New Batch of Plays for Spring

by Soyia Ellison

This year’s Pacific Playwrights Festival will take you through time and across the map, from tornado-tossed Kansas to not-quite-past, not-quite-future London, from a ramshackle trailer in the Colorado desert to the visiting area of a Massachusetts prison.

Talk about something for everyone: There’s even a musical about a secret-burdened family set in modern-day San Francisco.

The 14th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival runs April 29 through May 1, and will once again draw a multitude of the country’s top theatre professionals—playwrights, artistic directors, literary agents, casting specialists—eager to hear some of the best new American plays.

The festival kicks off Friday afternoon with Steven Drukman’s The Prince of Atlantis, which some of you may have been lucky enough to have heard in our January NewScripts reading. Funny and full of surprises, it finds an imprisoned seafood importer trying to manage the sudden appearance of the son he gave up for adoption 30 years earlier.

Following that are two very different plays that are both interested in the uneasy relationship between religion and government. In How the World Began, veteran Catherine Trieschmann explores a modern-day dust-up over evolution in a Midwestern school. And in The Droll, newcomer Meg Miroshnik imagines a ragtag troupe attempting to organize a secret performance of Hamlet in a world in which theatre has been outlawed.

Saturday morning brings a new SCR-commissioned work by Sharr White. Annapurna, which takes its name from one of the world’s highest mountains, investigates the relationship between a dying, reclusive poet and his ex-wife, who re-appears at his trailer doorstep just as suddenly as she disappeared 20 years earlier.

Things conclude on Sunday with something of a PPF rarity: a new musical titled Cloudlands. Written by Octavio Solis, who gave us La Posada Mágica, and Adam Gwon, who made a big splash last season with his musical Ordinary Days, Cloudlands is a play about family secrets and deadly desires.

In addition to these five staged readings, the festival also includes two fully produced plays, both world premieres: Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky, a beautiful historical drama based on the life of turn-of-the-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, and Itamar Moses’ Completeness, about two science-minded graduate students who find that love is the most complicated algorithm of all.

Since its creation in 1998, PPF has grown into one of the leading festivals of new plays in the country, devoted to showcasing the best new work on our radar, in hopes of generating lively conversation, future world premieres and subsequent productions for myriad playwrights.

Over the years, the festival has helped launch some of the most prominent plays in the American theatre, including Donald Margulies’ Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics, Rolin Jones’ The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole, among many others.

Festival directors John Glore and Kelly Miller expect similar big things for the plays this year.

“The plays of this year’s festival are stylistically diverse and exciting,” Miller said, “including a powerful new musical collaboration between playwright Octavio Solis and composer Adam Gwon, an inventive drama about the end of theatre by emerging playwright Meg Miroshnik, compelling dramatic stories from Sharr White and Catherine Trieschmann, and Steven Drukman’s quirky family comedy set in the Down the Lake section of Boston.”

  ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

	Lauren Gunderson received her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch, her BFA from Emory, and is an NYU Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. Her play Emilie was commissioned and premiered at SCR in 2009, and has now been published by Samuel French. Fire Work was developed at The O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and is a 2011 finalist for Aurora Theatre Company's Global Age Project. Her 2011 three-city rolling world premiere of Exit, Pursued By A Bear includes Synchronicity Theatre, Crowded Fire and ArtsWest Theatre. She is currently developing a musical with Harry Connick, Jr. and John Rando. She has developed plays with Second Stage Theatre and Primary Stages in NYC, New Repertory Theatre in Boston, Playwrights Foundation, Crowded Fire, Aurora Theatre Company and Magic Theatre in San Francisco, Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, Actor's Express and Horizon Theatre Co. in Atlanta, JAW/West in Portland, WordBRIDGE, Brave New Works, and others. She received a Sloan Science Script Award (2008) for her screenplay Grand Unification. She teaches and speaks on the intersection of science and theatre and writes for The Huffington Post.
	Itamar Moses is the author of the full-length plays Outrage, Bach at Leipzig (produced at SCR in 2006), Celebrity Row, The Four of Us, Yellowjackets, Back Back Back and The Den, a collection of short plays titled Love/Stories (or But You Will Get Used to It), as well as various one-acts. He is presently adapting Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude for the stage with composer Michael Friedman and director Daniel Aukin. His work has appeared Off-Broadway and at regional theatres across the country, in Canada, France and Brazil; has been published by Faber & Faber, Heinemann Press, Playscripts Inc., Samuel French and Vintage. He has received new play commissions from McCarter Theatre Center, Playwrights Horizons, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Wilma Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory and Lincoln Center Theater. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU and has taught playwriting at Yale and NYU. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, MCC’s Playwriting Coalition, Naked Angels Mag 7, and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. He was born in Berkeley and now lives in Brooklyn.
	Steven Drukman’s play Truth and Beauty was presented at the 2002 Pacific Playwrights Festival. His play The Bullet Round—read as part of South Coast Repertory’s NewSCRipts—received its world premiere at Arena Stage in Portland, Oregon, in 2009. His newest play, The Innocents, premiered this month at Asolo Repertory Theatre. In This Corner (on the Louis/Schmeling bouts) premiered January 2008 at The Old Globe and won the Critics’ Circle “Best New Play” award. Other produced plays: Another Fine Mess (Portland Center Stage, Pulitzer Prize Nomination for Drama, 2003), Going Native (Long Wharf Theatre), Flattery Will Get You (Connecticut Repertory Theatre), Collateral Damage (Illusion Theater, Minneapolis), and Snowmaiden (Bob Hope Theatre, Dallas). Drukman’s work has been developed by the Mark Taper Forum, Intiman Theatre, Sundance Theatre Lab, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Lark Play Development Center, and many others. Awards: Edgerton Award for New Plays, Craig Noel Award, Paul Green Award, Alfred P. Sloan Award, Ovid Foundation, and Boston Theatre Works. Other writing: The New York Times, The Village Voice, The International Herald Tribune, The Nation, and others. He is the former senior editor of American Theatre magazine. Drukman teaches playwriting at NYU.
	Adam Gwon was named one of “50 to Watch” by The Dramatist magazine and won the 2008 Fred Ebb Award for excellence in musical theater songwriting. Gwon’s projects include Ordinary Days (Roundabout, South Coast Repertory, London’s West End), as well as the upcoming The Boy Detective Fails (book: Joe Meno) and Bernice Bobs Her Hair (book/lyrics: Julia Jordan). His other honors include the ASCAP Harold Adamson award, the MAC John Wallowitch award and a MAC award nomination for best song, as well as commissions from South Coast Repertory, Signature Theatre, Broadway Across America, and the EST/Sloan Project. Recordings: Ordinary Days (Ghostlight Records). Fellowships: MacDowell Colony, Dramatists Guild. Education: NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
	Meg Miroshnik’s plays include The Tall Girls and The Recessions are Coming!. Her work has been produced by Perishable Theatre, Yale Cabaret, Brown University’s New Plays Festival, developed by South Coast Repertory, WordBRIDGE, A.R.T. Institute, The Powerhouse Theater, and published in Best American Short Plays, 2008-2009 (Applause, 2010). Her play The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls is the winner of the 2011-2012 Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award and will be produced by Alliance Theatre in February 2012. She is the recipient of a commission from South Coast Repertory and was a Visiting Instructor in Theater at Wesleyan University during the 2010 semester. Meg is currently an MFA candidate at the Yale School of Drama (graduation expected May 2011), studying playwriting under Paula Vogel.
	Octavio Solis is a playwright and director living in San Francisco. His works Lydia, June in a Box, Lethe, Marfa Lights, Gibraltar, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, The 7 Visions of Encarnacion, Bethlehem, Dreamlandia, El Otro, Man of the Flesh, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, and La Posada Mágica have been mounted at Yale Repertory Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center Theatre Company, Dallas Theater Center, Magic Theatre, Intersection for the Arts, South Coast Repertory, San Diego Repertory Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Shadowlight Productions, Venture Theatre, Latino Chicago Theatre Company, Summer Play Festival, Teatro Vista in Chicago, El Teatro Campesino, Undermain Theatre, Thick Description, Campo Santo, Imua! Theatre Company, and Cornerstone Theatre Company. His collaborative works include Burning Dreams, co-written with Julie Hebert and Gina Leishman; Shiner, written with Erik Ehn; and Great Highway, written with Wendy Weiner. Solis has received an NEA 1995-97 Playwriting Fellowship, the Roger L. Stevens award from The Kennedy Center, the Will Glickman Playwright Award, a production grant from The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, the 1998 TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the 1998 McKnight Fellowship grant from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and the National Latino Playwriting Award for 2003. He is the recipient of the 2000-2001 National Theatre Artists Residency Grant from TCG and the Pew Charitable Trust for Gibraltar at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Solis is a Thornton Wilder Fellow for the MacDowell Colony, a New Dramatists alum, and a member of the Dramatists Guild. Prospect is an independent feature film he wrote and directed.
	Catherine Trieschmann’s s plays include The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock (Weissberger Award), crooked, The World of Others, Hot Georgia Sunday, Small and Selfish Creatures and How the World Began. Her work has been produced Off-Broadway at the Women’s Project, the Bush Theatre (London), the New Theatre (Sydney), American Theatre Company (Chicago), Florida Stage, the Summer Play Festival, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Theatre in the Square, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival. It has been developed with Manhattan Theatre Club, Lark Play Development Center, LAByrinth Theater Co., Williamstown Theatre Festival, Florida Studio Theatre, ARS Nova, and the Dallas Theatre Center. She has received commissions from SCR and Manhattan Theatre Club. Her work is published by Samuel French, Methuen, and Smith & Kraus, as well as featured in The Best New Playwrights of 2009. She also wrote the screenplay for the film Angel's Crest, premiering at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. Originally from Athens, Georgia, she currently resides in a small town in western Kansas.
	Sharr White’s plays have been developed or produced at theatres across the country, including MCC Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Marin Theatre Company, Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors Lab and Key West Theatre Festival. Sunlight, an SCR commission that was part of 2008’s PPF, was the recipient of a National New Play Network rolling world premiere, featuring productions at Marin Theatre Company, Seattle’s ArtsWest, Phoenix Theatre and New Jersey Repertory Company. Six Years premiered at the 30th Anniversary Humana Festival of New American Plays. In March 2011, White's The Other Place will receive its world premiere Off-Broadway at MCC Theatre, featuring Laurie Metcalf and directed by Joe Mantello. White has been honored with a Dr. Henry and Lillian Nesburn Award as part of the Julie Harris Award in Playwriting (The Escape Velocity of Savages), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (Six Years), the 2009 Skye Cooper New American Play Prize (Sunlight) and the 2010 Playwrights First Award (The Other Place).

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