Good afternoon. Good afternoon, good afternoon. Welcome to the NDA conference here in Chicago. On the first day, afternoon, and one of the first sets of concurrent sessions. This session is called Playwrights Under the Radar. It is kind of a variation of an annual session that we have done called Hot Topics, but this one focuses mainly on presenting playwrights. More or less common, more local playwrights that we feel need a little bit more exposure and it's time to get their names out there so we can get to know them a little bit better. So I have ten presenters today who are going to share some of their favorite playwrights and creators, some of the work that they've done, and maybe even share a little bit of information about how you can connect with those individuals and check out work for yourselves. One of the things that I've noticed from talking to the presenters prior to this is many of these individuals are on the new play exchange. And we would like to take some time to talk about that afterwards as we need to, but the new play exchange is a great source that you all should know about and it's great that many of these individuals are on there, so that is another way to connect. But especially if you've received a handout or such program, you have some contact information from many of these individuals and I will welcome and encourage you to kind of reach out to our presenters who know more about these individuals and they can probably help share some information about them as well. So this conference overall, especially for those of you who were here for the first time, really about networking is a huge thing and it's really cool because drama turks from my experience are, even though they admit at times that they can be introverted, they're actually very approachable. So please reach out to any of these individuals at the conference, have a conversation, get some coffee tea, et cetera, and just get to know each other. That's how we engage and we make ourselves better in what we do so we can make our work better wherever we are. So, oh, hi, my name is Brian Moore. By the end of this conference, I will be the incoming president-elect for WMA. My pronouns are he, him, his. I am at Concordia University in Nebraska. The theater professor, chair of the theater department, department of one, et cetera. So I'm happy and excited to present this panel and we are about ready to roll. A handful of our presenters have handouts and we will try to get those to you either just before, just as they're starting or immediately after they are done. We do have a kind of a strict timeline that we ask them to present in. They need to give their presentation in five minutes. So what's going to happen is, Leah, is going to be our timekeeper. She's going to be the one who's basically going to tell you when you have one minute left. She is even nicer to tell you when you've got about 15 seconds left. She's going to, like, wave her hands in the air. And then she is going to be not so nice and tell you you're done. Let's hope you don't get to that point. It's great when you can complete yourself and not have or have to tell you when you're done. Okay, so without further ado, we're going to do a story. And I don't remember this first. It's Catherine, isn't it? Thank you. So my name is Catherine, pronounced she, her. I'm from the Great Canadian Theater Company in Ottawa. And I have the pleasure today of talking about my friend and a very talented playwright, Matt Hurtenty. So Matt is a playwright, actor, and producer born and raised in Ottawa. His new play, Rideshares and Rope Swings, received the 2016 Pete Rideau Award for Outstanding New Creation. That same year, he was also voted emerging artist of the year. Rideshares and Rope Swings has been produced as far as Halifax and Philadelphia. Matt is an instructor in acting and playwriting at the Ottawa Acting Company, where he is also assistant dramaturg for the Emerging Creators Unit, which happens to be my project, so. He also serves as a dramaturgy mentor for the Youth Infringement Festival. His next project will be collaborating with fellow Ottawa-based creator, Monica Bradford Lee, on the development of a new play based on Hitchbot, which is the real-life story of a robot that hitchhiked from Halifax to Victoria, so coast to coast in Canada, with the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council. So I would like to talk about two of his projects just really quickly. The first of which is called Swedish Furniture, and it premiered at the Tactics Festival this past April in Ottawa. It was directed by Katie McNeill. So Swedish furniture takes the audience into the bedroom of a modern-day millennial couple. Their frustration with each other, gender constructs of expectations, the economy, education, and entering the workforce all boil to a head as they face the fiercest challenge a couple can face. Assembling an Ikea bed. Part plain blue, part pointed exploration of modern love, Swedish furniture is a compassionate and hilarious cautionary tale, with Ikea furniture assembled live on stage. Yeah, it's a lot fun. And the ride shows in road swings. So it premiered at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in 2016, and it actually was a part of the inaugural Emerging Creators Unit that I founded in Ottawa also in 2016. So I had a little bit of a hand in the development of this project. It was directed by Matt Venner, who is the other Matt's creative partner. Together they form two kind boys. Yes, their names are both Matt. No, it's not confusing. So this play asks, what does anyone gain from only seeing two stars in their whole lifetime? A rideshare agreement goes awry, forcing two troubled strangers to spend time in the great eastern Ontario wilderness, getting to know each other, or worse, themselves. David Curry of Part 613 said, the script for rideshares and road swings is a brilliant work, well balanced and sincere. Matt's honest writing explores what is in between intimacy and death, the jokes land, the drama pushes the audience further into the themes of the play. It's simply a delight to watch. And also I would be remiss not to mention that he is on the New Play Exchange, and I think I left his email address on this there. So thank you everyone, that is my good friend Matt Herndy. Thanks. Thank you very much. Next up, Amber Brechall. Thank you. Sorry to be reading off my phone, but I didn't finish, so I don't have it printed. Okay. I met Daryl Lisa Fazio in 2011 when we connected to collaborate on her play Split in Three. Daryl and I connected immediately, and her writing drew me into a world that I recognized, felt at home in, and which I am contentionally fascinated, the South. Daryl's writing is iconic of the Southern female narrative. And what does that mean when I say the Southern female narrative? I'm not talking about Scarlet O'Hare, that's for sure. Think more like Thelma and Louise, but less spectacle. The women of Daryl's plays are loud and appropriate, endless talkers saying absolutely nothing and everything all at once. They are funny, vulnerable, awkward people with a significant regional connection that clearly defines the way in which they both see and experience the world. They are heroes without allowing such acknowledgement. They are saviors without a halo. They are survivors. They are saints and they are sinners. The culture of the Southeast, Mississippi in particular, is always present in her work that is her home. The systematic oppression of black and brown people, the consistent degradation of all those not white, straight cis males in this place is a character of its own within her plays. Daryl sits us in the middle of this conflict that lives in our history and in the South in our everyday lives and makes us fall in love with the good, the bad, the weak and everything in between. Her characters speak in rhythms, the tune of rich Southern accents and it is this very quality that drew me into her play, Split in Three. So we've worked on the play for about four months. It was featured in a reading with Atlanta's Essential Theatre, a company that only produces premieres of readings by Georgia Playwrights. After that reading it was awarded a workshop with Florida Rep for a Dory Theatre as part of their play lab. Then Florida Rep produced the world premiere and they sold out the show to Roaring Houses. A year later a Roaring Theatre in Lawrenceville just outside of Atlanta staged the second production of the play and it received another production in Alabama the same year. Currently it is being reviewed by Samuel French for potential publishing. Less than ten years after the launch of her first professional production on Split in Three at Florida Rep her resume has grown impressively but most of her credits are Southern and local opportunities. Here's a list of production and development opportunities beyond Split in Three in the last years, last eight years. Off-Broadway Pop Art the Musical is featured in the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Gray Hills was produced by our regional New York Theatre. Safety Net will receive its world premiere with theatrical outfit and its second production at Pinoscot Theatre. The Flower Room premiered at Actors Express. Freed Spirits was a commission and world premiere through Horizon Theatre. Her musical Lyft with composer Aaron McAllister was awarded a slot in the N-A-M-T Festival of New Musicals in New York City as well as being developed at NYC's New York, NYC's York Theatre and Coastal Carolina University. Her list of award selections and recognition includes the Alliance Theatre Riser Lab for Safety Net, the O'Neill Playwrights Conference Finalist for the same play, New York Musical Theatre Festival, next link selection for Pop Art, three-time Florida Rep Play Lab selection. Development workshops Darryl has been awarded are from Actors Express Threshold Festival, Synchronicity She Writes, Angry University Brave New Works, Truman State University, Seven Stages Homebrew Festival, working title playwrights Ethel Wilson Lab, Florida Rep. Darryl received her BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and she also has an MFA in Graphic Design. Her production credits in the City of Atlanta alone is proof that Darryl Fazio is well loved, but I'd say it's high time the rest of the country experiences stories in the South and Darryl's work is a perfect example. Why should we put southern narratives in the spotlight, you might ask. The South is a place that combines cultures no one would ever believe would get along, but travel to Atlanta, Georgia and you will experience a South you never knew existed. Metro Atlanta is majority African-American and nearly 15% queer. In order to know the full diversity of what it means to be Southern and to live in the South, we have to tell the full story. Start with my talented friend and working title playwrights member Darryl Lisa Fazio. Please let me know if you'd like me to connect you with her. She has wonderful, a wonderful website. It's under Darryl's Plays.com and that's Darryl's with an S and she also has all of her plays on the new play exchange under Darryl Lisa Fazio. Thank you so much. Next up, Adam Goldstein. Appreciate it. I'm Adam Goldstein, assistant professor of theater in North East Illinois and the incoming artistic director of NEIU State Center Theater and I'm here to speak about my visionary friend and collaborator, Georgette Kelly. As a new part of the Good and the Theater's playwrights unit I suppose that puts her on the radar but I believe that her strong record of development is a sounding imagination and open heart. Suggests her as incredibly deserving of more exploration and full productions. Georgette is currently self-represented but is the writer of nine full length plays including Portrait, which will receive its first reading coming up at the Goodman on July 5th. Fa Clavide Artiste receiving a reading at Diversionary Theater's Spark Festival on July 23rd. North Star, which will be workshopped in the Headwaters New Play Festival in August at Creedy Rep in Colorado and Alice, which will receive recognition as part of the Kilroy's List in 2015. She's written numerous short plays as well as a teacher and teaching artist and creates challenging, accessible work for adult young audiences. Has won the first Hope on State's Playwriting Award as well as the San Diego Critics Circle Award for Best in Play, finalists at yada yada yada a million other awards and fellowships and completed her MFA at Hunter College. So maybe not under the radar but in my view at least under produced. I'm a MFA directing student at Northwestern and she's an employee in our department and I had no idea that she was this genius writer. I encountered her just in my own little narrow grad school world as efficient, professional, polite, polished and quiet. I encountered her at work after the 2016 election and reckoned with a writer whose words, characters and vision exploded in poetic, visceral, epic, intimate and beautifully rough in the real ways. And loudly trumpeted what I call a necessary imagination of the heart. To its audience like a reminder that we are still here and still human. I don't know about the rest of the room here but following the election I sure need to feel like magic still existed in the world and that heart still sought beauty somewhere. And additionally came as a bit of a refreshment to see that Georgia's work was political but the political bend lay in exploring the ramifications of the world around us on our internal life. She weighed how visibility is taken and lost and how challenging self-reclamation in the face of crisis might be. I'm here now speaking to you as a current collaborator of hers at NEIU as we're proud to host a two-year developmental process of her gorgeous how to hero or the subway play which we're producing in partnership with Philham and Theater Ensemble a leading Chicago professional company producing works for all audiences. For me as a director what sparks personally in her work is the sense that the heart is always missing herself. In some of her plays this missing piece is identity. In others it's a critical lost companion but in all cases Georgia's characters seek very real things and are forced to look for them in very magical ways. She reminds us that to find solutions to impossible moments we must often do the impossible. Kelly's mentor Tina Howe has described her work as being at best when it's vertical. Her plays dreamscapes often travel through extreme heights of understanding alternative realities spirituality and magical realism. Her characters may learn how to fly or descend into subway tunnels or get themselves swallowed by whales in order to reclaim themselves such as in my personal favorite of her work Jonah and the belly of the whale. Her state's directions are poetry small plays into themselves and expand our notion or visual notion of what constitutes reality because in many cases in the pedestrian world it too often lacks the answers so we visit other universes, crawl through tunnels and reckon with the magic that is us. Georgia's work as she puts it is hopefully a playground for her collaborators and a unique puzzle in which to solve how to stage that impossible. From a producer's perspective I get it. Her work is intimidating on the page, it's big, it makes us ask amazing questions over design teams and it looks crazy and silly expensive at first. But at the end of the day she sees inside all of us in a special way and I think that she would simply respond to the challenges with there are just many ways to solve the puzzle. I don't know. Georgia's self identifies as queer and that perspective plays a critical role in her storytelling as she gravitates towards stories that explore the layers of that identity as well as in stories that center relationships of women and children. She signs lights on those who need it most and finds a way to make each member of an audience fully visible with honesty, empathy and love. This is both young and old and moved by her work and I hope that many of you in the regional world will find space in her stories for your audience as too. You can find out more about her philosophy in the Indian New Plain Play Exchange and also the website listed on your handout and we thank you. Ji-Hae Kim The playwright, two female playwright I'll be briefly introduced to all of you both from Seoul, South Korea Their last names happen to be both Hwang but they're not related other than the fact that they're both up-and-coming female power in South Korea For the time purposes I'm going to focus more on one playwright than the other but I'll leave a hook for the other playwright so that you can come talk to me and grab me whenever you have time First playwright Her name is Hye Jung Hwang Hye Jung Hwang might take used to write what play where her play is tight and sharp in terms of plot and timing Based on realism I would dare to say she has a trace of Arthur Miller's plot and Tennessee Williams' characters but I feel it so I want to say it to honor her work hence her words have been actors' favorite grabbing and shaking the audience's heart through the inevitable yet razor sharp dramatic fall in the climax of these juicy characters that you can find every subway station in the opposite side of Gangnam, South Korea Yes, she sounds just like all American family living in drama following after Miller and Williams yet she does not waste a single moment on stage Every moment an action is happening and the plot is moving moving and she doesn't give any time for the audience to sit back and relax Starting her career as a winner of the 2013 National Theater Center of Korea's New Play Festival for her first ever play, Merry Christmas or in Korean, Merry Christmas Hye Jung has written Strangers or Cheon In-Dung literally translated as Land Without an Owner a contemporary family tragedy of Korean-American immigrant family has won the 2015 Arts Council of Korea's Young Arts Frontier Grant in Literature The play begins with an ex-used car dealer in Southern California whom she's a small business went down and his son Andrew returns from the war an Iraq war with glory and trauma After its initial run in 2016 Strangers has traveled the city of Kwangmyung Kwonpo in 2018 has invited to the World Festival in Tokyo, Japan in 2018 Introduced today is actually called Chinese Cabinet It's a really fancy cabinet that I guess only known to someization, very fancy very expensive cabinet so hence the title Chinese Cabinet 2017 The story is about a family of arsonists The story begins with a burnt house missing father's death notice the living hand of the shadow family that consists of a mother, a son and a daughter who came back from Canada for the ghost funeral a funeral with her body of her father and the last but not the least her Canadian Indian boyfriend David The play is inspired by hiding the fact that some of the family has set a fire on their previous house with glory the tightly woven plot chases down who, how, and why of the fire asking the audience questions of in the era where the uncertainty provokes a constant state of anxiety would all go wrong do we commit become a sin what makes us anxious and why the play was inspired by Hejong's personal encounter to witnessing an apartment of fire when she was little I saw the reading of this play in the winter of 2017 in Seoul at the National Theater Center of Korea's emerging playwright reading series Into the Writer's Room I was fascinated by Hejong's keen insight towards crude human desire I was also mesmerized by the imagery created in the pinnacle of the climax I couldn't stop talking about the show when I returned to Santa Barbara Fast forward, Hejong got the Art Council of Korea's International Registration Grant this year and her play Change Cabinet was chosen to be translated as a part of her international portfolio in surprise I got to work with her as her dramaturgical translator and annotator She will be spending three months at Slovenia researching for her new plays So I put it out there for you to grant me to talk more about her play And the very briefly the other playwright that I would like to just briefly mention, her name is Jeongwon Hong, another playwright She writes about the relationship between nature and human, nation, technology and science and technology Her writing style is very poetic vastly different from Hejong But for the time's sake, feel free to grade me for more information or questions and I'm willing to talk more about it Thank you I'll turn based in New York City There will be a handout about my playwright, Bo Ryan McCoy They are in black and white There is one random color one If you get that, please pass it to the most successful person I am trying to impress the right type of people In Monterey, California He is a public school educator in addition to being a playwright I first met him in undergrad California State University Long Beach He was a very successful performer and director, so him also becoming a very successful playwright seems like a natural progression to me Some common themes in his work include freedom, fear, change and appropriately fear of change Although his work has always been very personal, very representative of him being a queer man He does find his work is also becoming increasingly political obviously, at least in part due to the current political climate When it comes to genre McCoy prefers not to label himself but often describes his writing as running the gamut from absurdism to magical realism and always coming from a self-described humanist perspective To get the idea of the caliber of the work McCoy produces some major playwright inspirations for him include Bernie Kushner, Annie Baker and Eric DeGosjean and their influence is always readily apparent when reading his work As he has performance experience it makes sense that he thinks of himself as a performer's playwright meaning dialogue is always at the forefront of his work and his plays are just veritable gold mines for actors looking for meeting monologues or scenes that provide a challenge while still being very relatable His work is really ideal for college age productions as the material is dramaturgically stimulating and also can be worked to suit minimalist staging and sets Some of his plays I'd like to highlight Cockfight, a one act about a group of men participating in the first human cockfight Queen Queenie an absurdist two act about a newly minted tyrannical queen meeting her subjects for the first time and immediately encountering opposition within the house and F or chariot sounds which is four acts about two ex-lovers who come together each seeking forgiveness and one making the transition towards death while experiencing a series of otherworldly divine visitors coming to his deathbed McCoy is a playwright who is incredibly accessible He is dedicated to being in contact as much as needed by the director and or dramaturg he has had his work produced in both Los Angeles California by the urban theater movement as well as in Long Beach, California by the found theater in their new play festival in 2017 and he managed to coordinate and communicate with those folks despite the distance between monitoring and Southern California which geographically is pretty far However, by that same token he is wonderfully hands off and is very open and excited to see the choices made by directors and actors he does not believe in being too precious with one's own work so you don't have to worry about a writer leaning over your shoulder and giving notes but yes, to summarize I think Bo Ryan McCoy has a very distinct voice that addresses both timely and timeless issues and he is without a doubt a rising playwright to watch out for Thank you so much Mark Lord I'm persuading you to visit the website of the creator that I'm going to speak to you about her name is Annie Wilson and her website which I just tweeted out at the beginning of the session is TheAnnieWilson.com If you visit you'll get to see lots of fancy quotes about what a well appreciated performer creator she is, you can also ask to be able to view video of her work there and I think that would be a good idea she's a relatively young artist whose work really deserves to be seen more than it has been she's a Philadelphia based performer creator she actually describes herself as a choreographer performer, director, writer bartender she's a really popular super hyphenated way of getting through I want to talk to you about my experience seeing two of her pieces because I think that her work is different than other artists first I'm going to speak to you about a piece called Lover Tits or one word which is a performance that Annie directed features three female body performers who are largely clothes less for the duration of the performance it's the most amazing representation of the naked body that I've ever witnessed in a theater she talks on her website about how one of the sort of founding thoughts for the piece was how amazing it is that we have bodies and I think that sense of awe and earnestness about physicality helps her in that work to let bodies be sexy but not only sexy playful but not only playful inviting being seen but not only being seen and to over the course of the probably 70 or 80 minutes of the performance to really sidestep the gaze of an audience to allow the bodies to simply be and to be funny without being self-deprecating to be real in the ways that perhaps we continue our own bodies over time in the privacy of our own homes being able to like see bodies in performance like that so you should check that out the second piece that I want to talk to you about briefly is a piece called I want to get the title correct At Home With the Humourless Bastard which is a solo performance that Annie made on the heels of experiencing catastrophic loss in her own personal life and it is a representation that does with grief and grieving and the experience of loss what Lover Tits does which is through a series of performance actions singing, engaging the audience allowing herself to be kind of radically present with the audience at the performance to let grief and the feelings of grief really just sit in the room with the audience in a gruesome kind of slumpy depressed way that we actually experience loss I actually experience loss and the piece is fascinating it's for one performer it deserves to be seen it deserves to travel Annie is not a playwright she's a maker of live performance and I want to say before I split A visit her website and B the work of performer creators because it doesn't get written down in text really languages if we don't make the effort to see it and share it and hers is worth it it needs to be shared some more thank you thank you Mark Juliana Marchese Juliana Marchese I feel like I've found lightning in a bottle my friend and Chicago director said this to me months ago about an LA playwright he had found on the internet Ellen Steves work, as Justin said is electric her plays are about power, politics manipulation and endurance she writes strong ensemble plays two of which I'm going to talk to you today about the first is Thin Mints a troop of girl scouts who lived in Cabin for 10 days for fishing, fun and friendship on the last night of their stay the results of an ancient ceremony revealed which scout will be elected to take over the troop and replace their current scout master the girls manipulate, terrorize torture in one another in the hopes of receiving the nomination this is a quote from Ellen Thin Mints is based on the Shakespeare 5 Act History structure looking back on it, it is also a reflection of the absurdity of the 2016 election Thin Mints also scores a 100 out of 100 on the Beckel test there is no single mention of men no brothers, no fathers, lovers et cetera by removing romance altogether Thin Mints explores who women are when they are not in love what's left is a story about greed, power, addiction, torture and ruthlessness the second play I want to talk to you about is called Talk Locker a trip dick this play is in search of a workshop when Justin and I first began talking to Ellen she shared two separate short plays with us both of them took place in exclusively masculine spaces Justin suggested that both of these plays could go together and be rounded out by a third piece the result is a gut-branching full-length play in three parts about toxic masculinity and suffering but most of all it is a play about brotherhood in this the first part of this trip dick or trip dick is called Frat Pie it is a real-time enactment of an induction ceremony for Alpha Kappa Lambda Chad, their fearless and sadistic leader, forces his new brothers to take part in a game widely known as Soggy Waffle according to Ellen in a reading of this play people had to leave the room to throw up it is 16 minutes that ends with the line you stand before me and I call you my brother the second part of the trip dick is called Trenches Trenches is a story about a group of men who are forgotten by a war that rages on around them abandoned in the trenches and left for dead the soldiers are severed from the outside world while their supplies dwindle they begin to create their own social systems with its own code of laws and ethics power becomes the most important commodity as their situation deteriorates secrets about each of them rise to the surface some descend into madness some are awakened, some die the third part of the play is called Charisma, Uniqueness Nerve and Talent is a working title CDUNT is an up to the date minute examination of gender presentation now divorced from realism this third piece explores barbarism and savagery in personal beauty it imagines a future where beauty standards are imposed on men to a draconian degree the third piece of this play called Talk Locker is still in development it's brand new still fluid, still neukaryote and it is in need of a community to finish sculpting it so you have Ellen's email I'm also happy to give you my email so I can send you the plays directly and she's also in the new play exchange thank you Brian Court nice to meet you in Toronto I'm also the chair of the board of LMDA I'm going to take a moment just before I begin to welcome you on behalf of the board of LMDA to Chicago to the conference and I'm very grateful to have you here I also I'm here to speak with Jeff Ho Jeff and I live and work in Toronto and I wanted to say that we're grateful to work and create on the territory of the Wendat, Katoom, the Seneca the Mississaugas of the Credit on territory that's subject to the dish of one spoon covenant between the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat nations and I'm also a caretaker of land north of Toronto on the territory of the Wendat nations Jeff Ho is a remarkable playwright who over the last couple of years has not only been a playwright but also a dramaturg and a teacher and educator and has been the playwright and resident at Mike's Showman two seasons ago more recently he completed a Granitergy internship with Mike's Showman I'm here to speak about three of his new plays, two of which premiered in the past season alone the three plays are Trace, a solo play that premiered at Factory Theatre two seasons ago the second is Iphigenia and The Fury is on Torian Land which premiered this winter in Toronto in a spectacular production and the third one is a version of Antigua, a premiered at Young People's Theatre just this spring in April May the first of those Trace is a solo play that is in fact Jeff is in rehearsal right now in Toronto for a revival of Trace a solo play that he also performs is a spectacular actor as well and has been going into production for a run at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa this fall it traces four generations of women inspired by Jeff's own ancestors from China to Hong Kong and on to Canada one of the unique features of it is that there are no male voices in the play the male voices are entirely captured by a piano Jeff is also an outrageously good pianist and the piano and the positive and negative role of the piano and of musical education is hugely important in the play and as are games of Mahjong which also trace the journey from Hong Kong to Canada hugely recommended and in fact it is being published this fall and there will be a yellow or golden rod hand out passed out after my little speech and you can contact the publisher or his agent through that it is a really superb version of if Virginia and the Furies Ontarian land which was premiered this winter it is a genius distillation of the classic play that explores gender queer relationships and most importantly and most scorchingly and urgently the enduring colonization of indigenous peoples in Canada and their nations it makes a huge twist to the play that is truly shocking and powerful and silenced the audience when I saw it on opening night I have to say it is also the earlier part of the play extremely funny the third one is Antigone a new version that Jeff was commissioned to create for young people a young people's theatre for high school students it is an excellent adaptation that in fact has become a new play through the process essentially which draws on the characters of Antigone and some of the plot points of Antigone especially around the trail and about leadership and moral action but it draws on and it is set in a place like Hong Kong although Hong Kong is not named and draws on the red umbrella protests of several years ago and in fact red umbrellas are the only props in the show they serve to make all the props and all the environments of the show and it has been very pressing about the current ongoing acts of resistance in Hong Kong right now it is very much about resistance and the capacity of humans to come together to confront authoritarianism his writing is potent perhaps I would say even spectacular in its use of language and he has an in tune of sense as all of these shows as you can tell perhaps in terms of how to weaponize language and words he is very productive he works in various states of completion at the moment I would urge you to look up his work the handout that will be passed around in the moment is for the publication of the play which portrays which comes out this fall at the bottom there is also the e-mail and contact information for his agent in Canada at Catalyst Ian Arnold and it is Ian Arnold's birthday today so that feels appropriate and lovely so Jeff Ho I hope you track his work down okay I'm going to get like 30 seconds so and I can just distribute before you start this thing called the new play exchange for those of you who are not familiar with it it is a website it is a become essentially a best way to describe it it's kind of a database but it's a place where individuals can playwrights can share their materials for the purposes of potential production in the future it's become a place where people can actually give feedback or reviews of the scripts as much as the scripts that the playwright is willing to share it's a place where playwrights can provide their contact information so people can reach out to them but it's also a space for dramaturgs and directors and other artists in the community for dramaturgs it's an opportunity to learn about dramaturgs and literary managers it becomes an opportunity resource to find new plays you can keyword search through a new play exchange so if you are looking for particular plays that are about certain topics or by individuals of different demographics you can search them accordingly and find the people that you are looking for it's again we can provide reviews for each other to help those playwrights in terms of their process of development theater companies also use it for publishing or announcing submission opportunities festivals and submission opportunities and so playwrights can flag you know kind of give their own keywords for their work and if the festival highlights certain themes or topics or demographics they can flag certain festivals that will work for their work which is kind of a really neat source as well so it's got a lot of different purposes and it's just a dang awesome website we LMDA actually offers a reader discount for people who want to register or who want to become a member of the new play exchange I believe it's the price is normally $12 we have an LMDA discount $12 for the year, thank you the discount is $9 for the year so please feel free to again touch with Lindsay Barr at the registration table if you want more information on how to get that discount and I think that's it if you are an artist of other kinds there's a reader but there's also a playwright account a company account those are different payments and there might be a way to do some combinations and such they're very amenable to your situations in terms of how you want to use it I'm not sure if Gwydian is going to be here this weekend or not I have to check with Martin and Lindsay about that it's very approachable as well if you want to contact the main person he's very good about that they have been to so many of our conferences and we were one of their internal sponsors but if you have been on in the last I would say year they have made some incredible improvements and they have made it so easy to contact playwrights directly and so you writers and you dramaturgists need to get back on because you would be shocked at how different the equipment is now it's a great site they are always updating to make it as user friendly as possible so they're really good people really good resource take advantage of it it's newplayex.com is it the whole thing now? okay so newplayexchange.com I asked Gwydian to come to Texas last fall to pitch because we have so many writers and I just haven't been looking the way I should have regionally I didn't know until I went in and searched geographically we have like 30 something Texas playwrights on there already but I think he signed up 5 or 6 in the process of them just seeing it and if I were a young writer or I were working with a young writer I think you've got to be Kutumanga you can also look for dramaturgs as well so finding yourself on there as a dramaturg is a great opportunity as well so okay I'm going to stop now because we have a couple more and excited to hear these last couple people so next is Rebecca Suella I don't usually deal with microphones so there we go hi I'm Rebecca Suella I am a writer, director dramaturg based in Atlanta, Georgia I'm also the associate development artist with working title playwrights which is where I met Theron Darcy Patterson he is an amazing member of working title and I would be remiss not to introduce his words in this speech that's where I'm going to start Theron has said every couple of years I write something that comes out of my concern for where we are as a society, where we are as an American society what that identity really means and what it means if something threatens it or takes it away I'm always wondering what are the circumstances that would lead us to come face to face with who we are as a society and what happens if all the old rules don't apply anymore this line of questioning is fascinating to me and it comes to beautiful, beautiful life in Theron's work and something that I casually call a personal post apocalyptic now being from Atlanta, we're the home of the walking dead we're kind of over the post apocalyptic thing in general on the whole what Theron is able to do is uniquely ground the explosion of the world and the simultaneous rebuilding of that world by engaging a sort of mystical realism more than magical realism and creating these wild, liminal spaces I first encountered his work with a play called The Wilderness which starts with a traumatic event that launches three women so on the noses this, the triple goddess and maybe mother crown actually going on there launches them into this absolutely indistinct world that is both natural and unnatural that is full and empty and forces them to sort of come into contact with each other until they can incorporate one another that sort of inflection of encapsulating the people that we encounter, the way that we attract them because we need them is pervasive throughout his work and it's absolutely remarkable the next play that I when I actually got to work with him I directed a reading of his piece The Rut which again, liminal, clever word play deals with both a marriage that is in a rut in the wake of some infidelity and The Rut, which is a season in which young bucks I think is the right word for a male deer grow their horns go around banging them into everything and then mate so that and in that work the female identifying person in the couple comes to find a dying buck, Priya and he coaches her through integrating her own animus as she tries to reclaim her sexuality in the wake of the rejection in her marriage his work is absolutely staggering and I wish I could give you guys his website but among his many, many, many many skills it's not self promotion which is why I am here and delighted to uplift him he has no website, he is not on the new play exchange I do my best y'all but he he does know I'm here and talking about him and he has given me permission to open up you guys to contact me and we can put you guys directly in touch so I have a little handout I hope I have enough, I think I only had 20 but my email is associate at workingtitleplayrights.com again my name is Rebecca Soella, feel free to approach me or my cohort Amber Bradshaw who has also worked with Theron and can sing his praises to the moon just like I can I think that's all I have, let me check my little list because it's pretty extemporaneous um, yeah, that's it thank you presenting quote tomorrow very beautifully here to sing the praises of no actual singing, no worries my friend a playwright in a month a native Baltimorean so honour in that respect who first came to my attention courtesy of wonderful Jeremy Cohen at the playwright center as she moved through Minneapolis when she was then a New York based playwright with some recent successes around 2011 including production at 59 East 59th so some success a little bit of blip on the radar and a representative of kind of multiple communities and multiple local identities we invited Anna on the strength of that meeting and her work to be the inaugural resident hot desk playwright at center stage where her parents have been long time subscribers which was kind of wonderful and she had two weeks to complete a bold rehearsal draft of a play before she was leaving on a cross-country bike trip and then starting rehearsal for a commission to write this play for the graduate acting cohort at NYU so she had to finish this if you want to read about the bike trip the blog 300 Snickers a day is amazing and charts there's two person bike trip across the country I can't recommend it off another way of getting access to her voice but anyway so she had these two weeks and she said what she wanted was time at center stage with a just casual group of actors and a kind of daily accountability so she would write and we would gather some staff and volunteers and interns and we'd read what she'd written and then we would discuss it and she'd go off and read some more at the end of the week after the play and then she went off and wrote her bike so it's just really more approachative kind of the way that she works deeply unprecious as some have pointed out about these other playwrights but with an incredible sense of committed dedication to the work and really producing at the same time while she was working on that we commissioned her to as one of 50 playwrights to write for my America project which is three of these to explore in a short monologue of what America meant to that playwright so she generated that and a following of playwrights over the course of her residency I then continued to collaborate her a little bit with her on with The Lark but it's sort of a newsworthy at the time homicidal love triangle involving NASA astronauts you may remember you know basically typical Anna's work I find is always grounded in emotional and psychological truths as extreme as those might be in condition circumstances like that or the piece that she worked on for the NYU Corps that she worked on with us about a group of young post college Freigans who retreat to a kind of upstate abandoned house and may or may not find themselves in conflicts if only they had cell phones and could check but they don't so always grounded in emotional psychological truths though really much more theatrical and expansive than straight realistic in really exciting and engaging ways again I find that her plays always seem to explore or probe or circle around the questions of identity which we've heard so much about and I think you could say many plays do ultimately but watching her own navigation and evolution of understanding her identity as an Asian American playwright as a woman playwright as a playwright as now recently an MFA graduate from UCSD who's also a mother all of these formulations of identity very much individually play in and shape her exploration but how the past and the present can shape possible futures and who we are relative to who we might want to be, how we're perceived her plays also focus very particularly on women in what I was given to call unexpected circumstances that are not unexpected to them so much as unexpected according to the conventions and probes and narrative formulations that so many of us are used to encounter and so they're always surprising she can be found at anamange.com on the new play exchange she's rep by Ali Schuster at CAA a couple productions coming up and Interact in Philly and some small regional productions she's working on a new play about an actor who's trapped Groundhog Day like in endless productions of the same productions of the Christmas Carol at a small regional theater you can imagine but I want to leave with and as own words I'm interested in how our dreams can become an albatross we sometimes cling to old identities out of fear or shame or nostalgia and being able to put back down is a meaningful step towards growth and happiness please check out the work thank you Brian, thank you all this concludes the formal presentation portion of the session we have about 25 or so minutes which is great so we've got a couple different ways we can go about this I want to kind of open it up to all of you including our presenter if you have a question or a thought about any of the playwrights that you have heard today it would be a great time to share that again these are advocates for their work and we definitely need to be advocates for those who we work with no matter what capacity they work in so thank you for doing that as I mentioned many of the presenters know these playwrights so that's great and so they can support in that way again many of these playwrights are also on the newplayexchange.org you can check that out but I also want to say this is a great time that if you have a playwright of your own right now that you want to give about a minute or two spiel about that people should be thinking about or looking out for this is a great time to do it as well we're taking notes but we're to absolutely share that information as well so I want to take some time to just kind of open it up to you all questions, thoughts, recommendations etc and we'll take the mic around and get that all going so okay so any questions this works out well I have one I just want to re-advocate for the newplay exchange and just to say on behalf of our colleagues at NMPN that they are not for many of them are not here this weekend because their annual conference is in Kansas City right now so that's why we're missing them I'm on the affiliated artist council of NMPN if you have any questions about the newplay exchange you can also come find me thank you I have a playwright but I also want to advocate for a new session I love these listen hot topics make my heart go pitter-patter but I think we also and I'm saying this because I have so many playwright friends and I think I need to tell you this story would you think about writing this and they're all so deep into projects and maybe some of these are better for our students but I think we need a session on I have an idea for a play and is anybody out there interested in it so I would call that session chasing rabbits because I love to chase rabbits so may I throw a rabbit out right now and as an example go for it so I met this woman through my husband who's my best civil rights African American history geometry and she wrote this book called Wednesdays in Mississippi and it's another one of those stories that who the hell doesn't know this story everybody of these women during the civil rights movement who were very upset because men were running everything don't get me started on the movie so I love her but she got some of that stuff wrong the women didn't get the credit they should have so these women were African American women they were Caucasian women and they started meeting secretly in Mississippi and they would fly in this went on for two years the moms would get together they would Caucasian women would stay in hotels they would find homes for the African American women and they met regularly for two years to talk about how to bring into segregation in America have you ever heard of that rumor and now there's a book about it called Wednesdays in Mississippi there are so many untold stories and to do that I want to promote a playwright whom I love working with maybe some of you know her her name is Colin for playwriting official name is C Denby Swanson Colin is a Smithie and she is of course on the new play exchange and graduate of the National Theater Institute and then she was in the Missioner program which if you read Todd London's book you know it's one of the seven places where you can go and get produced so the Missioner program for writers she did screenwriting and playwriting at the University of Texas at Austin and then she was the head of Austin Scriptworks and has worked with us when we did the Austin conference she's a Jerome Fellow McKnight playwright center and when she was living in Minneapolis she got so interested in the culture the Norwegian culture there so her play the Norwegians if you haven't seen it's hysterical comedy takes place in Minneapolis and it's about hit men and but they're nice they're like really nice and these women who are getting rid of their really bad ex-boyfriends but then one of them changes her mind that play ran off off Broadway and it just kept getting extended and extended and extended I know two actors who got their equity cards off but anyway so that's a really interesting play the Norwegians it's produced a lot Gabriella Polemik is another of her plays that if you're interested in great monology for sure I'll look at it it's about four women who have become in the custom over the years as friends of getting together for state or dinners and it's about women who want to have children and who don't want to have children and one who gets pregnant because she's raped one who is pregnant and loses a baby and two who have done everything in the world pregnant and can't and it's a hell of a dinner flesh and it too has been done by great play Gabriella it's about do women ever have free will did Mary have free will and the other one I wanted to talk about which again is a great history play and I had never heard of this woman until Colin just wrote Nutshell and I'm just going to read you quickly it's a cast of three it's a biography dark comedy docudrama and she manages to work into it what is happening right now with conflict between the police and people who should have been left alone despite their color but the play is actually about Francis Glesner Lee whom I had never heard of she is the and Baltimore so you probably heard of her my dear she is the mother of modern forensic scientists and creator of the miniatures called the nutshell studies of unexplained death in the place she hijacked the seminar on homicide investigation in Baltimore this woman was a wealthy woman I think she was from Chicago and had a bad marriage and had a lot of money and got fascinated by creating miniatures so she was creating tiny little doll houses of nutshell size and ended up figuring out how could they be they could be used to reconstruct crime scenes and today the police revere her and there's a museum to her nutshell studies in Baltimore so because she basically single-handedly invented this wealthy lady who didn't want another husband whose parents thought she was a wackadoodle how we do modern crime scene and how many and mostly they were murders of women that were never solved but they never at the time took the time to reconstruct crime scenes and figure out what really happened and who killed them now there's a wack, isn't it so I think we need a chasing rabbit section so thank you for your indulgence thank you Cindy appreciate it Danny Joseph so I actually have two but I'll be very quick so one is my friend Nicole Zimmer who has most recently been produced at a gift theater she is a disabled playwright, she has CP and a lot of her plays deal with her disability but she's also one of the funniest people I know oh my god, she's hilarious she also writes writes romance really well a lot of her plays are just steeped in the longing as well as comedy and her dialogue just moves super fast so you're being snatched up by a TV executive which is why I want her to be produced so that she stays in our world instead the play specifically of hers that I really enjoy she's on the new play exchange the play of hers that I specifically enjoy is Eat Your Heart Out which is a play about three sisters sirens who are trying to sort of live under the radar in an Alabama town they're trying to hide that they're sirens because they're on the run who's a political activist accidentally killed a senator son and ate his heart so the play centers around one sister who was basically a victim of a hate crime which left her disabled and afraid of singing she falls in love with her neighbor her neighbor cruelly rejects her and you'll have to see what happens next so that's Nicole Zimmerer Z I M M E R E R and if you want to know more about her I'm crazy about her come to me I second everything about Nicole Zimmerer thanks one the other person she's not so much under the radar but in the service of performance artists Diana Oh she is in the emerging writers group at the public theater she was most recently produced at the Bushwood Star I believe with her play The Infinite Love Party and basically Diana Shtick is that she wants to connect holistically and authentically with her audiences so the Infinite Love Party is basically a slumber party where you sit down and you talk about sex and love and your experiences with getting your heart broken and your experiences with falling in love with people with the hope that once you leave the Infinite Love Party you will have basically had a crash for some kindness and opening yourself up to other people and you will feel healed and whole that's basically the ethos behind all of her work and she's a really lovely person she runs workshops as well sort of along the same themes and I highly recommend you bring her to your theater that's Diana Oh like the exclamation and thank you for listening that's what we can breathe and shout out to a UK based player who is Kate O'Reilly K-A-I-T-E O'Reilly she's a disabled playwright and she has this awesome play called Keeling that focuses on three disabled actresses the first play I've ever seen that focuses solely on disabled actresses so and she's never well that play has never been produced in the US but I'm going to have the great honor to be the first dramaturge for that production that will be premiering in August so small self-promotions sound theater company on that so I think that's everything check her out she's a great player and it's K-A-I-T-E yes great thank you and good luck with your show I'm just going to I'll perch here for a moment I just wanted to uplift my friend Gavin Woods advocacy of Anna Munch I saw Anna's work at the Wagner New Play Festival at UCSD last year which I consider the resurrection of Sarah Kane with Anna's unique style and it was phenomenal and I also really want to uplift that Anna is a tremendous activist and that is always part of her artistry as part of the production of Mothers at Playwrights Realm she with the artistic staff of Playwrights Realm created the radical parent inclusion project which allows parent artists to be able to have more sustainable work weeks of five day work weeks with six hour reversal blocks to have childcare on site to hire more parent artists to be part of the process and to also have matinees available to be more accommodating to parents so I think the way in which the play itself really speaks to in Anna's wildly and original theatrical style the challenge of parenting and particularly motherhood and what she's doing with that project is remarkable I wanted to celebrate that One more I want to throw out there if you haven't been to the public in York this year boy they have been doing some amazing stuff in the last several months and one of the pieces that again is very near and dear to my heart because one of my mentees, Stevie Walker Webb his first director of Dubuia just got huge reviews and Jordan Price's play 8 No More if you've seen any of the publicity about it Jordan Cooper Jordan Cooper is like 24 guys and they came up through the new school to gather Stevie is actually from my Mission Waco Mission World project so he came up through our project in Waco, Texas but he is an amazing talent and it got looming reviews and if you didn't see it thank you darling Jordan's going to be something isn't he? Oh yeah I mean it is the first time I saw George Wolfe's color museum was actually in London and I was like why do these people understand all of this African American history most audiences in the United States wouldn't know what all these references are so in a lot of ways it's like the next step beyond the color museum but the writing is just brilliant Jordan E. Cooper he's also in the show or wasn't the show they just closed because it was extended most nights you know the concept of the show if you don't know it it's an airline that's now we give up okay it's over back to Africa and everybody getting on the plane so it's a bunch of vignettes that are just beautifully written beautifully written but he also plays the stewardess all the one performance a week the whole length of their run so he's also an incredible actor too but I hope you'll watch for the name because not many people get their very first script done at the public to the plane from the New York Times and every other press outlet and by the way Stevie Walker Webb remember that name too he's an incredible caring artist and he actually just won an OB recognition for his direction of his very first so look out for these fine young artists and I will just say as we wrap up we're going to wrap up because I think we're winding down here but if this has more or less become an annual session so if you end up working with some new artists new creators or playwrights absolutely consider sharing with us through this session but we put out a call usually by about early spring or so and it's a great opportunity to share a little bit about the people who you work with and to uplift them and to promote them and to get them out there into kind of the wider theater world so we definitely appreciate that but thank you all for your ears but also for your contributions and we will just kind of continue to talk together throughout this weekend and throughout the year so thank you our next session is at 245 it's another set of concurrent sessions both the panel as well as papers and presentations