Alexis Schaetzle
Brooklyn, New York
Wanda, Daisy and the Great Rapture by Alexis Schaetzle
Directed by Clinton Hopper
Friday, April 1, 2017 @ 1pm
Synopsis:
It’s a sticky hot summer in the swamplands of Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. Step-sisters Wanda and Daisy struggle to get by as the people they love disappear; Wanda’s mother has recently died, and Daisy’s father is fading away as his Alzheimer's worsens, and his obsession with an impending rapture intensifies. The girls summon dark memories as they try to repair their fractured relationship, and find a little light. A magical story about how we hold onto family, the past, and ourselves while we seek better lives, and wait patiently as the Great Rapture hails us--or doesn’t.
Biography:
Alexis Schaetzle is a NYC-based playwright. She grew up in Los Angeles, Nashville, and Pawley’s Island, SC. Her plays have had readings, been developed or produced in California, Illinois, Oregon, New York, and Ohio. Plays include: Monte, Tennessee (Dixon Place & Exquisite Corpse Company) Wanda, Daisy & the Great Rapture (Exquisite Corpse Company, Available Light Theatre, The Landing Theatre Company), Transplant (Available Light Theatre, UO Pocket Playhouse), Blessing in the Sky (Foundry Theatre Chicago), Astral (UO Pocket Playhouse, Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival), and Lightning Bugs (Foundry Theatre Chicago). She studied playwriting with José Rivera (Noor Theatre, Torn/Page NYC) and Jennifer Schlueter (University of Oregon, for/word company). She was the winner of the University of Oregon’s 2010 New Voices Competition, is a KCACTF National Playwriting Finalist, received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 ATHE Jane Chambers Award, and is a two member of Exquisite Corpse Company’s Playwriting Labs in Brooklyn.
John Bavoso
Washington, DC
Blight by John Bavoso
Directed by Steven Miranda
Saturday, April 1, 2017 @ 7pm
Synopsis:
Can a home be haunted by the actions of its owners? In BLIGHT, Silvia and Cat Henson have just moved from a tiny apartment in Washington, DC, into their sprawling dream home in the small, affluent town of Greenville, Delaware. But the house only happens to be in their price range because it was most recently the home of a teenaged mass shooter and his single mother. Within days of moving in, they’re confronted by a mayor who wants to erase their house from the map, a neighbor who’s on a mission to turn it into a memorial, and an alarmingly chipper consultant who specializes in the macabre. Is this the right time and place for Silvia and Cat to bring a new baby into the world, or will the house create an irreparable rift between them and their new community?
Biography:
John Bavoso is a Washington, DC-based playwright, marketer, and book/theatre reviewer. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and a Pinky Swear Productions company member. His first full-length play, Olizzia, premiered at the 2014 Capital Fringe Festival, prompting DC Metro Theatre Arts to dub him "a playwright to watch out for." His short plays have been produced by the DC Queer Theatre Festival, Source Festival, and Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival in DC, [spectrum: lgbt new play festival] in Colorado Springs, and the Short + Sweet Theatre festival in Sydney, Australia. He returned to Capital Fringe in 2016 as a co-writer of Pinky Swear’s Over Her Dead Body: A Bluegrass Benediction, which won two Fringe Audience Awards (Best Musical and Best Overall Show). A staged reading of his new full-length play, BLIGHT, was presented by Theater Alliance of Washington, DC, in October 2016 following a week of development as part of the Fifth Annual Hothouse New Play Development Series, and it was subsequently named one of the Top 20 Full-Length Play Finalists for the Source Festival 2017. He loves unicorns more than most things. www.John-Bavoso.com
Barbara Kingsley
Astoria, New York
Under This Roof by Barbara Kingsley
Directed by Robert Meek
Saturday, April 2, 2017 @ 1pm
Synopsis:
Set In the segregated black neighborhood of Central Cleveland in the late 40’s, Mamie Warren needs household help after her husband, Raymond, has an accident. On recommendation, Mamie hires a down-on-her-luck woman named Bessie, whose arrival brings surprises and new challenges. Set against the back-drop of post WW II recovery, this four character, two-act play examines the question of race, gender, age, power, family, and love - on an ever- shifting axis, with often unexpected results, both comic and painful.
Biography:
Barbara Kingsley is a multitasking theater artist and New York resident whose playwriting credits include Under This Roof, I Am Proof of Me – A final Visit with Emily Dickinson, and Living In The Blue Zone (winner of the 9Thirty Theatre Co. 2009 one-act playwriting competition and produced in the 2010 A Fresh Assortment/Earth Week, One-Act Festival). Barbara is also co-author of two screenplays: Henry Wind and Flourtown (2008 Official Selection: Palms Springs Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, SSHF Film Festival and Flickerfest Intl. Film Festival).
Writing awards include Eugene O’Neill NPC 216 Semifinalist, MSAB/National Endowment For The Arts - Artist Initiative Grant, and MRAC - Next Step Grant. She is a member of The 72nd St Playwrights Collective, The Playwrights’ Center (MN) and Dramatists Guild (NY). Barbara also served as an adjunct faculty member in the University of Minnesota Dept. of Theatre and Dance, from 1998 – 2013.
Anne Phelan
Brooklyn, New York
The Benders: A Dark Western by Anne Phelan
Directed by Jonathan Gonzalez
Sunday, April 2, 2017 @ 7pm
Synopsis:
“The Benders” is based on a true story about the first U.S. serial killers, the Benders, who operated in the decade after the Civil War. The Benders staked a claim in Osage Township (now Cherryvale), Kansas in 1870, after the U.S. government moved the Osage Nation off their land to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The family opened a rustic inn, near the Osage Trail, which was relatively well-traveled by settlers coming west. The Benders murdered at least a dozen of their guests, burying them in the orchard next to the inn, before they were found out.
Biography:
Anne Phelan - A two-time Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellow, Anne Phelan has been a Guest Artist at The Juilliard School, Playwright-in-Residence at the William Inge Theatre Festival, and was in the Play Lab at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in 2003. She won the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild’s Marilyn Hall Award, and has been a Finalist for the Sloan Project Commissions at Ensemble Studio Theatre (twice), the Jerome Fellowship and the Robert J. Pickering Award.
Anne has written fifteen full-length plays, fifteen one-acts, one award-winning children’s play, and ten ten-minute plays. Milk Can Theatre Company premiered her ten-minute musicals, “The Player King Musical” (music by Bill Tinsley) and “The Joshua Tree” (music by Nick Moore); “Mushroom in her Hands,” her adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; and a staged reading of “Kansas Faust,” her adaptation of Goethe’s “Faust, Part One.” Her plays have been produced at Looking Glass Theatre, Juilliard, Lincoln Center Directors Lab/American Living Room at HERE, Abingdon Theatre and the Perishable Theatre. Anne’s play for children (“The White Cat”) is published by DramaSource, and her work is anthologized in Monologues for Women, By Women (Volume One), and Best Ten-Minute Plays 2005. Three or More Actors, published by Smith and Kraus. The Tiger Play was a semi-finalist at the O’Neill in 2016. Anne received her B.A. from Hampshire College, and a certificate in theatre from the Trinity Rep Conservatory. She lives in Brooklyn, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the League of Professional Theatre Women and American PEN.