Ohio University MFA Playwriting Program
Recent MFA grad, Bianca Sams is apart of the 2014-15 New Works Fellowship at Tennessee Rep! This prestigious opportunity is given to 4 playwrights per year and includes development help on a new play, a public reading and workshops with professional theater artists.
Fun fact!(tell all your friendsss) Jeremy Sony(another OU alum) received this fellowship last year!
For more info on this Fellowship
OU Alumnus, Bianca Sams ’14, won 2nd place for Athe’s Jane Chambers student award.
“The Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award recognizes plays and performance texts created by women that present a feminist perspective and contain significant opportunities for female performers. This competition is open to both graduate and undergraduate students. The Jane Chambers Award for emergent playwrights encourages diversity of style and content. All forms of drama are accepted, including solo performance work. Your play will be recognized at the Women and Theatre Program’s Pre-Conference in Scottsdale, AZ on July 24th and a synopsis and information about your work will be posted to the WTP website.”
Bianca Sams ’14 will have a reading of her thesis play, RUST ON BONE, JULY 15TH IN New York at the Manhattan Theatre Club. It will be directed by the Goodman Theater’s Chuck Smith, and feature OU alumnus Marissa Wolf, and current OU MFA actor, Thomas Daniels.
Synopsis: Trapped by a stranger in her office, psychologist Dr. Devra Mendoza must use her training to maneuver her way through a game of cat and mouse with life and death consequences. Rust on Bone looks at the personal cost of war, societal stigmas of therapy, and the ripple effects of trauma and mental illness.
You can RSVP by emailing BIANCASAMS (at) BIANCASAMS (dot)COM.
Details:
MANHATTAN THEATRE CLUB
STUDIO SPACE #3
311 W. 43 R D STREET
JULY 15, 2014 @ 7:30PM
Bianca Sams’ play “Rust on Bone” was one of four plays chosen for the Gulfshore Playhouse’s 2nd Annual New Works Festival in Naples, Florida. Sams, OU MFA ’14, will work with actors and director for a week before a staged reading of her play the weekend of the festival, Sept 4-7, 2014.
The Playwrights’ Center (PWC) announced this year’s core writer’s and Jerome Fellowship recipients last week. Qui Nguyen was named a Core Writer, and Bianca Sams was named a Core Apprentice.
Nguyen was one of eight new writers to join the group of 25 Core Writers. “The Core Writer program brings a diverse range of playwrights to the Center for play development workshops in collaboration with prom is the Co-Artistic Director of the Nguyen is an OBIE Award-winning Vampire Cowboys of NYC. His plays include “She Kills Monsters,” “Soul Samurai,” “Alice in Slasherland,” “The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G,” and the musicals “Krunk Fu Battle Battle,” “War is F**king Awesome” and “Samantha Rai and the Shogun of Fear.” He is a proud member of The Playwrights’ Center, New Dramatists, Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Ma-Yi Writers Lab. His company, Vampire Cowboys, often considered the pioneers of “Geek Theater,” holds the unique distinction of being the first and only professional theater organization to be sponsored by NY Comic Con.inent directors, actors, dramaturgs and designers. Over the three-year term with the Playwrights’ Center as an artistic home, selected work by Core Writers is showcased in the community through the PlayLabs festival and the Ruth Easton New Play Series.”
Sams, a MFA graduate this year, was one of five playwrights named a Core Apprentice. That program”pairs student playwrights with a mentor and offers play development support.”
Sams is an Actor/Writer/Producer based in New York City. She is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School, where she earned the distinction of being Tisch’s first ever Triple Major (Acting, Dramatic Writing, Africana Studies). At NYU she studied acting through the Strasberg Film Institute and Royal Academy Dramatic Arts (RADA) London, England. Her writing mentors at NYU included Richard Wesley, Beth Turner, George Malko, John Guerre (Honors), Kenneth Lonergan (Honors) and Daniel Goldfarb. Since graduating her work has been seen at Karamu House, Cleveland Public Theater, Old Vic Theater London and Public Theater in New York. She has performed as an actor at Cleveland Public Theater, Florida Studio Theater, Old Vic London, Public Theater NY, and can be seen on film in Rent directed by Chris Columbus. She is a full member of the Old Vic New Voices Network New York under Artistic Director Kevin Spacey. She has produced several ten minute play festivals in New York and Los Angeles, and is moving into full length off broadway theater. She is recent graudate from the MFA in Playwrighting at Ohio University with Charles Smith. For more information go to www.biancasams.com.
The Playwrights’ Center is “one of the nation’s most generous and well-respected theater organizations, the Playwrights’ Center focuses on both supporting playwrights and promoting new plays to production at theaters across the country. The Center has helped launch the careers of numerous nationally recognized artists, notably August Wilson, Lee Blessing, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jordan Harrison, Carlyle Brown, Craig Lucas, Jeffrey Hatcher, Melanie Marnich, and Kira Obolensky. Work developed through Center programs has been seen nationwide on such stages as the Yale Rep, Woolly Mammoth, Guthrie, Goodman, and many others.”
This Sunday night, May 11, a reading of OU Alum Jeremy Sony’s new play ‘Pathogenesis’ will be streamed live on the internet thanks to HowlRoundTV’s Livestream channel, http://www.livestream.com/newplay/ (visit the link and look for Upcoming Events).
Sunday, May 11
5pm PDT / 7pm CDT / 8pm EDT
This reading is part of the Ingram New Works Lab at Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville, where Sony has been developing his new play during the 2013-2014 season.
You can also read more about ‘Pathogenesis’ on Sony’s website at http://www.jeremysony.com/plays.html
Classes are over. Commencement has taken place. Ohio MFA playwrights are getting busy this summer.
Tyler Whidden, MFA Class of 2016, is having a reading of his play, RUN KINGSBURY RUN, at the Ensemble Theatre in Cleveland this weekend.
Inspired by the 1938 events surrounding the catch and release of Cleveland’s Torso Killer, RUN KINGSBURY RUN, tells the story of the men out to save the city form a butcher, and the secrets that refuse to remain buried within the city’s forgotten capillaries.
Saturday, May 10
2pm
2843 Washington Blvd., Cleveland Hts., OH 44118
216.321.2930
info@ensemble-theatre.org
The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center selected 2010 Ohio MFA Alumnus, David Mitchell Robinson’s play, THE IMAGINARY CRITIC WHO DOESN’T EXIST, for it its 2014 National Playwrights Conference.
Since it was established in 1965, the O’Neill “Playwrights Conference has developed more than 600 plays. During the Conference, playwrights live on the grounds of the O’Neill for a full month and each engages in a week-long process of rehearsals culminating in two script-in-hand public readings. Up to eight playwrights are selected for this intensive laboratory each summer. Conference playwrights represent a wide range of experience from those working on a first play to Broadway veterans; directors and actors have also worked on and off Broadway, in film, and in regional theaters, and represent emerging artists and seasoned professionals. Virtually every major American playwright has been part of the Conference, including Julia Cho, Rebecca Gilman, Regina Taylor, John Guare, Israel Horovitz, David Henry Hwang, David Lindsay-Abaire, Adam Rapp, Lanford Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein and August Wilson.”
THE IMAGINARY CRITIC WHO DOESN’T EXIST synopsis: Lacey runs what’s, like, probably the most influential music site on the internet – a site that can determine whether an act pops off or becomes an endnote in pop history. But when she uses the site’s clout to hype a gifted but controversial MC, it threatens to unravel everything she’s built. The Imaginary Music Critic Who Doesn’t Exist, a play with endnotes, is about aging out, authenticity, and what we’re willing to do to stay relevant.
Also see our earlier post about Robinson’s other spring projects.
Ohio MFA alum, Jacquelyn Reingold, will have her play “2B (Or Not 2B”) performed and recorded tonight at BRIC’s Playing On Air. Two other short plays written by David Ives and John Guare will also be produced.
POA is “public radio’s showcase for contemporary short plays…Broadcast across the nation, the show brings a mix of short works written and performed by Tony-, Pulitzer- and Emmy-Award winning theater artists.” This is the first time the show has been recorded in front of a live audience.
From BRIC’s website, this is tonight’s lineup with play synopses.
It’s tonight, Monday, 3/31, at 7:30PM at the BRIC House Ballroom. Doors open at 7pm.
Tickets are $15 in advance, and $18 at the door. You can buy tix on BRIC’S webpage.
Location: 647 Fulton Street
(Enter on Rockwell Place)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
(Take the 2/3/4/5 to Nevins or B/Q/R to DeKalb).
You can check out TimeOut’s review of GHOST BIKE here.
GHOST BIKE is produced by hot, young theater company, Buzz22 Chicago.
Buzz 22 Chicago’s synopsis of GHOST BIKE: Ora and Eddie fell in love with Chicago on their bikes. But when Eddie is hit by a car and killed, Ora refuses to let him go. Instead, she rides beneath our city to bring him back, facing off against underworld gods and ghosts -some interested in helping her, some determined to get in her way. The more difficult her journey becomes, the more Ora must question what it is she’s journeying towards. In Ghost Bike, Chicago culture skitches off of Greek, African, and Chinese mythology, sparking a spirited mash-up of underworld and after-life as seen from the seats of fixies, BMX’s and ten-speeds.
Ghost bikes can be found in Chicago and in cities all over the country. Learn more about them at http://ghostbikes.org/chicago.
From their website: “Ghost Bikes are made from bikes and bike parts which are no longer rideable, painted all white, and installed where cyclists were killed by motorists. They are grim but necessary reminders of the hazards cyclists face on our roadways. They remember the victim and raise awareness of the need to combat reckless and aggressive driving and fix our streets to be safer for all users.”
OHIO 