Ohio University MFA Playwriting Program
MFA Alum, Mark Chrisler‘s play WORSE THAN TIGERS has garnered two accolades. It’s been selected for The Stella Adler Studio’s First Breath Festival in New York. (The site for the festival isn’t full operational yet, but the link is to the main site.)
The play was also semi-finalist for The New American Voices Festival put on by the The Landing Theater in Houston!
Alumni, Jeremy Sony and Garret Schneider, have 10-minute plays that will be part of Playhouse Nashville’s 10-Minute Playhouse February 9 & 10 in Nashville.
Sony’s play is NEXT STOP CENTRAL STATION, and Schenider’s is EX-GIRLFRIEND IS THE CENTERFOLD.
Check out their site for more information: http://www.tenminuteplayhouse.com/
Laura Jacqmin’s Do-Gooder was “Recommended” in this weeks’ review by the Chicago Reader.
Jack Helbig writes Do-Gooder is “a remarkable, slyly told meditation on gender and racial politics, and how genuinely hard it is to really make a difference.”
Learn more about Laura from her website http://www.laurajacqmin.com/
OU alum, Jacob Juntunen‘s play “In the Shadow of His Language, was chosen as a a Finalist for the 2014 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Award.
In 2005, the Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre in Atlanta established the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, which is the only national competition that transitions graduate student playwrights to the world of professional theatre. Each year, the theatre solicits the work of third-year MFA playwriting students from 36 of what it considers to be “the country’s leading graduate playwriting programs.”
An in-house panel of readers evaluates approximately one hundred submitted scripts each year and selects a slate of semi-finalists. The semi-finalist scripts are then sent to a national panel of theatre professionals for judging, resulting in the selection of four finalists and one award-winning play. Since 2005, the playwriting program at Ohio University has had finalists in 2007, 2009, 2013, and in 2010, third-
year Ohio University MFA playwriting student, David Robinson’s play was named winner.
Of the 36 programs that the Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre considers to be “the country’s leading graduate playwriting programs,” only 21 of these programs have had students who either won or placed as finalist since the inception of the program in 2005. Of these 21 programs, only UT-Austin and Julliard surpasses Ohio University’s record of achievement of four placements in nine years. Yale University, NYU-Tisch, and University of California at San Diego all have matched Ohio University’s record of achievement. The record of achievement of the playwriting
program at Ohio University has surpassed the playwriting programs at University of Iowa, Columbia University School of the Arts, Boston University, University of Southern California, Hunter College, California Institute of the Arts, Northwestern University, NYU Musical Theatre Writing Program, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Hollins University, The New School for Drama, Catholic University of America, Florida State, and Carnegie Mellon, well as the other 15 playwritingprogram in the nation that have not placed in this one-of-a kind competition.
Theatre podcast “The Inexplicable Dumb Show” interviewed alum Jeremy Sony this week about his play “Ichabod: Missing in Sleepy Hollow” playing at Street Theatre Company. Sony talks about his take on the classic Sleepy Hollow legend and his work with Tennessee Repertory Theatre and their Ingram New Works Lab.
Reginald Edmund has been nominated for a Black Theater Alliance Best Play Award for writing, for REGINALD EDMUND’S SOUTHBRIDGE, produced earlier this year at Chicago Dramatists. The play, originally developed at OU was the National Runner-up for the Kennedy Center’s Lorraine Hansberry and the Rosa Parks Awards in 2009, Winner of the Southern Playwrights Competition in 2011, and the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award Winner in 2013. Congratulations!!
N. Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago seems to be a hotspot for OU alums. Fiona Kyle’s I WILL NOT LET YOU GO is being presented Monday, August 5th as part of a night of new works as part of Something Incredibly Marvelous Happens, A Festival of Magical Realism. More details available at http://somethingmarvelous.org/#events
This month, alum Aaron Carter’s THE GOSPEL OF FRANKLIN can be see at Steppenwolf (starting tonight!). Aaron’s play is part of Steppenwolf’s First Look Season. OU’s own Associate Professor of Playwriting Erik Ramsey is on board as the dramaturg. Break legs to all involved! Congratulations, Aaron! Visit the link to find all performance dates and to purchase tickets.
For more information check out the play’s page on Steppenwolf’s website.
This Sunday, August 4th, in Chicago, alumna Dana Lynn Formby has a reading of her new comedy UNTIL DEATH at Silent Theatre new HQ space, 1914 N. Milwaukee, 3rd floor at 5:00 PM. It’s FREE. Fine spirits will be available for a suggested donation. Until Death is part of the American Demigods Local Heroes reading series, running every Sunday in August.
