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The Antaeus Playwrights Lab Festival Lab Results include plays by Paula Cizmar and Stephanie Alison Walker

8/31/2018

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LAB RESULTS
The Antaeus Playwrights Lab Festival


The Antaeus Playwrights Lab supports a select group of award-winning, mid-career writers as they develop the classics of the future. The Lab incubates new works that provide compelling roles for actors, and creates a nurturing and supportive artistic community.
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Saturday, September 29

11:00 am

Along The River, Almost Winter 
by Paula Cizmar

directed by Stephanie Shroyer
Perdita knows something is off in her life and she longs to know what happened to her mother in this update of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.  Set along the Sacramento River Delta during the time of the Gold Rush, Along the River, Almost Winter is a journey from betrayal to forgiveness — told from the point of view of a bear.

Saturday, September 29
1:30 pm
The Abuelas
by Stephanie Alison Walker

directed by Eli Gonda
Gabriela is an Argentine concert cellist living a good life in Chicago with her American husband and adjusting to life as a new mom until a visit from two strangers upends everything. The Abuelas explores the long and devastating repercussions of Argentina’s military dictatorship from 1976-1983, and the heart’s capacity for forgiveness even in the face of the harshest betrayal.
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ANPF 2018 Winning Playwrights Announced

8/31/2018

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The Ashland New Play Festival 2018
Winning Playwrights include

 The Abuelas
By 
Stephanie Alison Walker
A visit from two strangers exposes a 37-year-old secret about the
ongoing and devastating repercussions of the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s and ‘80s. The Abuelas explores the heart’s capacity for resilience and forgiveness even in the face of the most incomprehensible betrayal.


Stephanie Alison Walker is a returning ANPF Fall Festival winner, previously winning in 2016 for The Madres, which is receiving four consecutive productions in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, and Austin, as part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere this year. The Abuelas is a companion piece. Walker is a NNPN Affiliate Artist and a member of the Playwrights Union and Antaeus Playwrights Lab. She lives in Los Angeles.

​Teatro Vista will be producing the World Premiere of The Abuelas in February of 2019.
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Aline Lathrop and Minita Gandhi get nominations for Jeff Awards Best New Work!

8/28/2018

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Aline Lathrop's The Hero's Wife and Minita Gandhi's Muthaland both get Jeff nominated for best new work!
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The striking final moments will stay with you, as will the warmth and humor shared by the characters even as they literally fight for their relationship and try to create a world where they can exist together. 
Kerstin Broockmann, Chicago Stage Standard​
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Highly Recommended! “Minita Gandhi grabs our attention and keeps it for the full 90 minutes of this rich, resonant, sometimes hilarious, at times deeply moving autobiographical piece.” 
Jack Helbig,  Chicago Reader
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Playing at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe: The Squirrel Plays by Mia McCullough

8/8/2018

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Playing at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe!
The Squirrel Plays
by Mia McCullough

There’s only one thing you need to know about newlyweds Tom and Sarah: they are definitely not squirrel people. Not that they judge, of course. So when they discover a critter in their attic, they’re faced with a marriage-testing decision: to exterminate, or not to exterminate? But the squirrels aren’t only invading Tom and Sarah’s home. They’ve infested the whole neighbourhood. This time, the issue doesn’t only tear Sarah and Tom apart. It threatens the peace of an entire community. Using both absurdist humour and emotional truth, award-winning playwright Mia McCullough sheds new light on timely matters.
Aug 8-12, 14-27
TICKETS

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The critics are raving about The Hero's Wife by Aline Lathrop!

8/6/2018

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THE HERO'S WIFE
by Aline Lathrop
 directed by Ann Filmer and Miguel Nunez
16th Street Theater
through August 18 2018


...it’s a lacerating and relevant portrait of how hard it can be for two people to find their way home to each other in the wake of the living nightmare of war.

Kerry Reid, Chicago Tribune
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The striking final moments will stay with you, as will the warmth and humor shared by the characters even as they literally fight for their relationship and try to create a world where they can exist together. 
Kerstin Broockmann, Chicago Stage Standard

Thank you North Berwyn Park District for making this quality theater available to the greater Chicago area! They are currently doing a World Premier of Aline Lathrop’s dynamic “The Hero’s Wife”  
Alan Bresloff, Around The Town Chicago

 ...Aline Lathrop’s new play The Hero’s Wife, now playing at Berwyn’s 16th Street Theater. A fast-paced one-act, it uses two richly drawn characters to explore what it means to love someone with a mental illness and where to draw the line at how much self-sacrifice to invest in a marriage.
Jacob Davis, Picture this Post

Aline Lathrop's deft two-hander, codirected by Ann Filmer and Miguel Nuñez and currently receiving a joint premiere production (with Atlanta's Synchronicity Theatre) at Berwyn's 16th Street Theatre, tackles the timeless theme of how war damages soldiers and makes it hard for them to adjust to life after war. But Lathrop makes one simple and less frequently employed adjustment that makes all the difference: she tells the story from the wife's point of view. The choice gives Lathrop an opportunity to explore more sides of a sadly familiar story. It also gives her tale a tighter focus; everything we learn about the returning soldier is through his wife's eyes. This gives the play a subjectivity that makes the more intense parts of the play—the returning soldier experiences violent night terrors—all the more terrifying.
Jack Helbig, Chicago Reader

I think it's the best play I have seen, and I have seen a number, about PTSD.
Jonathan Abarbanel, The Dueling Critics

The Hero’s Wife is a highly recommended 90 heart-pounding minutes of intense drama describing an issue that needs to receive every American’s full attention.  Christensen and Fisher are well cast as the loving couple who must come to grips with a roaring and dangerous elephant in the room threatening to stampede their idyllic life. 
Ruth Smerling, Theatre World Internet Magazine

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We are thrilled to welcome Sue Pak to our client roster!

7/31/2018

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Susan H. Pak is a Chicago Dramatists Resident Playwright and  assistant professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. She received an MFA in writing for the screen and stage at Northwestern University; she received both a BA in English and a JD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Her plays have been produced in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and include: Marabar at Chicago Dramatists; Election at the Goodman Theater and Collaboraction; Underworld at Collaboraction; the Fixer at The Steppenwolf Theater; T.A.B.at New York’s Downtown Urban Theater Festival, and the Manhattan Repertory Theater Festival; Haters at New York’s Midtown International Theater Festival; and Incredible Invisible at Chicago’s Bailiwick Director’s Fest.

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BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) By Jami Brandli opens at Promethean Theatre Ensemble

7/27/2018

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BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) 
​By Jami Brandli
July 21-August 25, 2018

1960 in North Orange, NJ. Clytemnestra and Medea are now discontented housewives, and Antigone is the teenage girl next door struggling with the rules of her overbearing uncle. On the surface, they’re seemingly blissful to follow the “rules” of Emily Post, the American author famous for writing on etiquette. But that’s just the surface. Then Cassandra, a working girl, moves into their neighborhood and all routines are interrupted. Cassandra is determined to finally break the curse of Apollo, the gorgeous and egotistical god who gave her this “gift” of prophecy but made it so no one would ever believe her. He makes it clear his curse is practically indestructible: yet all she must do is convince someone to believe her. Can Cassandra convince them they now have a choice in this modern era? That they don’t have to live a doomed existence? Can all four women escape their ongoing fate?

TICKETS
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Smart, snappy 'Bliss' gives tragic heroines a hopeful future

Playwright Jami Brandli smartly upends theatrical history this month in her hilarious, sharply written and fast-paced comedy-drama “Bliss (or Emily Post is Dead!),” which opened Saturday at Moxie Theatre in a world premiere co-production with L.A.’s Moving Arts and Chicago’s Promethean Theatre. The San Diego Union-Tribune 

A Joint World Premiere with Moving Arts at Atwater Village Theatre in Los Angeles and in Association with Moxie Theatre in San Diego
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SONS & LOVERS BY DONNA HOKE PUBLISHED BY STAGE RIGHTS

7/19/2018

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Now available through Stage Rights...
Sons & Lovers
By Donna Hoke

WINNER! 2018 Emanuel Fried Award for Outstanding New Play
Ellen knows the score--her son is gay and her husband is cheating--but it's so much easier to pretend than to talk about it. It takes fantasy, farce, and one fabulous makeover before the truth flies free, mother and son discover just how much they have in common, and Ellen realizes the reality she's been avoiding most is her own.
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Bay Area Playwrights Foundation 2018 Reading Features "suspension" By Kristiana Rae Colón

7/18/2018

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​suspension
By Kristiana Rae Colón


For the students of Climb & Succeed Charter Academy, a high school in a dystopian near future, the slightest defiance is met with riot-gear-clad security who patrol the halls informed by an AI bot. Armed and ready with each student’s protocols, she deploys harrowing new disciplinary codes that take ‘in-school suspension’ (ISS) to a haunting extreme. In search of their mysteriously missing sister and guided by a mystic teaching artist, Voltaire & Yansa learn to wield their ancestral magic and black girl badassery to combat the harrowing militarization of public education.

DIRECTOR: MARGO HALL
DRAMATURG: LISA EVANS
PRODUCERS: ELLEN GAVIN AND MELINDA WHITE


Reading Dates: Saturday 7/21 4pm, Saturday 7/28 8pm
Buy Tickets

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14TH ANNUAL NEW PLAY READING FESTIVAL AT BOSTON COURT FEATURES "HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN" BY E.M. LEWIS

7/17/2018

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14TH ANNUAL NEW PLAY READING FESTIVAL
Boston Court
TICKETS


Saturday, July 21 at 11:00am
How the Light Gets In by E.M. Lewis
Directed by Emilie Beck
A travel writer who never travels. A Japanese architect who can’t figure out how to build a simple tea house. A tattoo artist who refuses to draw on a woman’s skin. And a homeless girl who lives under a weeping willow tree in the Japanese Garden. Four lonely people find each other when one of them falls apart.

About E.M. Lewis:

E. M. Lewis is an award-winning playwright, teacher, and librettist.  Her work has been produced around the world, and published by Samuel French.  She received the Steinberg Award for Song of Extinction and the Primus Prize for Heads from the American Theater Critics Association, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for outstanding writing of a world premiere play, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a playwriting fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Commission, and the 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama.  Her play Now Comes the Night was part of the Women's Voices Theater Festival in Washington DC, and was published in the anthology Best Plays from Theater Festivals 2016.  The Gun Show premiered in Chicago in 2014, and has since been produced in more than a dozen theaters across the country, including Coho in Portland.  It has upcoming productions scheduled in Richmond, Denver, Washington, DC, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and will be published in the upcoming anthology The Best American Short Plays 2015-2016.  Two of Lewis' newest plays will be on stage next year:  Magellanica had its world premiere at Artists Repertory Theater and Apple Season will have its world premiere at New Jersey Repertory Theater.  Her other plays include: Infinite Black Suitcase, The Study (aka Reading to Vegetables), True Story, and You Can See All the Stars (a play for college students commissioned by the Kennedy Center).  Lewis is currently working with her composer partner on a full-length, family-friendly opera commissioned by American Lyric Theater called Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant, and a big, new play set in her home state of Oregon called The Great Divide.  She is a proud member of LineStorm Playwrights, ASCAP, and the Dramatists Guild.  


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The World Premiere of The Hero's Wife by Aline Lathrop at 16th Street Theater

7/10/2018

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The Hero's Wife by Aline Lathrop
Directed by Ann Filmer and Miguel Nuñez
Starring Alex Fisher and Aaron Christensen
July 12 - August 18, 2018 
TICKETS

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Cameron doesn’t remember in the morning what he does to Karyssa at night. She doesn’t tell him, believing his night terrors may provide a window into her new husband who just retired from the Navy SEALs. During the day, they negotiate dinner plans, career ambitions, gun safety and video games, as he attempts to craft a post Special Ops identity while guarding his secrets. At night, he is more available yet more dangerous, affording opportunities to know him if she risks enough.

WATCH THE TRALER...
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Summer News

7/10/2018

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Summer News...

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Playing...

​​Ripped from the headlines, Kristiana Rae Colón’s Tilikum explores captivity, violence and rebellion in a vital and visceral blend of theatre, drumming and dance. Poetic and lyrical, Tilikum calls out the power structures--both corporate and human--that ensure continued oppression, and the complicity of those willing to stand by and do nothing. Presented by Sideshow Theatre and playing June 22-July 29 at Victory Gardens.
The Hero’s Wife by Aline Lathrop premieres at 16th Street Theater July 12 – August 18, 2018. Cameron doesn’t remember in the morning what he does to Karyssa at night. She doesn’t tell him, believing his night terrors may provide a window into her new husband who just retired from the Navy SEALs. ​
Once In My Lifetime - A Buffalo Football Fantasy by Donna Hoke opens at Shea's Smith Theatre. For one night, fans at the downtrodden Miracle Bar discover that the impossible happens when you believe it can.
A release announcing the show calls it "the most exciting event to hit this city since the Bills made four straight trips to the Super Bowl – but with a happier ending." GUSTO
Stephanie Alison Walker's The Madres finishes its NNPN Roll at Shrewd Productions. It's 1978 in Buenos Aires, Argentina where people are disappearing right off the street but no one is talking about it...
The New Colony’s The Light by Loy A. Webb at Theater on the Lake runs 8/21 - 8/24. A surprise proposal takes an unexpected turn that upends the world of Genesis and Rashad, forcing them to confront a devastating secret from the past and putting the future of their relationship at risk. The Light is a 70-minute rollercoaster journey of laughter, romance and despair that uncovers how the power of radical love can be a healing beacon of light.
The multi-award-winning play The Madres, by North American playwright Stephanie Alison Walker, will receive its non-U.S. premiere in San Miguel, as the 2018 full production of La Troupe México. This powerful new five-character play, set in Buenos Aires in 1978, will be performed for the first time in Spanish.
D(ART) is announcing the launch of its inaugural season with David Rush’s POLICE DEAF NEAR FAR. Loosely based on actual events, POLICE DEAF NEAR FAR will follow the parallel stories of a young Deaf rights activist and two police officers as their worlds collide. POLICE DEAF NEAR FAR opens July 25th.
BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) by Jami Brandli comes to Promethean Theatre July 21-August 25. It’s 1960 in North Orange, NJ. Clytemnestra and Medea are now discontented housewives, and Antigone is the teenage girl next door struggling with the rules of her overbearing uncle. On the surface, they’re seemingly blissful to follow the “rules” of Emily Post, the American author famous for writing on etiquette. But that’s just the surface...
Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones and Bobby Cannavale in “The Lifespan of a Fact," a new play adapted from a 2012 book about the real-life, multiyear, wildly tortured editing of a magazine essay about an adolescent’s suicide. Opening October 18, 2018 at Studio 54.

Coming Soon...

Muthaland written and performed by Minita Gandhi comes to PCPA.
MCC Theater presents the New York Premiere of THE LIGHT by Loy A. Webb, directed by Logan Vaughn.
Teatro Vista announced the lineup for its 2018-19 season, including the world premiere of “The Abuelas,” by Stephanie Alison Walker.
New Clients...
We are thrilled to welcome Lenelle Moise our client roster!
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The Madres at Moxie Theatre - rave reviews!

6/5/2018

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 "...Walker’s play celebrates their commonality: the fierce, fearless, feminine drive to stand up, no matter the personal cost, for one’s children and for human rights. During Argentina’s seven-year “dirty war,” as many as 30,000 students, liberals and government-described “subversives” disappeared into prisons, mass graves and the ocean depths. More than 500 were pregnant women who were killed after giving birth and their babies were “adopted” by military families...
Walker’s play tells an important story, but what it really honors is a mother’s love, and the play’s hauntingly-lit closing moments illustrate just how far a mother will go for those she loves."  Pam Kragen, San Diego Union Tribune


"Walker’s taut script, excellent direction, and these fine actors keep the fear and suspense levels at a nearly unbearable level throughout, reminding us once again how fragile freedom and democracy are...
It is estimated that 30,000 Argentinians were “disappeared” and never seen again. The Madres began marching in front of the Casa Rosada in 1977 and are still at it. Now focused on building a DNA database of the children who were taken from their parents and farmed out to military families under different names. To date, they have found 114 grandchildren. Don’t miss this fine, thought-provoking production." SDGLN Theater, Jean Lowerison

"After seeing The Madres at Moxie Theatre, I understand why someone living in a totalitarian surveillance state would begin to “doublethink,” Orwell’s old chestnut about believing two contradictory ideas at once—sometimes it’s a survival mechanism...
 it all builds toward an innervating finale that will have you ready to take to the streets, join hands, and shout for justice." Dan  Letchworth, San Diego Magazine

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May 2018 News!

5/29/2018

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May 2018 News!

May News
  • Let's talk about plays!

Now Playing...
  • The Madres by Stephanie Alison Walker at MOXIE Theatre is based on the true story of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose protest captured the world’s attention.
  • The most beloved musical of all time, Lerner & Loewe’s MY FAIR LADY , is back on Broadway in a lavish new production from Lincoln Center Theater. Directed by Tony winner Bartlett Sher, the stellar cast is led by Lauren Ambrose, Harry Hadden-Paton, Norbert Leo Butz, Diana Rigg, Allan Corduner, Jordan Donica, Linda Mugleston and Manu Narayan.
  • Jo Cattell directs The Displaced by Isaac Gomez at Haven Theatre. The Displaced explores the wake of pain and yearning left behind when gentrification forces people out of their homes and the kind of vengeance that can come from it.
  • GHOST GARDENS by Steven Simoncic at Detroit Repertory Theatre is a story of the humor, grit, denial and delusion it takes to survive in a urban village. This is a Michigan Premiere!
Coming Soon...
  • MCC Theater presents the New York Premiere of THE LIGHT by Loy A. Webb , directed by Logan Vaughn.
  • Once In My Lifetime - A Buffalo Football Fantasy  by Donna Hoke premieres at Shea's Smith Theatre in Buffalo, New York.
  • Muthaland written and performed by Minita Gandhi comes to PCPA .
  • Sideshow presents the World Premiere of Tilikum by Kristiana Rae Colón.
  • The Madres by Stephanie Alison Walker finishes its NNPN Roll at Shrewd Productions in Austin.
  • Promethean Theatre Ensemble presents Bliss (or Emily Post is Dead!) by Jami Brandli .
  • The New Colony’s The Light by Loy A. Webb comes to Theater on the Lake.
  • The Hero’s Wife by Aline Lathrop premieres at 16th Street Theater.
NEW CLIENTS...
  • We are thrilled to welcome Emilio Williams to our client roster!
IN THE NEWS...
  • Voyage Chicago   interviews writer and producer,  Mia McCullough  of
          HAVEN PRODUCTIONS.
  • Reginald Edmund is one of "6 Theatre Workers You Should Know." 
   PLAYS TO READ...
  • Technicolor Life by Jami Brandli
  • The "So-Amazing" Murga Brothers by Emilio Williams
  • Tar and Feather by Kristin Idaszak
  • How the Light Gets In by E. M. Lewis
  • Berlin Diary by Andrea Stolowitz
  • Tombolo by Terence Anthony
  • Friends With Guns by Stephanie Alison Walker

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We are thrilled to welcome Emilio Williams to our client roster!

5/23/2018

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Emilio Williams’ plays have been produced in Spain, Argentina, France, Estonia, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States (including productions and performances in Chicago, New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles).
His most recent comedy “Your Problem with Men” was produced by Teatro Luna in Chicago, and has traveled to New York City, Los Angeles and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
In 2012, his one woman show “Medea’s Got Some Issues” received “Best International Show” at United Solo Festival, Off Broadway, New York City.
That same year, his comedy “Smartphones – a pocket-size farce,” received its world premiere at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago.In 2010, his “dramedy” “Tables and Beds, an unromantic comedy“was selected among 80 plays from 12 countries as the winner of the 4th Premio el EspectáculoTeatral.

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