2007 Ohio University Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwrights’ Festival
GUEST MENTORS
Deborah Brevoort is an alumnus of New Dramatists. She is the author of numerous plays and musicals including: The Women of Lockerbie (silver medal, Onassis International Playwriting Contest; published by Dramatists Play Service); Blue Moon Over Memphis, a Noh Drama about Elvis Presley (published by Applause Books); The Poetry of Pizza, a comedy about love; The Blue Sky Boys, a comedy about NASA’s Apollo engineers; and two plays published by Samuel French, Signs of Life, a comedy about faith and doubt, and Into the Fire, a magic realism play set in Alaska. She is two-time winner of the Frederick Loewe Award in Musical Theatre, first for King Island Christmas, with composer David Friedman, and then for Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing, with composer Scott Richards. She has received grants and commissions from the NEA, NFYA, Rockefeller Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and others. She was one of the original company members with the Perseverance Theatre in Alaska and currently teaches in the MFA programs at Columbia University, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Goddard College. Her website address is http://www.DeborahBrevoort.com and http://www.kingislandchristmas.com
Julie Jensen was reared in southern Utah. She has a Ph.D. in theatre from Wayne State University in Detroit, and has taught playwriting at seven different colleges and universities. She worked as a writer in Hollywood for five years and until recently directed the graduate playwriting program at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. She is now Resident Playwright at Salt Lake Acting Company. Jensen is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Award for New American Plays (White Money), the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work (The Las Vegas Series), and the LA Weekly Award for Best New Play (Two-Headed). She has received the McKnight National Playwriting Fellowship (Wait!), the TCG/NEA Playwriting Residency (Wait!), and a major grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts (Dust Eaters). She has won the Mill Mountain Theatre Playwriting Competition three times (Tender Hooks, Last Lists of my Mother, and Two-Headed). Her play, Two-Headed, was included in the volume Best Plays by Women 2000, and she has twice been nominated by the American Theatre Critics Association for the best new play produced outside of New York (Last Lists of my Mother and Dust Eaters). Her work has been produced in London and theatres nationwide. She has been commissioned by Mark Taper Forum, ASK Theatre Projects, Kennedy Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Salt Lake Acting Company, GeVa Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, and National New Play Network. Her work is published by Dramatic Publishing, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Inc., and Smith and Kraus.
DENNIS ZACEK held the position of artistic director at the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago for 30 years, and recently accepted the Actor’s Equity Association’s (AEA) Spirit Recognition Award. The Spirit Award is given to institutions that “have made non-traditional casting a way of life.” He also received the 2005 Jeff Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chicago Equity Theatre. He, his wife Marcelle McVay, and the theater are co-recipients of the 2001 Tony Award® for Outstanding Regional Theatre. He is also the recipient of the 2004 Artistic Leadership Award from the League of Chicago Theatres. Mr. Zacek and Ms. McVay received the 1999 Rosetta Lenoire Award from Actors’ Equity and the 1998 Sidney R. Yates Arts Advocacy Award from the Illinois Arts Alliance Foundation. He has directed more than 250 productions in his career, including, most recently, the Chicago premiere of Blackbird by David Harrower, the world premiere of Jeffrey Sweet’s Class Dismissed, James Sherman’s Relatively Close, the Midwest premiere of A Park in Our House by Nilo Cruz, the world premieres of Cynical Weathers by Douglas Post, Denmark by Charles Smith, the inaugural production at Victory Gardens’ new home at the Biograph, Symmetry by David Field, The Family Gold by Annie Reiner, Affluenza! and The Old Man’s Friend by James Sherman, Unspoken Prayers by Claudia Allen, The Action Against Sol Schumann and Flyovers by Jeffrey Sweet, and others. Additional projects include Marisha Chamberlain’s Scheherazade (National Winner of the FDG/CBS competition), John Olive’s Clara’s Play (production and direction award, Academy of TheaterArtists and Friends), and James Sherman’s Mr. 80% (direction award, Academy of Theater Artists and Friends). Mr. Zacek directed Arthur Cantor’s production of James Sherman’s Beau Jest at the Lambs Theater in New York, where it holds the record as the longest-running show in the history of the theater. Other New York credits include Lonnie Carter’s The Sovereign State of Boogedy Boogedy, presented by Woody King’s New Federal Theater, and Charles Smith’s Jelly Belly, which was produced by the New Federal Theater. Mr. Zacek is a professor emeritus of Loyola University and was included in 2005 in Utne magazine’s first-ever list of “Artists Who Will Shake the World.”
2007 Festival Line Up:
MFA Featured Production:
Real Girls Can’t Win!
by Merri Biechler
Directed by Shelley Delaney
May 16-19 and 23-26, 2007
8pm – Hahne Black Box Theater
Synopsis: College freshman Katie considers herself to be a Real Girl. When beauty queen Dakota announces she’s running for Miss Freshman B Dorm, Katie joins the race in the name of Real Girls everywhere. But in an age of Internet images and instant fame, how does a girl stay real?
Readings:
Thursday, May 24
Loaded Gavel – Noon
By Dana Lynn Formby
Trinity – 3:00PM
G. William Zorn
School by the Sea – 8:00PM
by Nicholas Sqouros
Friday, May 25
The Revisionists – 3:00PM
by Laura Lacqmin
2 Man Kidnapping Rule – 8:00PM
by Joseph Gallo
Saturday, May 26
Red Lane – Noon
by Kara Dunn
Juneteenth Street – 3:00PM
by Reginald Edmund