Meet the Playwrights

INCLUDING THE LATEST ADDITION TO SCR'S SEASON

And so, in this issue, we’d like you to meet 11 playwrights whose work you’ll see on stage this season. (We figure after 29 years, there’s no need to introduce you to Jerry Patch, our brilliant adaptor of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.) Among the playwrights you’ll meet are several up-and-comers, a few established craftsmen and two legends.

SEGERSTROM STAGE PLAYWRIGHTS

Stephen Sondheim (Putting it Together – Sept. 11-Oct. 11): Sondheim, a 79-year-old New York native, grew up an only child in an unhappy household. He fell in love with theatre at age nine and wrote his first musical — a send-up of events at his high school — while still a teenager. His first great success came at 27, when he wrote the lyrics for West Side Story. He’ has won seven Tonys, two Grammys, an Oscar and a Pulitzer Prize. Singers consider Sondheim’s work incredibly difficult — and incredibly rewarding.

Noah Haidle (Saturn Returns: Oct. 23-Nov. 22): Haidle, 30, majored in philosophy at Princeton University and is a graduate of The Juilliard School. The New Yorker called Haidle, who was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., “precocious and formidably talented, with a sort of freewheeling intuitive daring.” He’s the author of no fewer than nine plays, two of which have been produced at SCR: Mr. Marmalade in 2004 and Princess Marjorie in 2005. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that Haidle has sold his first film script, entitled Old Timers, about two retired hit men out for a wild night on the town before one of them must make a deadly decision.

August Wilson (Fences – Jan. 22-Feb. 21): Wilson grew up in an impoverished black neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pa., known as the Hill District, which became the setting for nine of the ten plays in his Century Cycle. The son of a white German immigrant and a black cleaning woman, Wilson dropped out of high school in the 1950s after a teacher falsely accused him of plagiarizing a paper about Napoleon. His Century Cycle — ten plays, each set in a different decade in the 1900s, that tell stories of the African-American experience — began with Jitney in 1982. Characters and storylines sometimes overlap in the cycle, which was not written in chronological order. Two of the plays — Fences and The Piano Lesson — won Pulitzer Prizes, and Fences also won the Tony. Wilson died in 2005.

Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart – May 7-June 6): Henley and SCR go way back. The theatre produced its first Henley play, The Debutante Ball, in its 1984-1985 season, and later mounted productions of Abundance and Ridiculous Fraud. Born in Jackson, Miss., Henley studied acting at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She wrote her first play while still in college. Among her classmates was Patricia Richardson, best known for her work in “Home Improvement,” who would go on to originate roles in two of Henley’s plays. Crimes of the Heart launched Henley's career and won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. Though her plays tend to be set in the South, Henley has lived in California for years.

Segerstrom Stage playwrights clockwise from top left: Noah Haidle, August Wilson, Beth Henley and Stephen Sondheim.

JULIANNE ARGYROS STAGE PLAYWRIGHTS

Julie Marie Myatt (The Happy Ones – Sept. 27-Oct. 18): Myatt, the daughter of a two-star general who served in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, grew up moving from place to place but has settled in L.A.'s Los Feliz neighborhood. She went to college at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., where her first play was produced. Over the years she has written plays about homelessness, Iraq war veterans and the sex lives of American women, among other things. Commissioned by SCR, the Happy Ones is her second SCR premiere; her first was 2007’s My Wandering Boy, about a private detective searching for a privileged young man who’s dropped out of sight.

Argyros Stage playwrights clockwise from top left: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Adam Gwon, Julie Marie Myatt and Howard Korder.

Adam Gwon (Ordinary Days: Jan. 3-24): Gwon started taking piano lessons in third grade, studying with a neighbor who was the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s organist. He began composing in high school and continued writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Gwon soon made a name for himself, winning commissions and awards — including the 2008 Fred Ebb Award for excellence in musical theatre songwriting (which comes with a $50,000 prize). In addition to Ordinary Days, Gwon – who according to his website is a really big peanut-butter fan — composed music and lyrics for Bernice Bobs Her Hair and Ethan Frome. He is currently working on a musical adaptation of The Boy Detective Fails, and an SCR-commissioned musical.

Howard Korder (In a Garden – March 7-28): Korder returns to SCR with his third world premiere, after 1999-2000’s The Hollow Lands and 1989-1990’s Search and Destroy. Korder was born in New York, and after graduating from SUNY Binghamton in 1979, moved to Manhattan to make his fortune as an actor. Playwriting soon replaced acting, however. His big break came with 1988’s Boy’s Life, which had earlier debuted in SCR’s NewSCRipts program and which went on to be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Korder now lives in New Mexico and writes television and film scripts as well as plays. He recently co-wrote the movie Lakeview Terrace, starring Samuel L. Jackson.

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Dr. Cerberus – April 11-May 2): Aguirre-Sacasa isn't only a playwright; he’s also a writer for HBO’s "Big Love" and Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four and Spider-Man comic-book series. The son of a high-level Nicaraguan politician (who ran for president there in 2006), Aguirre-Sacasa grew up in Washington, D.C., and Nicaragua, and attended Georgetown University before earning an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama. His plays include the semi-autobiographical Based on a Totally True Story, about a young, gay comic-book writer/playwright balancing a new relationship and the transformation of his first play into a movie.

THEATRE FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES PLAYWRIGHTS

Joan Cushing (Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business: Nov. 6-22): For years, Cushing was best known as the singing political satirist Mrs. Foggybottom. Her revue, Mrs. Foggybottom & Friends, ran for ten years in Washington, D.C., and toured for four. She wrote several adult musicals before turning more recently to creating musical versions of children’s books. Her adaptation of Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones is one of seven children’s musicals that she has written, with more commissions in the works. Cushing lives in D.C.

John Glore (A Wrinkle in Time – Feb. 5-21): Glore’s name should be familiar to SCR regulars: He is our associate artistic director and served as literary manager here from 1985 to 2000. An accomplished playwright, his plays On the Jump and The Company of Heaven have been seen on SCR stages and produced at respected theatres across the country. He chose to adapt Madeleine L’Engle’s beloved science-fiction story because it was his favorite book in elementary school. He fell in love with it again a number of years ago when his now-teenaged daughter discovered it and made a diorama of a scene from it for a school project.

Bathsheba Doran (Ben and the Magic Paintbrush – May 21-June 6): Doran is making her SCR debut with the Theatre for Young Audiences play Ben and the Magic Paintbrush. Born and raised in England, Doran had already had a play performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by the time she came to the States on a Fulbright scholarship in 2000. She earned an MFA from Columbia University and served as a Juilliard playwriting fellow. She has written more than half-a-dozen plays — most of them for adults — including the Signature Theatre-commissioned Nest, based on a real-life story of a woman hanged for killing her newborn child in 1809.

Read more about the 2009-10 season.