2011 Emerging Writers Group Spotlight Series
DON'T MISS
THE 2011 EMERGING WRITERS GROUP
SPOTLIGHT SERIES
BE THE FIRST TO SEE FREE READINGS
OF THE PLAYS WRITTEN IN THE PUBLIC'S EMERGING WRITERS GROUP PROGRAM!
The Public created The Emerging Writers Group to target playwrights at the earliest stages in their careers and to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights. The eleven writers of the 2011 group were chosen from a pool of over 350 applicants. Through the Spotlight Series, we are delighted to share their full-length plays with you.
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Wednesday, June 1
MINE
Written by LAURA MARKS
Directed by Evan Cabnet
Mari is a new mother with a devoted husband, a reassuring midwife, and a mom who can’t wait to babysit; but something seems different about her newborn daughter—could someone have switched her baby at birth? A contemporary thriller with age-old roots, Mine explores the shadowy border between madness and reality.
Thursday, June 2
THE BALL PLAYER
Written by AARON WIGDOR LEVY
Directed By Kent Gash
Everyone knows the plan: James, star of his high school basketball team, will get recruited to a top D1 school, head to the NBA, and get his family out of the projects. But as he enters his final high school season, the pressure starts affecting his game and James begins to think for himself about his future. What happens when plans change?
Wednesday, June 8
KISSING CHE
Written by AUGUSTO FEDERICO AMADOR
Directed by Victor Maog
Miami, Florida, 1984. Four years after the Mariel Boatlift, a man named Reina is dying in a nursing home claiming to have been Cuba’s last famous drag queen (“I turned kings into queens. And they loved me for it”). Tamika, an African-American nurse, strikes up a friendship with him. United by untold pasts, shared confessions change their lives forever.
Thursday, June 9
DETROIT 67
Written by DOMINIQUE MORISSEAU
Directed by Robert O'Hara
It’s 1967 in Detroit. Motown music is getting the party started, and Chelle and her brother Lank are making ends meet by turning their basement into an after-hours joint. Always at odds, they fight over the future of the family trade. But when a mysterious white woman finds her way into their care and a string of raids increases police brutality around the city, the siblings become divided over much more than business. Suddenly, they find themselves caught in the middle of the ‘67 riots.
Monday, June 13
BABEL
Written by SEVAN KALOUSTIAN GREENE
Directed by Jonathan Silverstein
Luke and Issa have found a friendship in the middle of a war. But when Luke’s squad is ambushed in a surprise attack, Issa finds himself interrogated for answers by Mark, Luke’s father and the base’s colonel. How far will Mark go to get the truth? And what if the truth is something he would never suspect?
Tuesday, June 14
PERISH
Written by STELLA FAWN RAGSDALE
Directed by Johanna Gruenhut
When Porter’s father kidnaps her son, she must go back to the woods of East Tennessee to find him, where she is distracted by a mysterious firebird. Textured with poetry and grit, this play follows the plight of women in Appalachia and the disappearance of the working class.
Wednesday, June 15
"LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!!"
Written by SUKARI JONES
Directed by Liesl Tommy
Gladys and her daughter Asali live in a house that floats through various catastrophic events in time. Jeana, a real-estate agent cricket (as in the bug) tries to sell the place to Li and Ray—a newlywed lesbian cricket couple—but they're hesitant to buy because the humans inside seem way too crazy. A play about a daughter trying to escape her mother featuring a T-Rex, a Piece of Lava and other puppets.
Wednesday, June 22
HUNGER
Written by ANNA MOENCH
Directed by Eric Ting
In the sandy hills of China’s Loess Plateau, a farming couple mourns the death of their only son. Their search for an illegal afterlife bride becomes increasingly desperate as his ghost longs for companionship. Told with actors and life-sized puppets, Hunger explores the boundary between life and death and the friction between tradition and progress in contemporary China.
Thursday, June 23
BLISS
Written by JEROME A. PARKER
Directed by Andrew Russell
After his duties as a soldier ended, Perry explored the world as a fading pop-star’s lover and ghostwriter. Weary of his “high-life,” he decides to return to his hometown only to find that his worldly ways aren’t welcome. This story, told partly through song (traditional, world, and pop music), is a modern, American re-telling of the German myth of Tannhauser, popularized by Wagner’s opera, which mixes the sacred and secular.
Monday, June 27
STOCKHOLM, PENNSYLVANIA
Written by NIKOLE BECKWITH
Directed by Daniel Aukin
After 17 years of captivity in a boarded up basement, Leia is returned home to her parents, where she discovers her birth-name is Leanne and her birthday isn’t in March after all. With little understanding of the world around her, Leia struggles to find her place in it and what it means to be “Leanne.” This complicated reunion with her family is made all the more trying as she longs for the life she remembers and the man who kept her in the basement; while her mother works harder than ever to get her daughter back. By any means necessary.
Tuesday, June 28
ZOETROPE
Written by JAVIERANTONIO GONZÁLEZ
Directed by Steve Cosson
Inspired by the letters of the playwright’s grandfather from New York to Puerto Rico in the ‘50’s, Zoetrope is an irreverent reconstruction of two love stories: Severino and Inés, a perfect couple doomed by exile; and Francisca, a lesbian-looking existentialist finding love in the least expected of places. An epic romance in two parts, the play spins between four decades, two cities, multiple couples, the personal and the political.
CLICK HERE to read bios of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group.
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