OHIO UNIVERSITY SEABURY QUINN, JR. PLAYWRIGHTS’
2014 Festival
The Visiting Mentors for the OHIO UNIVERSITY SEABURY QUINN, JR. PLAYWRIGHT’S FESTIVAL are:
Acclaimed playwright Lydia R. Diamond.
Goodman Theater’s Associate Producer, Steve Scott.
Goodman’s Resident Director, Chuck Smith.
Lydia R. Diamond Broadway debut: Stick Fly (premiered at Congo Square Theatre Company, 2006 Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for Best New Work, 2006 BTAA Award for Best Play). Her plays include Stage Black (premiered at Arts Consortium of Cincinnati, 3rd place Theodore Ward Prize); The Gift Horse (premiered at the Goodman Theatre, 2nd place Kesselring Prize, 1st place Theodore Ward Prize); The Inside, premiered at MPAACT Theatre Company and published in TriQuarterly, where she is a contributing editor; and Voyeurs de Venus, premiered at Chicago Dramatists, 2006 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work, 2006 BTAA Award for Best Writing, commissioned by Steppenwolf Theatre Co. Diamond’s adaptation of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre, won the Black Arts Alliance Image Award for Best New Play and was recently remounted at Steppenwolf and moved to a co-production with New Victory Theatre in New York. The Bluest Eye has also been produced by Theatre Alliance, Washington, D.C.; Playmakers Repertory Co., Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Plowshares Theatre Company, Detroit, Michigan. The Gift Horse is anthologized in 7 Black Plays, edited by Chuck Smith, Northwestern University Press. Diamond’s third Steppenwolf Theatre commission, Harriet, a play based on the life of Harriet Jacobs, was recently workshopped and presented at The Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices Festival and at United Kingdom’s Old Vic Theatre (New Voices Program). She is currently working on new commissions with The McCarter Theatre Company and Chicago Children’s Theatre Company. Diamond holds a bachelor’s degree in theater and performance studies from Northwestern University. She taught playwriting at Columbia College Chicago, DePaul University, Loyola University and currently at Boston University. Diamond is a Huntington Playwriting Fellow and a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists. Diamond is a board member of StageSource, Boston’s resource for theatre artists..
Steve Scott is the associate producer of Goodman Theatre, where he has overseen more than 150 productions; he is also a member of the Goodman’s Artistic Collective. His Goodman directing credits include the 2011 production of A Christmas Carol, Horton Foote’s Blind Date; Rabbit Hole; Binky Rudich and the Two-Speed Clock and No One Will Be Immune for The David Mamet Festival; Dinner With Friends; Wit; the world premiere of Tom Mula’s Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (co-directed with Michael Maggio); and the 1989 through 1992 productions of A Christmas Carol. Other recent directing credits include Yellow Face, The DNA Trail and Yohenat Silk Road Theatre Project; The Mandrake at A Red Orchid Theatre; Elling, A Delicate Balance, Lettice and Lovage and Shadowlands for Redtwist Theater; Black Pearl Sings! and Souvenir at Northlight Theatre; The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Buried Child and Dealer’s Choice at Shattered Globe Theatre; Frozen at Next Theatre Company; A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing at the St. Lawrence (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival; The Teapot Scandals of 1923 and Falsettos at Porchlight Music Theatre; Execution of Justice, Ah, Wilderness!, God’s Country and Judgment at Nuremberg at the Theatre Conservatory at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts (where he is a faculty member); and a number of productions at Eclipse Theatre Company, where he is an ensemble member, including Arthur Miller’s After the Fall, John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Gets Girl, Keith Reddin’s Big Time, Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite and Lanford Wilson’s The Moonshot Tapes. He has directed for a variety of other companies, including Theatre Wit, Buffalo Theatre Ensemble, National Jewish Theatre, Theatre at the Center, Lifeline Theatre, Organic Theater Company and the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. Mr. Scott has served on panels for Theatre Communications Group, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, United States Artists, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the Chicago Council on Fine Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pew Charitable Trust/Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. He is a member of the Jeff Committee’s Artist and Technical Team, a board member of Season of Concern, and an associate artist with Chicago Dramatists and Colllaboraction theater companies. He was one of six resident directors for WBEZ’s series Stories on Stage, and has contributed articles to a variety of publications, including the Encyclopedia of Chicago. Mr. Scott is the recipient of five Jeff nominations, an After Dark Award and the Illinois Theatre Association’s Award of Honor. As an actor, he most recently appeared in Next Theatre Company’s production of Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? (Jeff Award for Outstanding Ensemble).
Chuck Smith is Goodman Theatre’s Resident Director and an associate producer of Legacy Productions, a Chicago-based touring company. His Goodman credits include the Chicago premieres of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Race; The Good Negro; Proof and The Story; the world premieres of By the Music of the Spheres and The Gift Horse; James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner, which transferred to Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company, where it won the Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Award for Best Direction; Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun; Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky; August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; the Fats Waller musical Ain’t Misbehavin’; the 1993 to 1995 productions of A Christmas Carol; Crumbs From the Table of Joy; Vivisections from a Blown Mind; and The Meeting. He served as dramaturg for the world-premiere production of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean at the Goodman. He directed the New York premiere of Knock Me a Kiss and The Hooch for the New Federal Theatre and the world premiere of Knock Me a Kiss at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater, where his other directing credits include Master Harold and the Boys, Home, Dame Lorraine with the late Esther Rolle and Eden, for which he received a Jeff Award nomination for best direction. Regionally, Mr. Smith directed Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Birdie Blue at Seattle Repertory Theatre, The Story at Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Blues for an Alabama Sky at Alabama Shakespeare Festival and The Last Season for The Robey Theatre Company in Los Angeles. At Columbia College he was facilitator of the Theodore Ward Prize playwriting contest for 20 years and editor of the contest anthologies Seven Black Plays and Best Black Plays. He won a Chicago Emmy Award as associate producer/theatrical director for the NBC teleplay Crime of Innocence and was theatrical director for the Emmy Award-winning Fast Break to Glory and the Emmy Award-nominated The Martin Luther King Suite. He was a founding member of the Chicago Theatre Company, where he served as artistic director for four seasons and directed the Jeff Award-nominated Suspenders and the Jeff Award-winning musical Po’. His directing credits include productions at ETA; Black Ensemble Theater; Northlight Theatre; MPAACT; Congo Square Theatre Company; The New Regal Theater; Kuumba Theatre Company; Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre; Pegasus Players; the Timber Lake Playhouse in Mt. Carroll, Illinois; the Black Theatre Troupe in Phoenix, Arizona; He is a 2003 inductee into the Chicago State University Gwendolyn Brooks Center’s Literary Hall of Fame and a 2001 Chicago Tribune Chicagoan of the Year. He is the proud recipient of the 1982 Paul Robeson Award and the 1997 Award of Merit presented by the Black Theater Alliance of Chicago. He is currently a board member of the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago.
(Note: Some bio information pulled from Goodman Theatre website.)
FEATURED PRODUCTIONS*
Presented in the Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall
Poor Bob*
by Anthony Ellison
April 16th, 19th, 23rd,
& 25th at 8:00pm
April 19th at 2:00pm
Rust on Bone*
by Bianca Sams
April, 17th, 18th, 24th,
& 26th at 8:00pm
April 26th at 2:00pm
*Tickets for the Featured Productions are $5 general admission or FREE for OU Students (with valid student ID) through Arts for Ohio; available at the Templeton–Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium box office.
READINGS
Presented in the Forum Theater, RTV Building
Thursday, April 24th
Moraine
by Ryan Patrick Dolan
1:00 pm
Pontiacs
by Neal Adelman
4:00 pm
How to Eat an Oreo
by Chanel Glover
8:00 pm
Friday, April 25th
Run Kingsbury Run
by Tyler JC Whidden
1:00 pm
Wastepaper Basket
by Morgan Patton
3:30 pm
Saturday, April 26th
Port Wing
by Aaron J. Johnson
1:00pm
Dauphin Island
by Jeffry Chastang
4:00pm
All readings are FREE and open to the public.
POOR BOB*
by Anthony Ellison
Directed by David Haugen
8:00 pm – April 16th, 19th, 23rd & 25th;
2:00 pm – April 19th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall
Poor Bob is a funeral romp about a family struggling to properly send of a legend of the community. Bob, the husband of the deceased, has a secret that he’s been wanting to blurt out his entire adult life, and this funeral seems to be the perfect opportunity, even though his wife’s funeral is actually a terrible time to do it.
There will be no intermission.
Cast
Bob ………………………………………………………………………………………………..Matt Mikita
Celeste ……………………………………………………………………………………..Kelli Wanamaker
Barb ………………………………………………………………………………………………Rachel Mock
Drew ………………………………………………………………………………………………..Jared Davis
Sharna ………………………………………………………………………………Emily Paige Auwaerter
Production Staff
Scenic Designer ……………………………………………………………………………………………..Justin Locke
Costume Designer ………………………………………………………………………………………..Katie Behrens
Lighting Designer………………………………………………………………………………….Amanda Vecciarelli
Sound Designer ……………………………………………………………………………………………Garrett Hood
Stage Manager ……………………………………………………………………………………………….Anna Kovacs
Assistant Stage Manager ………………………………………………………………………………..Michelle Lane
Production Stage Manager………………………………………………………………………………Regina Vitale
Technical Director ………………………………………………………………………………………..Ryan Watland
Assistant Technical Director …………………………………………………………………..Daniel Schumacher
Assistant Director ………………………………………………………………………………..Katarina Radujkovic
Master Electrician……………………………………………………………………………………..Kevin Arsenjevic
Props Master ……………………………………………………………………………………………….Max Abelman
Dramaturg ………………………………………………………………………………………………………Erin Baker
*This thesis presentation partially fulfills the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting.
RUST ON BONE*
by Bianca Sams
Directed by Aurora E. Held
8:00 pm – April 17th, 18th, 24th & 26th ;
2:00 pm – April 26th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall
Trapped by a stranger in her office, psychologist Dr. Devra Mendoza must 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 and the ripple effects of mental illness on the loved ones of military veterans.
There will be one ten minute intermission.
Cast
Devra ………………………………………………………………………………….Shambrion Treadwell
Jim ……………………………………………………………………………………………Tomas Daniels
Agnes ………………………………………………………………………………………..Sophie Mitchem
Sue …………………………………………………………………………………………………Jessica Savitz
Production Staff
Scenic Designer ……………………………………………………………………………………………..Justen Locke
Costume Designer ………………………………………………………………………………………..Katie Behrens
Assistant Costume Designer …………………………………………………………………………Emmy Weldon
Costume Shop Manager ………………………………………………………………………………..Sheila Hunter
Lighting Designer……………………………………………………………………………………….Jeremiah Stuart
Sound Designer ……………………………………………………………………………………………Megan Culley
Stage Manager …………………………………………………………………………………………….Alex Charavell
Assistant Stage Manager ………………………………………………………………………………..Sam McClain
Production Stage Manager………………………………………………………………………………Regina Vitale
Technical Director ………………………………………………………………………………………Ryan Wantland
Assistant Technical Director ………………………………………………………………………Dan Schumacher
Master Electrician……………………………………………………………………………………..Kevin Arsenjevic
Props Master ……………………………………………………………………………………………….Max Abelman
Dramaturg ………………………………………………………………………………………………..Adrian Shelton
*This thesis presentation partially fulfills the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting*
OHIO 