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Playwrights Festival, September 22 - 28, 2008
  

A Closer Look At Our Writers, Part II
Playwrights' Week 2008
  
In this 2nd installment, get to know a bit more in depth about the other five playwrights from our 15th Annual Playwight's Week Festival.
 
We asked our writers,
  
"What was the impetus for writing your play?"
  
Here's what they said:
  
LILA ROSE KAPLAN on WILDFLOWER
  
"While living in San Diego, I heard about a Wildflower Hotline. I was intrigued. How could flowers be urgent enough for a hotline? It got me thinking. When does something beautiful become dangerous? And then it hit me. Adolescence. Adolescence is when something beautiful becomes dangerous. Desire flows through our veins for the first time. Innocence transforms into experience. WILDFLOWER explores the discovery of desire and its consequences."
  
STEVEN GRIDLEY on THE TWELFTH LABOR
  
"I chose to structure the play around the "Twelve Labors of Hercules" for a couple of reasons. The sense of never-ending labor. The dream, of course, and the hope is to some day be finished…butentirely new labors emerge and take the place of the old ones. It's a perpetually frustrating state that we all share, to see the goal, the vision, but not be able to connect the dots to get there. Yet, despite this certain failure, as said in the play, 'It is still pointless to give up hope, isn’t it?'
  
  
PLAYWRIGHTS' WEEK 2008 September 22-28
  
For schedule and reservations,
  
visit www.larktheatre.org or call 212-246-2676 x. 24.
  
LINA PATEL on SANKALPAN (DESIRE)
  
"In the wake of 9/11, America re-examined its role in the world, its feelings about democracy and freedom and to what extent we could pursue democracy and freedom at home and abroad. In India, in 1905, western ideas of freedom, democracy, and justice were intermixing with Indian ideas of class, caste, gender roles. East was influencing West and vice-versa. This exchange ultimately brought forth huge upheavals in what was to become the world's largest democracy.
  
We were at a decisive political moment. How we reacted to that tragedy determined the course of our country for years to follow. The early years of the twentieth century proved to be a decisive political moment in India. I zero in on this moment through its effects on a family: on sisters, on lovers, on a husband and wife."
  
MEET THE WRITERS on Monday, September 22 @ 7pm
Hosted by Morgan Jenness
Hear the excerpts from their work and mingle with them at our Opening Night reception.
  		 MARK BORKOWSKI on THE NOISEMAKERS

"I wrote this play at a time where I found myself at an intense crossroads, on the verge of a breakdown. In order to complete it, I was forced to come to terms with all the standards and morality I’d been taught by parents, society, church, etc. The father in the play represents this insane conditioning that caused me to feel so swindled. The father’s crucifixion represents the son’s confrontation of self, placing him at a crossroads that reflected my own-- between stagnation and rebirth."

KATHLEEN CAHILL on CHARM
  
"Living in New England, haunted by the literary giants who used to walk here. Hearing about a woman called Margaret Fuller, with her Latin education and her hungry heart, sweeping through Concord and Boston, having a disquieting effect on the men who knew her. I hope audiences will think about how history can hide its heroes…how in the Trancendentalists' America there was an alternative tradition to materialism, militarism, and empire."
  
RSVP: CLICK HERE or 212-246-2676 x. 24
  
  
 

A Closer Look At Our Writers, Part I
Playwrights' Week 2008
  
In this 2nd installment, get to know a bit more in depth about the other five playwrights from our 15th Annual Playwight's Week Festival.
 
We asked our writers,
  
"What was the impetus for writing your play?"
  
Here's what they said:
  
DAVID JENKINS on middlemen
  
"Like most people, I've been pretty aghast/fascinated at the decline of any sort of accountability in our government and corporate America. The Enron documentary The Smartest Guys in the Room was a great inspiration. I wanted to touch on the issues of extreme corruption and complacency, but not from the perspective of the Executives or the Victims. More troubling, and interesting to me are the people in the middle. The importance of accepting responsibility. The need to define our ethical boundaries or they will be defined for us."
  
MOTTI LERNER on BENEDICTUS
  
"I'm terrified of the conflict between Iran and the U.S. and Iran and Israel. I'm terrified at the thought that irresponsible leaders could bring a catastrophe over us and our countries. I hope that people will re-think their political convictions. I want them to get involved in the public political discourse. I want them to think deeper before they vote."
  
  
PLAYWRIGHTS' WEEK 2008 September 22-28
  
For schedule and reservations,
  
visit www.larktheatre.org or call 212-246-2676 x. 24.
  
ISMAIL KHALIDI on TRUTH SERUM BLUES
  
"I wrote this play at a time when as a young Arab American I was feeling alienated, alone and angry. I was also inspired by the horrors of the Iraq war, then in its second year, and the War on Terror with its black holes and loopholes where human beings, history, law and logic had been tortured, twisted and disappeared for four years... The play turned into a kind of a tortured psychedelic ode to the oppressed and to my ancestors and a warning to future generations."
  
ALLISON MOORE on SLASHER
  
 "A couple of years ago I read an article in Texas Monthly about the making of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's a genre that metaphorically feeds on young women--both as characters in the movies themselves, and the young actresses who are trying to catch their big break. I also went through a period of a couple of years where I couldn't watch any of the police procedurals on TV, because all of the dead women started to get to me. So all this stuff was perking around in my brain, and SLASHER is what came out."
  		 JAMES McLINDON on FAITH
  
" I believe that one of the great challenges to America and the world in the 21st century is the resurgence of religious fundamentalism. I wanted to write a play that explores fanaticism, the most extreme form of fundamentalism, and the essential selfishness, if not narcissism, that is often at its root. I set the play in a domestic setting - a Christian, American suburb. I hope audiences will ponder what our own fundamentalists may have in common with those from abroad."
  
DANO MADDEN on IN THE SAWTOOTHS
  
"Who are we in our greatest moments of crisis? When our world falls apart and our truest, deepest selves emerge, what is revealed? What becomes of our closest relationships and the people who mean the most to us? I wanted to write a play about the changing nature of friendship. I had recently turned 30 and was noticing a pattern in my life and in the lives of the people around me. As people grow older and change there is often a breaking point or a falling out, a moment when our friendships are stretched to the limit. In this moment our oldest friendships either fade away as we move into adulthood or they grow stronger and last our entire lives."
  
Stay tuned for:
A Closer Look At Our Writers, Part II
  
Featuring:
LILA ROSE KAPLAN,  STEVEN GRIDLEY, MARK BORKOWSKI,
KATHLEEN CAHILL, and LINA PATEL
  
For schedule and reservations to Playwrights' Week 2008, visit www.larktheatre.org or call 212-246-2676 x. 24.
  
  

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