Rough Readings
The Playwrights Foundation's Rough Readings are series of developmental readings that give playwrights the opportunity to hear first drafts of new work, fine-tune nearly finished plays approaching a production or commission deadline and make connections with producers. The Rough Readings series are a partnerships with Lark Play Development Center in New York City, and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford University.
Rough Readings Series
Playwrights Foundation again partners with The Center For New Plays at Stanford University and Bay Area Theaters to present early drafts of new plays by rising national playwrights. Be a participant in the early development of a new work. Come every month, on a consecutive Monday or Tuesday evening to witness a new play in the making!
Winter/Spring 2010 Series
Trista Baldwin's American Sexy. February 22 & 23, 2010
Michael Gene Sullivan's Recipe. March 8 & 9, 2010
Cory Hinkle's The Killing of Michael X, A New Film by Celia Wallace. April 12 & 13, 2010
Lauren Gunderson's Exit, Pursued by a Bear. May 17 & 18, 2010
Winter/Spring 2010Series
Trista Baldwin's American Sexy
Directed by Rebecca Novick
- Monday, February 22, 7:30pm at Stanford University
Contact David Goldman for more information at davidg1@stanford.edu - Tuesday, February 23, 7pm, The Thick House.
Contact us for more information and to reserve a space at jill@playwrightsfoundation.org.
About the Play
American Sexy follows four college students en route to a carefree fling in Sin City, when an unexpected stop at the Grand Canyon reveals depths for which none of them are prepared. Unexamined desires push recklessly to the edge, as deceptively simple images give way to complex matters of the heart. When what is desired at a distance moves in closer, is it still desirable?
About the Writer
Trista Baldwin is the recipient of two Jerome Fellowships (04-05 and 05-06) and a 2006-2007 McKnight Advancement Grant. Her work is published through Playscripts and Heinnemann. Recent plays include Sand (Off-Broadway premiere at Women's Project, available through Playscripts), Forgetting (PlayLabs 2008, Tofte Residency 2010), Doe (Tokyo Internaational Festival, HB Playwrights' Workshop), and Patty Red Pants (now available through Playscripts). Recent productions include Chicks with Dicks at Pittsburgh's Bricolage and Chicks with Dicks II: Battle With Cannible Sluts! at BPP. Screenplays include the shorts Climbing Trees (Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival) and Side Effects (Ripfest/Anthology Film Archives/NUEA/RiverRun).
Currently in development is Mesujika Doe a bi-lingual, cross cultural piece created collaboratively with Tokyo theatre artist Shirotama Hitsujiya of Yubiwa Hotel. The Playwrights' Center hosted the first presentation of the work-in-progress in August 2009 and Mesujika Doe was presented under the title Doe 2.0 at Morishita Studios in Tokyo, December 2009.
Trista's work has been developed and produced by companies including The Guthrie, The Lark, Women's Project, New Georges, Perishable Theater, Hypothetical Theatre Company, La Mama, HERE, Urban Stages, Synchronicity, Live Girls!, Eternal Spiral Project, The Red Eye, Bloomington Playwrights' Project, Circle X, The Empty Space, National New Play Network and HB Playwrights' Foundation.
A native of the woods of Washington State, and sometime-New Yorker, she currently makes her home in Minneapolis, where she is a co-founder of the Workhaus Collective, a Core Writer of The Playwrights' Center, and mother of Ila, who just turned 4 years old. Trista teaches playwriting and screenwriting at St. Cloud State University.
Michael Gene Sullivan's Recipe
Directed by Joy Carlin
- Monday, March 8, 7:30pm at Stanford University
Contact David Goldman for more information at davidg1@stanford.edu - Tuesday, March 9, 7pm at Central Works (Berkeley City Club).
Contact us for more information and to reserve a space at jill@playwrightsfoundation.org.
About the Play
So, what would you expect from the award-winning, word spinning, social satirist Michael Gene Sullivan, head writer for the SF Mime Troupe? A fine meal of skewered status quo — but of course! The Morning Glory Baking Circle for Revolutionary Self Defense find themselves in a delicate position. This intrepid group of 70-somethings are about to reveal the the winning anti-capitalist to be awarded their bake-sale super fund, but they grow deeply suspicious of the young reporter who arrives to do the interview. Is she a Government Agent sent to destroy them or an unwitting participant in an evil conspiracy? A bold action plan is enacted — but can they pull it off?
About the Writer
Michael Gene Sullivan is a veteran Bay Area actor, writer and director. Since 2000 Michael has been Resident Playwright for the Tony Award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he has helped create some of the Troupe’s biggest musical comedies, including 1600 Transylvania Avenue, Mr. Smith Goes To Obscuristan (with Josh Kornbluth), Veronique of the Mounties, Godfellas, Making a Killing, Red State (nominated by the Bay Area Critics Circle for Best Original Script), and the S.F.M.T’s critically-acclaimed 50th Anniversary show, Too Bif to Fail.
His one person show, Did Anyone Ever Tell You - You Look Like Huey P. Newton? (San Francisco, New York, Vancouver) was awarded the San Francisco Bay Guardian Upstage/Downstage Award and a best solo performance nomination by the Bay Area Critics Circle.
1984, his stage adaptation of George Orwell's dystopic novel of the oppressive present/future, had it's world premiere at the Actor's Gang Theatre in 2006. Directed by Academy Award winning actor Tim Robbins,1984 has toured across the United States, as well as in Greece, Spain, Hong Kong, and opened the 2008 Melbourne International Arts Festival.
Cory Hinkle's The Killing of Michael X, A New Film by Celia Wallace
Directed by Jessica Heidt
- Monday, April 12, 7:30pm at Stanford University
Contact David Goldman for more information at davidg1@stanford.edu - Tuesday, April 13, 7pm, Z Space @ Theater Artaud
Contact us for more information and to reserve a space at jill@playwrightsfoundation.org.
About the Play
After Celia's brother mysteriously ODs, she enlists her best friend Jake to be her only accomplice on a quest for revenge – they steal her step-mom's Lexus and drive cross-country to kill the CEO of the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the drug. At least that's the movie running in Celia's head. But her imagined life is quickly becoming real as she finds herself in a motel room hatching a scheme meant to send a message to all of America. A new dark comedy about grief and pharmaceuticals, shot in digital video.
About the Writer
Cory Hinkle's plays include Little Eyes, Cipher, Phosphorescence, and SadGrrl13 and have been produced or developed at the Guthrie, ART, Williamstown Theater Festival, the SPF Summer Play Festival, Illusion Theater, Rattlestick, Salvage Vanguard, Workhaus Collective, P73 Productions, Hangar Theater, and Red Eye Collective, among others. Cory is a co-creator of Fissures (Lost and Found) commissioned by Actor's Theater of Louisville and scheduled to premiere at the 2010 Humana Festival.
He has been commissioned by the Guthrie, is a former MacDowell Colony fellow, Sewanee Writer's Conference Fellow and recipient of a Jerome Travel and Study Grant. He is a Core Member of the Playwrights' Center, a member playwright of the Workhaus Collective and he received two Jerome fellowships through the Playwrights' Center. Cory earned his MFA in Playwriting from Brown University and his work is published by Playscripts Inc. and Heinemann.
Lauren Gunderson's Exit, Pursued by a Bear
Directed by Meredith Weiss Friedman- Monday, May 17, 7:30pm at Stanford University
Contact David Goldman for more information at davidg1@stanford.edu - Tuesday, May 18, 7pm, Climate Theater, 285 9th St., San Francisco.
Contact us for more information and to reserve a space at jill@playwrightsfoundation.org.
About the Play
Exit, Pursued by a Bear is a play based on one violent stage direction*. Likewise, our heroine will sacrifice it all to get out in this hilariously brutal modern revenge comedy.
A revolution is going on "over there," but for the beautiful young Nan Clark married to the hotly abusive Kyle, the revolution is personal. This thickly humid July 3rd Nan is finishing what she started a year ago: the annihilation of her husband and the cage-breaking resuscitation of her own life using her friends, her idolization of Jimmy Carter and the local wildlife. Part "I Love Lucy", part Jacobean revenge tragedy, part beautiful ballet, part nature special, and part feminist power ballad set in the North Georgia mountains. Exit is not over till the bears are in pursuit.
*The Winter's Tale by Shakespeare.
About the Writer
Lauren is playwright, screenwriter and short story author. She received her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch, is a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship and is the first Playwright in Residence at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (2010). Her work has received national praise and awards including the Berrilla Kerr Award for American Theatre, Young Playwright's Award, Eric Bentley New Play Award and Essential Theatre Prize. Her science-history play Emilie: Le Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Tonight premiered at South Coast Rep April 2009 and will be published this winter by Samuel French. Fire Work was developed at The O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Summer 2009. She is developing a musical with Harry Connick Jr. and two new plays with The Kennedy Center.
She has been produced off-Broadway, Parts They Call Deep, off-off Broadway, Sus Manos, and recently had many new plays produced in Atlanta, including Class, The Van Gogh Café, Leap, and Background, as well as regionally, A Short History of Nearly Everything and Embody. She is currently working on her second commission for South Coast Rep, and her first for Marin Theatre; and has been commissioned by The Alliance Theatre's Collision Project, Actors Express Theatre, Dad's Garage Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, City University of New York and Synchronicity Performance Group. Leap was published with Theatre Emory's Playwriting Center (2004), and her first collection of plays, Deepen The Mystery: Science and the South Onstage, is published with iUniverse (2006). She has developed plays with Second Stage and Primary Stages in NYC, New Rep in Boston, Marin and The Magic Theatre in San Francisco, Kitchen Dog Theatre in Dallas, Actor Express and Horizon Theatre 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. Her short story, The Ascending Life, won the Norembega Short Fiction Award and was published in the anthology, The Shape of Content; and her science play Background was published in ISOTOPE: A Journal of Nature and Science Writing. Her string theory poem "Hook of a Number" was published in the anthology Riffing On Strings. She has spoken nationally and internationally on the intersection of science and theatre and Arts Activism. Read more about her on her website at www.LaurenGunderson.com.
