2011 Ohio University Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwrights’ Festival
Guest Mentors
George Brant’s plays include Elephant’s Graveyard, Grounded, The Mourners’ Bench, Salvage, Three Voyages of the Lobotomobile, Grizzly Mama, Any Other Name, Defiant, Dark Room, Miracle: A Tragedy, Good on Paper, Ashes, NOK, The Lonesome Hoboes, One Hand Clapping, The Royal Historian of Oz, Lovely Letters, Three Men in a Boat, Borglum! The Mount Rushmore Musical, Tights on a Wire andNight of the Mime.
A Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center, his work has been produced internationally by such companies as Trinity Repertory Company, City Theatre, Gate Theatre of London, Page 73, Unicorn Theatre, Traverse Theatre, Borderlands Theater, SF Playhouse, American Blues Theatre, Dobama Theatre, Theatre 4, Premiere Stages, Trustus Theatre, Elemental Theatre Collective, Balagan Theatre, the Drama League, the Disney Channel, Factory Theatre, Debutantes and Vagabonds, StreetSigns Theatre Company, and zeppo theater company, among others.
His plays have been generously developed by the Kennedy Center, Cleveland Play House, Asolo Rep, McCarter Theatre Center, New Harmony Project, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, WordBRIDGE Playwright’s Lab, Playwright and Director Center of Moscow, Florida Studio Theatre, New Jersey Rep, Contemporary Drama Festival of Hungary, the Hangar Theatre, Equity Library Theatre, and Ground UP Productions, among others.
His scripts have been awarded the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center, the Smith Prize, the Keene Prize for Literature, an NNPN Rolling World Premiere, a Fringe First Award, an Austin Critic’s Circle Best New Play Award and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2012. He has received writing fellowships from the James A. Michener Center for Writers, the McCarter Theatre Sallie B. Goodman Artist’s Retreat, the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Fundacion Valparaiso and the Blue Mountain Center as well as commissions from Dobama Theatre and Theatre 4.
George received his MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. He is published by Samuel French, Oberon Books and Smith & Kraus.
Keith Bunin is the author of the plays The Busy World is Hushed, The World Over and The Credeaux Canvas, which were all originally produced Off-Broadway by Playwrights Horizons. His other plays include Vera Laughed, produced by New York Stage and Film, The Principality of Sorrows, produced by Pure Orange Productions, The King of Clocks, produced by Lincoln] Center Lab at HERE, and A Joke, produced by Malaparte. He wrote the book for the musical 10 Million Miles, which was produced Off-Broadway by the Atlantic Theatre Company. He has written screenplays for Disney Pictures, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Likely Story/Mandalay Films, and Film Nation, among others. He has also written for the HBO TV-series “In Treatment.” His essays have been published in American Film Magazine and on the web at McSweeney’s. He received his B.A. from Goddard College and his M.A. from Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn.
Laura Kepley is the Associate Artistic Director of the Cleveland Play House where she recently directed My Name is Asher Lev and produced FusionsFest which is CPH’s annual festival of new work. A native Ohioan, Kepley returns to the Buckeye State from Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island where she served as a Resident Director and Artistic Associate for four seasons and Interim Head of the Master of Fine Arts Graduate Program in Directing at Brown University/Trinity Rep for one. While at Trinity Rep, she directed The Clean House, The Syringa Tree, and Shapeshifter. Kepley also co-created and directed the world premiere docu-dramas Boots on the Ground, which examines the local impact of the war in Iraq, and Some Things are Private, which uses American photographer Sally Mann’s images to explore parenting and First Amendment issues. Both of these Trinity Rep commissions were co-created with and written by Deborah Salem Smith. Kepley had directed the world premieres of over 20 plays including Jennifer Haley’s Breadcrumbs at Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Laura Schellhardt’s The K of D at the Kennedy Center and Orlando/UCF Shakespeare Festival, George Brandt’s shop talk at Drama League’s DIRECTORFEST and Brandt’s Elephant’s Graveyard at the University of Texas-Austin. She has workshopped new plays with The Public Theatre, The Playwrights’ Center, PlayPenn, Naked Angels, and WordBRIDGE Playwrights’ Lab, among others. Kepley received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and her Master of Fine Arts from Brown/Trinity Rep. She is a Drama League Directing Fellow and a recipient of the 2009-2011 National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Career Development Program for Directors.
Jocelyn Prince is the Artistic Associate at The Public Theater where she produces the Public LAB Speaker Series. Dramaturgy credits include A Raisin in the Sun (Julliard School of Drama); Black Diamond: The Years The Locusts Have Eaten (Lookingglass Theatre Company); Raisin and The First Breeze of Summer (Court Theatre); The MLK Project (Writers’ Theatre); My Julliard, Kingdom and Eyes (eta Creative Arts Foundation); Teible and her Demon (European Repertory Company); Daughters of the Mock, Spunk, King of Coons and The House that Jack Built (Congo Square Theatre Company); and Intimate Apparel and Harriet Jacobs (Steppenwolf Theatre Company). Jocelyn has directed at the Bailiwick Repertory Directors Festival, Around the Coyote Art Festival, and 20 Percent Theatre and has assisted Mary Zimmermann on Mirror of the Invisible World (The Goodman Theatre), Eric Rosen on Wedding Play (About Face Theatre), and Hallie Gordon on The Bluest Eye (Steppenwolf). Jocelyn’s social justice and political work includes positions with the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago’s Rape Crisis Hotline and Obama for America. She holds an MA in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and has written for TimeOut Chicago, TimeOut New York, The Chicago Reporter, and The African American Review.
2011 Festival Line Up:
MFA FEATURED PRODUCTIONS:
KATE AND COMET
by Jason Half
Synopsis: Kate Sampson, head writer of Commander Bill and the Space Brigade, sees her chance to create something as exciting and rare as a Martian: a strong and smart female on 1950s American TV. But as her friendship with a woman in the costume shop grows so do suspicions, and Kate may not survive the hostile landscape of an alien–and thoroughly male–planet.
BITTEN BY A BOOMSLANG
by Andrew Black
Synopsis: The Civil War in Sierra Leone began in 1991. Several thousand people, many of them children, had their arms and legs cut off in a savage display of power. Learning of these atrocities, Lowell Carpenter, an American prosthesist, decides to start a foundation providing artificial arms and legs for the victims. He brings two teen-age amputees from Sierra Leone to America to outfit them prosthetic limbs. He plans to return them to their homeland and open a clinic. However, Brima, one of the teenagers Lowell is trying to help, has other ideas about how the project should unfold. Like the boomslang of the title, Brima moves quietly and quickly, and Lowell discovers that doing good deeds for others requires more than he first imagined.
Readings
EXPECTING
by Mark Chrisler
LITTLE STRIKES
by J. Merrill Motz
LIVELY STONES
by Sarah Bowden
THE MOMENT AFTER
by Greg Aldrich
“THE WICKED SON” – A PASSOVER PLAY
by Cecilia Copeland
BITCH MAGIC
by Rebecca Abaffy
THE HONEYCOMB
by Fiona Kyle
ADVICE TO THE GRADUATE
by Ira Gamerman
RIPTIDE
by Leean Kim Torske
THE FACE OF CONTRITION
by Jeremy Sony
OHIO 