conference).

Between 25-30 American universities are participating (we’re the only one in Ohio) along with individual artists, theaters, and cultural institutions from all over the globe.

Check out the press release here

For more information about Madness the fall semester, check out our Madness page.

More about Tyler

Tyler Whidden was born and raised in Cleveland, OH where he grew up the least-talented son of a hockey-first family. After earning his BFA in Playwriting at Ohio University, he began a tragic career as a stand-up comic based out of Seattle, WA. After years of toiling on the road, he moved to Chicago where he returned to theater, studying and working with Victory Gardens and the Neo-Futurists theaters among many others. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and worked as Director of Education with the great Ensemble Theater of Cleveland. His play Dancing With N.E.D. was produced in 2012 in Cleveland and his family-friendly farce, The Unofficial Almost True Campfire Tales of Put-in-Bay was commissioned by the Put-in-Bay Arts Council as part of their Bicentennial Celebration of the Battle of Lake Erie in the Summer of 2013. He’s excited to be back where it all started and he lives with his beautiful wife, Angie — way out of his league — and their beautiful boy, Booker — his intellectual equal. http://tylerjcwhidden.com/

Qui Nguyen has new play at MTC in NYC!

November 19, 2015
by catherineforever666
· alumni · News · Productions

Alumni Qui Nguyen’s new play “Vietgone” has just been added to the 2016/17 season at Manhattan Theater Club in NYC, a prestigious Off Broadway theater. Qui has made a name for himself in NYC with geeky, fun plays like “She Kills Monsters” and “Alice in Slasherland”

Variety describes the play, “Nguyen’s play “Vietgone” remixes pop culture and his parents’ real-life backstory to chronicle a romance between Vietnamese refugees in a Middle American relocation camp. The play recently finished up a run at South Coast Repertory directed by May Adrales, who’ll also helm the MTC staging.” Read full article here

Congrats Qui on this awesome achievement!

INFO

“Vietgone” begins previews Oct. 4, 2016 ahead of an Oct. 25 opening at the larger of MTC’s two Off Broadway spaces, City Center Stage I.

More about Qui

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

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

Laura Jacqmin has play in the Humana Fest!

November 17, 2015
by catherineforever666
· alumni · News

This morning it was announced that Chicago based alumni Laura Jacqmin will have a play for the 2016 Humana Festival for New American Plays. Jacqmin’s play “Residence” will premiere at the Fest from March 2nd to April 10th. The artistic director was quoted in the article , “Its an interesting play about people coping. So many people, when you ask them how they are doing, they seem to tell you they are just hanging on and coping with life. Check out the full article here

Congrats Laura!! Check out the play if you are in the area!

Here is the full lineup:

40TH HUMANA FESTIVAL OF NEW AMERICAN PLAYS

March 2 – April 10, 2016

ON SALE NOVEMBER 18TH

For Peter Pan on her 70^th birthday
by Sarah Ruhl
directed by Les Waters
commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville

This Random World
by Steven Dietz
directed by Meredith McDonough

Residence
by Laura Jacqmin
directed by Hal Brooks

Wellesley Girl
by Brendan Pelsue
directed by Lee Sunday Evans

Cardboard Piano
by Hansol Jung
directed by Leigh Silverman

Wondrous Strange
by Martyna Majok, Meg Miroshnik, Jiehae Park, and Jen Silverman
directed by Marti Lyons
performed by the 2015-2016 Acting Apprentice Company
commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville

– See more at: http://actorstheatre.org/humana-festival-of-new-american-plays/#sthash.wklyDuIk.dpuf

More out Laura

Laura Jacqmin is a Chicago-based playwright, TV writer, and video game writer, originally from Cleveland. Her play Dental Society Midwinter Meeting was named one of New City Stage’s Top Five Plays of 2010, as well as TimeOut Chicago’s Honorable Mentions: Best Theater of 2010. Look, We Are Breathing is currently nominated for a 2015 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work. Awards: winner of the Wasserstein Prize, two NEA Art Works Grants, Kennedy Center David Mark Cohen Award, two MacDowell Fellowships, Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Grant; finalist for Heideman Award, Laurents/Hatcher Prize, BBC International Playwriting Competition, and the Princess Grace Award.

Television: “Grace and Frankie” (Netflix), “Lucky 7” (ABC). Video games: “Minecraft: Story Mode” (Telltale Games).

Plays: Look, We Are Breathing (Sundance Theater Lab, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble), Ghost Bike (Buzz22 Chicago), Do-Gooder (16th Street Theater), January Joiner (Long Wharf Theatre), Ski Dubai (Steppenwolf Theatre), Two Lakes, Two Rivers (O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Royal Court Theatre’s International Residency), and Dental Society Midwinter Meeting (Chicago Dramatists/At Play, remounted 16th Street Theater and Theater on the Lake).

Her work has been produced and developed by Atlantic Theater Company, Old Vic New Voices, Roundabout Underground, Vineyard Theatre, LCT3, Ars Nova, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Second Stage Theatre, Contemporary American Theater Festival, The 24 Hour Plays Off-Broadway, and the inaugural NNPN University Playwrights Workshop at Stanford University, among others.

“Blitz” Madness coming this Friday!

November 16, 2015
by catherineforever666
· Madness · News

The next madness of the fall semester will be produced by third year playwright, Aaron James Johnson! His prompt is Blitz Madness! Here is how he describes it in his prompt:”This week we’ll be putting 24 plays in 48 minutes. Hopefully. We might not make it. But that’s part of the fun. That means each playwright must write, cast, and direct three 1-2 minute plays. “

Show is November 20th, 11pm, in the Hahne Black Box theater. Admission is free. We recommend you get there 45 to 60 minutes ahead of time to assure yourself a seat.

For more information about Madness the fall semester, check out our Madness page.

More about Aaron

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

Reginald Edmund has play reading at Stuart’s Opera House November 20th!

November 12, 2015
by catherineforever666
· alumni · News

Stuart’s Opera House presents a FREE play reading of The Daughters of The Moon by Chicago playwright and Ohio University MFA alumni Reginald Edmund! This play is part one of the City of the Bayou Collection. Throughout the week, Reginald will be conducting playwright workshops in local high schools and working with local students as part of Stuart’s Opera House’s arts education programming in the Ohio region!

Congrats Reginald! Check this awesome reading out!!

For more info on event click here

The reading will be free and will take place Friday, November 20, 2015 at 7:00pm

52 Public Square
P.O. Box 217
Nelsonville, Ohio 45764
(740) 753-1924
More about Reginald

Reginald Edmund is a resident playwright of Chicago Dramatists. He was a 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellowship recipient. Originally from Houston, Texas, he was the Artistic Director for the Silver House Theatre in Houston as well as the founder and producer for the Silver House Playwrights Festival and the Houston Urban Theatre Series. Reginald was the inaugural recipient of the Kennedy Center Fellowship at Soul Mountain Retreat in 2007 and the 2009 National Runner-up for the Lorraine Hansberry and Rosa Parks Playwriting Awards. In 2010, he was named Winner of The Southern Writers Competition and was recognized by TCG as a 2011 Young Leader of Color. His plays, The Ordained Smile of Sadie May Jenkins, Southbridge, Juneteenth Street, and The Redemption of Allah Black, all part of his nine-play series The City of the Bayou Collection, were developed at esteemed theaters including Ensemble Theatre of Houston, Silver House Theatre, Penumbra Theatre, the Playwrights’ Center, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Moving Arts, Karamu House, Pangea World Theater, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Texas State University Black and Latino Theatre Conference, the Last Frontier Theater Conference, and the Kennedy Center. In 2012, he traveled to Colombia to serve as the guest speaker at the Intercolegiado de Teatro de Buenaventura and most recently he was named a winner of the 2013 Edgerton Foundation Award for his play Southbridge.

New article by Ira Gammerman on Howlround about podcasts!

November 11, 2015
by catherineforever666
· News

Edgy OU Alum Ira Gammerman has written an awesome new article about the benefits of playwrights doing podcasts. He discusses his own podcast “Dangerously Unqualified” about his unfortunate love life with fellow OU alumni Ryan Dowler as well as the history of playwrights engaging in this medium.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

My first name is Ira, so I guess a career in podcasting was inevitable? When I moved to New York a few years back, I wanted to expand my skill set beyond writing plays. Podcasting seemed like a pretty intuitive transition: the format offers a great deal of creative freedom, production costs are relatively low, and—thanks to that other Ira—the medium is picking up major steam in popular culture.I started a serialized dating podcast called Dangerously Unqualified with EST/Youngblood alumni playwright Ryan Dowler and our friends at BSD Media.The premise was simple: Ryan agreed to fix my romantic troubles, if I gave him full control of my online dating profiles and wardrobe choices, followed all of his sage dating advice, and completed his whacky challenges. (Hilarity ensued; we even wound up in jail.)Not only did Dangerously Unqualified massively improve my dating life, but it also gave Ryan and me a chance to experiment with long-form serialized storytelling and collaborative content generation in a low-stakes environment that was protected from industry pressures. We dictated our own process, wrote all of the material ourselves, had final cut on the episodes, worked at our own pace, and learned a whole lot.

Click here for the full article. Congrats Ira on this article about playwrights expanding opportunities beyond the stage!

More about Ira

Ira Gamerman is an Award-Winning AustraliAmerican PodcastPlaywright. He creates sound and songs using affected electric mandolin and guitar with Anonymous In The Clouds, Battler, and Pronouns. His Dramatic work has been produced by The Kennedy Center, Collaboraction, Short & Sweet Sydney, Source Festival, and The Chicago New Media Summit. In 2006, City Paper voted Ira “Best Playwright Of Baltimore” and in 2009, he was nominated for a New York Innovative Theater Award for best short play. As a Podcaster, Ira writes for Radiotopia’s THE TRUTH (featured on This American Life) where his Collaborative Audio-Play “Biological Clock” won a 2013 Mark Time Award from the Fire Sign Theater for Best Science Fiction Audio Production of the Year. He also co-created and co-hosts DANGEROUSLY UNQUALIFIED: A PODCAST ABOUT LOVE with EST/Youngblood Alumni Playwright Ryan Dowler through BSD MEDIA. Internationally, Ira is Co-Creative Artistic Director of AUSTRALIAMERICAN THEATER CONGLOMORATE: EVERYTHING IS EVERYWHERE (2 Americans 2 Aussies 2 Gals 2 Dudes 2 Goys 2 Jews 2 Legit 2 Quit) with Jessica Bellamy, David Finnigan, and Siobhan O’loughlin. Ira holds a BA in Theater from Towson University, an MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University, and studied Devised theater at the (now defunct) Dartington College Of Art in the UK. As an educator, Ira has taught undergraduate theater at Ohio University and Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn in addition to playwright-mentoring Young Playwrights Festivals at Atlanta’s Horizon Theater and Baltimore’s Center Stage. As a journalist, Ira has been published by Consequence Of Sound, Eleven Magazine in St. Louis (even though he has never actually visited St. Louis), and HowlRound. He was also an extra in Season 3 of The Wire and has the screenshot to prove it if you don’t believe him.

“History” Madness coming this Friday!!

November 2, 2015
by catherineforever666
· Madness · News

The next madness of the fall semester will be produced by first year playwright, Cristina Luzarraga! Her prompt is History Madness! She has asked the playwrights to write about specific events in history she has chosen based on each of their voices. The picture for the article is Herodotus, the first historian.

Show is November 6th, 11pm, in the Hahne Black Box theater. Admission is free. We recommend you get there 45 to 60 minutes ahead of time to assure yourself a seat.

For more information about Madness the fall semester, check out our Madness page.

More about Cristina

Cristina Luzarraga is a playwright, comedian and New Jersey native. After graduating from Princeton University, she moved to Chicago to pursue improv, stand-up and theater. She has studied at The Second City, iO and the Chicago Dramatists. Her play Due Unto Others was produced by Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

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.

Qui Nguyen’s play “Vietgone” at South Coast Rep gets rave reviews!

October 24, 2015
by catherineforever666
· alumni · News

Qui Nguyen’s new play “Vietgone” just got a rave review from the Latimes! Check out the play if you are in the Costa Meza area! Here is a brief synopsis about the show:

” An all-American love story about two very new Americans. It’s 1975, and Saigon has fallen. He lost his wife. She lost her fiancé. But now in a new land, they just might find each other. Using his uniquely infectious style The New York Times calls “culturally savvy comedy”—and skipping back and forth from the dramatic evacuation of Saigon to the here and now—playwright Qui Nguyen gets up close and personal to tell the story that led to the creation of…Qui Nguyen.”

Congrats Qui on this awesome new play!

Here’s an excerpt from the review:

The language is more revealing of the playwright’s generational influences than his characters’. A good deal of the play’s slang wasn’t yet in circulation in the mid-1970s. Quang raps as though he had been listening to Ice Cube all through high school in Saigon.

But to accuse Nguyen of anachronism is to miss the point. The playwright is engaged in a multifaceted act of freehand translation. He wants to recapture the youthful vitality of his characters in a way that will speak to his own contemporaries.

Details on the show

VIETGONE by Qui Nguyen directed by May Adrales October 4-25, 2015

Theater Address: South Coast Repertory
655 Town Center Drive
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

More about Qui

Scripts include Vietgone (South Coast Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Company), She Kills Monsters (The Flea, Buzz22 Chicago/Steppenwolf, Company One); War is F**king Awesome (developed in the Sundance Theatre Lab); Krunk Fu Battle Battle (East West Players); Bike Wreck (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Trial By Water (Ma-Yi Theater); Aliens Versus Cheerleaders (Keen Teens); Soul Samurai; The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G (Ma-Yi Theater & Vampire Cowboys); and the critically acclaimed Vampire Cowboys productions of Alice in Slasherland; Fight Girl Battle World; Men of Steel; and Living Dead in Denmark.