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Playwrights Festival, September 22 - 28, 2008
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THE LARK AND INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL PRESENT
PLAYWRIGHTS’ WEEK 2008 |
| September 8, 2008 |
NEW YORK, NY – The 15th Annual Playwrights’ Week as presented by the Lark Play Development Center and the Indo-American Arts Council will take place from September 22nd – 28th at the Lark Studio in midtown. This year’s writers include: Mark Borkowski, Kathleen Cahill, Steven Gridley, David Jenkins, Lila Rose Kaplan, Ismail Khalidi, Motti Lerner, Dano Madden, James McLindon, Allison Moore, and Lina Patel.
In addition to the readings of these new plays, there will be three events to help celebrate Playwrights’ Week 2008. To start off the festival will be Meet The Writers with host Morgan Jenness ( Abrams Artists) on Monday, September 22 at 8pm, where each writer will talk a bit about themselves and read an excerpt from their play.
On Tuesday, September 23, following the reading of Motti Lerner’s BENEDICTUS, there will be a panel moderated by Catherine Coray ( hotINK International Festival Director) entitled “A Discussion About Intercultural Collaboration” with the playwright and his collaborators Dr. Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Roberta Levitow, Torange Yeghiazarian, and Daniella Topol ( Director).
To celebrate the close of the Playwrights’ Week 2008 on Sunday, September 28th, the Indo-American Arts Council will host a celebration following the reading of Lina Patel’s SANKALPAN (Desire), which will also feature the announcement of the 2008-09 IAAC/Lark Playwright-in-Residence. All Playwrights’ Week 2008 readings and events are free and open to the public. For a complete schedule and reservation information, please visit: www.larktheatre.org.
The Playwrights’ Week selection process started in November of 2007. Hundreds of scripts were submitted through the Lark's open submission policy. Finalists were chosen through a rigorous process involving the Lark’s Literary Wing, comprised of dozens of theatre artists and community members. The final eleven playwrights were selected by a group of esteemed industry professionals including: Catherine Coray, John Clinton Eisner ( Lark Producing Director), Suzy Fay ( Lark Associate Program Director), Daniel Jaquez ( Calpulli Danza Mexicana), Morgan Jenness , Katori Hall ( playwright, HOODOO LOVE), Miles Lott ( Lark LitWing Chair), Aroon Shivdasani (Indo-American Arts Council), and Rob Urbinati ( Queens Theatre in the Park), and Jose Zayas ( Immediate Theater Company). Playwrights Week 2008 is generously supported, in part, with public funds by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and with major support from Jerome Foundation, NYC Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, Time Warner’s Diverse Voices Fund and MetLife Foundation. Playwright fees are supported by The Dorothy Strelsin Foundation.
A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER provides playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work. The Lark brings together actors, directors, playwrights and the community to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of theaters, universities, community-based organizations, and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally. The Lark is led by Producing Director, John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director, Michael Robertson. For more information, www.larktheatre.org or .
Plays developed at the Lark regularly go on to full productions at theaters across the country. This past year Theresa Rebeck’s MAURITIUS was produced on Broadway by Manhattan Theatre Club, and David Henry Hwang’s YELLOW FACE premiered at Center Theatre Group and at the Public Theater. Rajiv Joseph’s BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO will be presented at Center Theatre Group this spring.
INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL is a registered 501(c) 3 not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization charged with the mission of promoting and building the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America: in the performing, visual, literary and folk arts. The IAAC supports all artistic disciplines in the classical, fusion, folk and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. IAAC works cooperatively with colleagues around the United States to broaden our collective audiences and to create a network for shared information, resources and funding. IAAC’s focus is to work with artists and arts organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists and arts organizations from India to exhibit, perform and produce their works here. The IAAC presents annual festivals of Art, Dance, Playwrights & Film as well as several book launches and individual concerts and readings. For more information on the Indo-American Arts Council, visit: .
All events take place at The Lark Studio
939 8th Avenue (btw 55 & 56) 2nd Floor
1, A, B, C, D, to Columbus Circle
N, Q, R, W to 57th Street
For information: visit www.larktheatre.org or call 212-246-2676, x24
BECAUSE OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL NATURE OF THIS WORK, THESE PRESENTATONS ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW. FOR A COMPLETE SCHEDULE, VISIT WWW.LARKTHEATRE.ORG
THE NOISEMAKERS
by Mark Borkowski
directed by Lisa Rothe
When a mentally disturbed father seeks forgiveness for sins against his family, he asks his son to help him take the only action he believes will fully absolve him: he wants to be crucified. His request unveils the family’s darkest secrets and forces them to confront their demons.
CHARM
by Kathleen Cahill
directed by Sturgis Warner
Margaret Fuller and the Transcendalists are not a rock group. And this isn't your typical history play... but Margaret is the woman who inspired Hawthorne's “The Scarlet Letter.”
THE TWELFTH LABOR
by Steven Gridley
directed by Kara-Lynn Vaeni
Follows a single day, October 15th 1949, filtered through the warped and damaged mind of an Idaho farm girl. Through her memories, dreams, and swirling language, we come to understand the price she and her family have paid for a little dignity as they await the return of their long absent father, lost somewhere in the war, half a world away.
middlemen
by David Jenkins
directed by Josie Whittlesey
Michael and Stan are two mid-level employees of a large, nameless corporation. They've worked hard. They've stayed in place. They've done exactly what's been asked of them. Now, they're bracing for the consequences. middlemen: an existential comedy about denial, adulthood and non-dairy creamer.
WILDFLOWER
by Lila Rose Kaplan
directed by Sarah Rasmussen
Crested Butte is the Wildflower Capital of Colorado. When a woman and her troubled son arrive, they encounter a forest ranger, an ex-drag queen, and a very curious girl. Five disparate souls collide in a summer of desire and unexpected consequence.
TRUTH SERUM BLUES
by Ismail Khalidi
directed by Margarett Perry
Infused with questions about family, exile, and home in the post-9/11 era, this play delves inside the tortured mind and body of Kareem--a young Arab-American man stripped of his rights and lost in his own memories. As the play glides between Guantanamo Bay, the Middle East, and urban-America, the lines between innocence and guilt become increasingly blurred and the freedom of imagination is given a new meaning.
BENEDICTUS
by Motti Lerner
directed by Daniella Topol
72 hours before an American attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran, an Israeli arms dealer tries to rescue his sister from Teheran. He meets his childhood friend who is an influential Iranian Ayatollah and together they get involved in the last attempt to prevent the war.IN
THE SAWTOOTHS
by Dano Madden
directed by Kristin Horton
As Oby, Nellie, and Darin prepare for their annual backpacking trip to the mountains of Idaho, their bond is unexpectedly shattered by tragedy. What will become of their longtime friendship as they navigate through an immense and unexpected wilderness?
FAITH
by James McLindon
directed by Jim Abar
All that young Simon wants for Christmas is to receive the stigmata and become God’s prophet, and if religious fervor has anything to do with it, he’s a shoe-in. So when the mysterious Harbinger appears to him in the Walmart parking lot, Simon knows that she is God’s angel, the answer to his prayers. Or is she?
SLASHER
by Allison Moore
directed by Adam Greenfield
When she’s cast as the “last girl” in a low-budget slasher flick, Sheena thinks it’s the big break she’s been waiting for. But news of the movie unleashes her mother’s thwarted feminist rage, and mom is prepared to do anything to stop filming—even if it kills her.
SANKALPAN (DESIRE)
by Lina Patel
directed by Ian Morgan
An inventive fusion of Chekhov's Three Sisters and Tagore's "The Home and the World," Sankalpan evokes a time of revolution that draws sharp parallels to the geopolitics of today.
The Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) is a 501©3 not-for-profit arts organization passionately dedicated to promoting, showcasing and building an awareness of Indian artists in the performing arts visual arts and literary arts. Information: Indo-American Arts Council Inc, 146West 29th St, Suite 7R3, New York, NY 10001. Email: Web:
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July 17, 2008
For Immediate Release
Media Contact:
Matthew Paul Olmos
212-246-2676 ext. 24
PERFORMANCES
September 22 - 28 |
THE LARK AND INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL ANNOUNCE SELECTIONS FOR THE 15TH ANNUAL PLAYWRIGHTS' WEEK FESTIVAL
NEW YORK, NY - The Lark Play Development Center and the Indo-American Arts Council are proud to announce the selections for Playwrights’ Week 2008. This year’s eleven writers, chosen from nearly 400 submissions, bring diversity in subject matter ranging from a father being crucified to an Arab-American man stripped of his rights to a young boy who yearns to become God’s prophet. The playwrights will spend a weeklong residency at the Lark developing their work with professional actors, a director, and Lark staff; they will then present that work in a public reading during the Festival.
For the Lark, the Playwrights’ Week is a key program in unearthing new writers from around the world, as it stems from an open-submission policy, as well as an outreach to numerous community groups, universities, and theatre professionals. The goal is to find unique and unheard voices who may not have an agent, “connections” or traditional access to theatre companies. According to Playwrights’ Week alumni Chisa Hutchinson, “There are so many reading series out there. I wouldn’t recommend any of them before I’d recommend Playwrights’ Week at the Lark. Heck, I’d recommend a reading at the Lark over full fledged productions at some other theaters.”
This year's selections include: THE NOISEMAKERS by Mark Borkowski, about how a father’s wish to be crucified unveils a family’s darkest secrets; CHARM by Kathleen Cahill about the woman who inspired Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”; THE TWELFTH LABOR, by Steven Gridley where a single day, October 15th 1949, is filtered through the warped and damaged mind of an Idaho farm girl; MIDDLEMEN, in which two model employees realize they are the only ones left in a sixty-story building, by David Jenkins; WILDFLOWERS, by Lila Rose Kaplan, about a woman and her troubled son look to escape their past in Crested Butte, a small town with its own share of secrets.; TRUTH SERUM BLUES, by Ismail Khalidi delves inside the tortured mind and body of Kareem-a young Arab American man stripped of his rights and lost in his own memories; IN THE SAWTOOTHS by Dano Madden in which three longtime hiking friends must navigate an immense and unexpected wilderness when their bond is shattered by tragedy; FAITH, by James McLindon, concerns Simon, a young boy who yearns to receive the stigmata and become God’s prophet, encounters a mysterious being floating above the Walmart parking lot bearing a message that can save the world; SLASHER by Allison Moore about a woman cast in a slasher flick who must battle a masked serial killer on the set-and her raging feminist mother at home; and SANKALPAN by Lina Patel, an inventive fusion of Chekhov's THREE SISTERS and Tagore's THE HOME AND THE WORLD, it evokes a time of revolution that draws sharp parallels to the geopolitics of today. Additionally, Lark has invited leading a leading Israeli playwright, Motti Lerner, to work on his play BENEDICTUS, where an Israeli arms dealer desperate to rescue his sister from Teheran meets childhood friend who is an influential Iranian Ayatollah.
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The Festival kicks off with a Meet the Writers reception on September 22nd where the playwrights will be introduced, interviewed, and will read excerpts of their work. The Festival will come to a finale with a special celebration of the Lark’s 9th year in partnership with IAAC on September 28.
The Playwrights’ Week selection process started in November of 2007. Hundreds of scripts were submitted through the Lark's open submission policy. Finalists were chosen through a rigorous process involving the Lark’s Literary Wing, comprised of dozens of theatre artists and community members. The final eleven playwrights were selected by a group of esteemed industry professionals including: Catherine Coray ( Festival director, HotINK), John Clinton Eisner ( Lark Producing Director), Suzy Fay ( Lark Dramaturg/Roundtable Director), Daniel Jaquez ( Calpulli Danza Mexicana), Morgan Jenness ( Abrams Artists), Katori Hall ( playwright, HOODOO LOVE), Miles Lott ( Lark LitWing Chair), Aroon Shivdasani (Indo-American Arts Council), and Rob Urbinati ( Queens Theatre in the Park), Jose Zayas ( Immediate Theater Company).
Playwrights Week 2008 is generously supported, in part, with public funds by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and with major support from Jerome Foundation, NYC City Speaker Christine Quinn, Time Warner’s Diverse Voices Fund and MetLife Foundation.
A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER provides playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work. The Lark brings together actors, directors, playwrights and the community to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of theaters, universities, community-based organizations, and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally. The Lark is led by Producing Director, John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director, Michael Robertson. For more information, www.larktheatre.org.
This past year year Theresa Rebeck’s MAURITIUS was produced on Broadway by Manhattan Theatre Club this spring. INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL is a registered 501(c) 3 not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization charged with the mission of promoting and building the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America. The IAAC supports all artistic disciplines in the classical, fusion, folk and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. IAAC works cooperatively with colleagues around the United States to broaden our collective audiences and to create a network for shared information, resources and funding. IAAC’s focus is to work with artists and arts organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists and arts organizations from India to exhibit, perform and produce their works here.
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All events take place at The Lark Studio
939 8th Avenue (btw 55 & 56) 2nd Floor
1, A, B, C, D, to Columbus Circle
N, Q, R, W to 57th Street
For information: visit www.larktheatre.org or call 212-246-2676, x22
BECAUSE OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL NATURE OF THIS WORK, THESE PRESENTATONS ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW.
FOR A COMPLETE SCHEDULE, VISIT
WWW.LARKTHEATRE.ORG
|
THE NOISEMAKERS
by Mark Borkowski
When a mentally disturbed father seeks forgiveness for sins against his family, he asks his son to help him take the only action he believes will fully absolve him: he wants to be crucified. His request unveils the family’s darkest secrets and forces them to confront their demons.
CHARM
by Kathleen Cahill
Margaret Fuller and the Transcendalists are not a rock group. And this isn't your typical history play... but Margaret is the woman who inspired Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.
THE TWELFTH LABOR
by Steven Gridley
Follows a single day, October 15th 1949, filtered through the warped and damaged mind of an Idaho farm girl. Through her memories, dreams, and swirling language, we come to understand the price she and her family have paid for a little dignity, as they await the return of their long absent father, lost somewhere in the war, half a world away.
middlemen
by David Jenkins
Michael and Stan are two mid-level employees of a large, nameless corporation. They've worked hard. They've stayed in place. They've done exactly what's been asked of them. Now, they're bracing for the consequences. middlemen: an existential comedy about denial, adulthood and non-dairy creamer.
WILDFLOWER
by Lila Rose Kaplan
Crested Butte is the Wildflower Capital of Colorado. When a woman and her troubled son arrive, they encounter a forest ranger, an ex-drag queen, and a very curious girl. Five disparate souls collide in a summer of desire and unexpected consequence.
TRUTH SERUM BLUES
by Ismail Khalidi
Infused with questions about family, exile, and home in the post-9/11 era, this play delves inside the tortured mind and body of Kareem--a young Arab American man stripped of his rights and lost in his own memories. As the play glides between Guantanamo Bay, the Middle East, and urban-America, the lines between innocence and guilt become increasingly blurred and the freedom of imagination is given a new meaning.
BENEDICTUS
by Motti Lerner
72 hours before an American attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran, an Israeli arms dealer tries to rescue his sister from Teheran. He meets his childhood friend who is an influential Iranian Ayatollah and together they get involved in the last attempt to prevent the war.
IN THE SAWTOOTHS
by Dano Madden
As Oby, Nellie, and Darin prepare for their annual backpacking trip to the mountains of Idaho, their bond is unexpectedly shattered by tragedy. What will become of their longtime friendship as they navigate through an immense and unexpected wilderness?
FAITH
by James McLindon
All that young Simon wants for Christmas is to receive the stigmata and become God’s prophet, and if religious fervor has anything to do with it, he’s a shoe-in. So when the mysterious Harbinger appears to him in the Walmart parking lot, Simon knows that she is God’s angel, the answer to his prayers. Or is she?
SLASHER
by Allison Moore
When she’s cast as the “last girl” in a low-budget slasher flick, Sheena thinks it’s the big break she’s been waiting for. But news of the movie unleashes her mother’s thwarted feminist rage, and mom is prepared to do anything to stop filming-even if it kills her.
SANKALPAN (DESIRE)
by Lina Patel
An inventive fusion of Chekhov's Three Sisters and Tagore's "The Home and the World," Sankalpan evokes a time of revolution that draws sharp parallels to the geopolitics of today.
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