In keeping with Actor's commitment to supporting and exploring new work, we are pleased to announce a month-long series of informal script readings. A donation of $10 for those attending is encouraged to support the development and production of new works by Actors’ Theatre.
In October of 2010, Actors’ Theatre sent out a nationwide call to playwrights for new works. Dozens and dozens of original plays rained down on Actors’ Volunteer Literary Manager Randy Wyatt - and now Randy, and Actors’, want to share some of the best with you.
Actors’ has selected four scripts from playwright submissions from across the nation to be publicly read and discussed with the audience. These scripts will be considered by the Actors’ play selection committee for inclusion in future seasons. We invite the public to come out, hear some exciting new work, and be part of the process of development for these plays and our upcoming season!
The scripts selected for reading will include:
February 8th, 7pm
FUGUE by Audra Lord
Location: GRCC Spectrum Theater Mezzanine, 160 Fountain Street
An intriguing puzzle of a play, about memory and identity. It follows a connected group of people who have experienced a shared tragic event and subsequently lost their memories of it, and of each other. As the play wears on, the characters piece together their memories--and identities--together. Is it possible to leave the past behind, or is it better to remember, no matter what the cost?
Audra Lord is a Detroit-area playwright and theatre artist. Her original plays have been staged in Michigan, New York, New Jersey and Nebraska; she plans to add a few more states to this list in 2010. Audra’s critically acclaimed one-act play Speed Dating! premiered at BoxFest 2009, where it was received as a “festival highlight” (EncoreMichigan.com); it went on to garner national recognition at the 2010 Great Plains Theatre Conference. She also made her New York debut in May this year with F.A.C.T.’s festival production of Joy, which was called “the highlight of the evening” by TheatreOnline.com. Audra is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, The Playwrights’ Center, TCG and The Extra Mile Playwrights Group. She is currently developing her new full-length play Fugue and is in the process of writing a new play inspired by Jeanette Winterson’s novel, Art and Lies. [website]
February 15th, 7pm
AMPERSAND by Vincent Delaney
Location: GRCC Spectrum Theater Mezzanine, 160 Fountain Street
Kate and Marlowe fly to Switzerland to enervate their marriage. Then the clones show up. Worse, dad is in the same hotel. A fast-paced dark farce that throws you headlong into questions about marriage and how we try to shape those we say we adore.
Vincent Delaney’s plays include The Art of Bad Men, Three Screams, Writer 1272 and Kuwait, which won the Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville and the New Play Award from Sonoma Rep. His plays have been produced, commissioned and developed at the Guthrie, Cleveland Playhouse, ACT, Children’s Theatre Company, the Humana Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Magic, Woolly Mammoth, the Empty Space, PlayLabs, Seattle Public, the New Harmony Project, Pittsburgh Public, Florida Stage, InterAct, and the Orlando Shakespeare Festival, among others. The Sequence, commissioned by the Guthrie, has been produced around the country and in the UK. Acceleration Red won the Lamia Ink contest and was produced by Harrogate Theatre and Brooklyn College. [website]
February 22nd, 7pm
THE OATH by Jacqueline Goldfinger
Location: Spectrum Theater Black Box Space (Room 201)
A Southern Gothic tale set during the Great Depression in which a wandering preacher is embroiled in the passions and politics of a swampy Florida outpost ruled with a macabre sense of justice by two rival sisters. It’s a darkly comic look at balancing ambition and ideals in a time of crisis.
Jacqueline (Jackie) Pardue Goldfinger is a dramaturg and award-winning playwright/screenwriter from Tallahassee, Florida (M.F.A. Screen and Television Writing, University of Southern California). She is the Literary Manager/PTC@PLAY Festival Director at Philadelphia Theatre Company (PTC) and a Senior Lecturer at University of the Arts (UArts). She’s also a Regional Vice President of the Literary Managers and Dramaturges of the Americas (LMDA).
Jacqueline has this to say about her work: “My work is inspired by the Southern Gothic style as portrayed in classic fiction - a style that heightens reality, gives epic importance to everyday situations, and embraces the macabre as a necessary, and instructive, part of life – yet transforms this literary style into an active and dramatic narrative for the stage.” [website]
March 8th, 7pm
AIN’T GOT NO HOME by Steve Feffer
Location: Spectrum Theater Black Box Space (Room 201)
Steve Feffer’s plays have been produced or developed by theatres that include the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference (NY and CT), Ensemble Studio Theatre (NY), Philadelphia Festival Theatre, Stages Repertory Theatre (Houston), Ruckus Theatre (Chicago) and the National Jewish Theatre (Chicago). His publications include The Wizards of Quiz (Dramatists Play Service); and Little Airplanes of the Heart in Best American Short Plays 1997-1998 (Applause Books) and Plays from Ensemble Studio Theatre 2000 (Faber and Faber).
Steve has won a number of national playwriting awards including the New Jewish Theatre Project Grant from the Foundation for Jewish Culture for Ain’t Got No Home and Southwest Plays national award for a play for young audience for The House I Call Love. At Western, Steve received the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Achievement in Teaching Award. Steve serves as Chair for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival’s National Playwriting Program (Region III). He is an Associate Professor of English at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. [website]
