Monday, February 5, 2007

In The Rough Reading Series - All The Details!

Playwrights Foundation joins forces with the Lark Play Development Center (NYC) and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford U to bring eight brand new plays to the stage though our developmental reading series, In The Rough.

San Francisco Readings: Traveling Jewish Theater, 470 Florida St., (between 17th and Mariposa) $10 - $20 sliding scale by donation. Info & reservations: www.playwrightsfoundation.org or call (415) 626 045 x110

Stanford Readings: CERAS Hall, Stanford University, $20

Box Americana: A Wal-Mart Fantasia by Jason Grote
Mon 3/26: 7:30pm, Stanford University
Tue 3/27: 7:00pm, San Francisco

Me Given You by Geetha Reddy
Mon 4/9: 7:30pm, ,Stanford University
Tues 4/10: 7:00pm San Francisco

Love Song for the Night in Gail by Marcus Gardley
Mon 4/16: 7:30pm, Stanford University
Tues 4/17: 7:00pm, San Francisco

Untitled by Sheila Callaghan
Mon 4/23: 7:30pm, Stanford University
Tues 4/24: 7:00pm, San Francisco

Sid Arthur: A Tale of a Modern Buddha by Tanya Shaffer
Mon 4/30: 7:00pm, Stanford University
Tues 5/1: 7:00pm, San Francisco

Layla and Majnun by Nastaran Ahamdi
Mon 5/7: 7:30pm, Stanford University
Tue 5/8: 7:00pm, San Francisco

Smudge by Rachel Axler
*Sun 5/13: 7:00pm, San Francisco,
Mon 5/16: 7:00 pm, Stanford University
*Please note this reading is held on Sunday

Boom by Peter Nachtrieb
Mon 5/21: 7:30pm, Stanford University
Tue 5/22: 7:00pm, San Francisco


ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS:

Jason Grote’s plays include 1001, This Storm is What We Call Progress, Hamilton Township and Box Americana. His work has been presented at Denver Center Theater Company, The 92nd Street Y’s Makor/Steinhardt Center, Baltimore Center Stage, The Brick, Circle X, Clubbed Thumb, CUNY’s Prelude ’06 Festival, The Glej Theater in Ljubljana, Slovenia, HERE, The Lark, The Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, The New York Fringe Festival, The O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, Soho Rep, The Williamstown Theater Festival workshop, and The Working Theater, and published in various anthologies. Honors include a nomination for the 2007 Kesselring Prize, finalist for the Weisssberger Award (still under consideration), an NEA Grant via Soho Rep, a Sloan Commission from Ensemble Studio Theatre and The P73 Playwriting Fellowship. He teaches playwriting and screenwriting at Rutgers University and is a member of PEN and New Dramatists.

Geetha Reddy is a three-time recipient of PlayGround's Emerging Playwright Award. In 2005 she was awarded PlayGround's June Anne Baker Prize and in 2006 she was awarded a PlayGround Alumni Commission. Her play "Honey, I'm Home" was showcased at the inaugural San Francisco Theater Festival and featured in PlayGround's 10th Anniversary production The Best of the Best of PlayGround. Recently her plays were performed in the Santa Rosa Actor's Theatre "Quickies" festival and the Best of SF Fringe Show "Three Plays About Your Mom."

Marcus Gardley is a poet-playwright who teaches Creative Writing at Columbia University. His play dance of the holy ghosts just premiered at the Yale Repertory Theater in March. He has had five plays produced some of which are: (L)imitations of Life, March 2004 at the Empty Space Theater in Seattle; like sun fallin in the mouth, August 2003 at the National Black Theatre Festival Winston-Salem, North Carolina and livin tired, July 2003 at the Yale Summer Cabaret. He was a finalist for the Alliance Theatre Graduate Playwriting Competition 2004, the sole runner up for the Princess Grace Award 2004, a Sundance writer in residence at Ucross in 2003 and the summer lab in 2006. He is the recipient of the Eugene O’ Neil Memorial Scholarship, the Bay Area Playwright’s Foundation Fellowship and the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize. His play Love is a Dream House in Lorin premiered at Shotgun Players last fall. He holds an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama and he is a member of New Dramatists.

Sheila Callaghan's plays have been produced and developed with Soho Rep, Playwright's Horizons, South Coast Repertory, Clubbed Thumb, The LARK, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, New Georges, Annex Theatre, Moving Arts, and LABrynth, among others. Sheila is the recipient of a 2000 Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, a 2001 LA Weekly Award for Best One-act, a 2001-02 Jerome Fellowship from the Playwright's Center in Minneapolis, a 2002 Chesley Prize for Lesbian Playwriting, a 2003 Mac Dowell Residency, and a 2004 NYFA grant. Her plays have been produced internationally in New Zealand, Norway, and the Czech Republic. She has been commissioned by Playwright's Horizons, South Coast Repertory, and EST/Sloan. Her full-length plays include Scab, The Hunger Waltz, Crawl Fade To White, Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), We Are Not These Hands, Dead City, Lascivious Something, Kate Crackernuts and her opera Elemental with music by Sophocle Papavasilopoulos. Sheila is a member of the Obie winning playwright's organization 13P.

Tanya Shaffer’s original plays and solo performances have been produced at the Berkeley Rep, the San Diego Rep, A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, and TheatreWorks, and have toured to colleges and festivals across the country. Her most recent play, Baby Taj, which premiered at TheatreWorks in 2005, was chosen by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, and the San Jose Mercury News as one of the Top Ten Shows of the Year and nominated for an American Theatre Critics Steinberg Award. Her book “Somebody’s Heart is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa” was profiled in Vogue and USA Today and chosen by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Best Books of 2003. Her stories and essays have appeared on Salon.com and in numerous anthologies.

Nastaran Ahmadi received her MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama in May 2006. Her plays have been produced in Louisville, New York, and New Haven. They include: The War Is Over (Yale Cabaret), Layla and Majnun (Yale School of Drama, Carlotta Festival), For Art (Shalimar Productions, NYC), Red Town, Utah (The Flatiron Playhouse, NYC), Pardon My Queen (Yale Cabaret), Broomer’s Gym (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Devil Caught Rope (YSD), …and Fishes (Yale Cabaret),and One Long Comfortable Gulp (Shalimar Productions, NYC). Nastaran is the co-recipient of the 2006 ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting.

Rachel Axler is an Emmy award-winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Her plays have been produced by Vital Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre, Spring TheatreWorks, Slant Theatre, NY Int'l Fringe, Brooklyn Rep and Cal Arts, and she wrote the screenplay for a short musical film, 11 (music: Brad Alexander, lyrics: Jim McNicholas) which was produced by Raw Impressions. Short pieces of hers are published in editions of Monologues for Women, By Women (Heinemann), McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and In Character. 2004-2005 Dramatists Guild Fellow. B.A., Williams College. M.F.A., UCSD. Member, Dramatists Guild.

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is a San Francisco-based playwright whose works include Hunter Gatherers, Colorado, Meaningless, Multiplex and The Amorphous Blob. Hunter Gatherers, which was developed at the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, had it's world premiere this past summer, produced by Killing My Lobster, and was hailed as one of the Top 10 Bay Area Theatre events in 2006 by the SF Chronicle and several other newspapers. His work has been also been seen Off-Broadway at SPF, the Bailiwick Theatre (Chicago), South Coast Rep, Seattle Fringe Festival, and at many other Bay Area Venues such as Impact Theatre, Playground, and several others. He was a recipient of one of the first ever TBA/New Works Funds grants, and has also won a Playground Emerging Playwright Award, the Highsmith Prize, and placed first in the Scene Competition at the Mother Lode Drama Festival in 1992. He holds a degree in Theater and Biology from Brown and an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He is currently under commission from Encore Theatre Company (full length) with whom he recently received an Emerging Playwright Award from the Gerbode and Hewlett Foundations. He’s also working on a short play about Nanotechnology for The Magic Theatre/Sloan Initiative. He frequently writes at the Z Space Studio and promotes himself online at www.peternachtrieb.com