THE LANDING THEATRE COMPANY
New American Voices
Playwriting Festival
2021
Eugenie Carabatsos
Hanover, NH
CONTENT WARNING
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Adult Language
PG
A Series of Inelastic Collisions
by Eugenie Carabatsos
Directed by Emily Neves
Saturday April 24, 2021 @ 3pm
Synopsis:
After the death of her husband, Rain moves in with her estranged son, whose recent religious conversion has brought on major life changes, including fostering two teenagers. Isolated from her family, Rain finds connection and intimacy with the strangers she interacts with while phone-banking for her preferred presidential candidate.
Biography:
Eugenie Carabatsos is a playwright and screenwriter. Her full-length plays have won the Kennedy Center Harold and Mimi Steinberg National Student Playwriting Award, BroadwayWorld Award for Best Play in South Carolina, the Trustus Theatre Playwrights Contest, the Mountain Playhouse Comedy Writing Competition, the Venus Theatre Festival, the University of Tulsa’s WomenWorks Competition, and the Variations Theatre Group’s Unchained Festival. They have been produced all around the country including places like Trustus Theatre, iDiOM Theatre, Stages Theatre, and South Park Theatre, as well as in festivals and development programs, such as Great Plains Theater Conference. She graduated with her MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016 and received her BA from Wesleyan University in 2010. She currently lives in Hanover, NH where she teaches at Dartmouth College.
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Rachel Bykowski
Chicago, IL
CONTENT WARNING
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Adult Language
PG
The Forgotten Language of the Handshake or The Torso Play
by Rachel Bykowski
Directed by Kelsey McMillan
Sunday, April 25, 2021 @ 3pm
Synopsis:
Welcome to the United Levels, a distant future that is closer than we think. Formally known as the United States of America with parts of Canada and Mexico. Citizens are defined by the amount of debt plaguing their finances and divided by their financial status into Levels. Level 1 being the wealthiest, Level 10 being the poorest. Sachs, a Level 9, uses her position as a Personal Journalist to help bring a sense of checks and balances to this capitalist driven future. She will always report the facts objectively, no matter how damning. Sachs finds herself working with an up and coming tech company that promises to bring equality through its questionable medical advances. She is forced to analyze her own moral code when asked how much she would sacrifice to raise her level and what would she charge for a literal piece of herself.
Biography:
Rachel Bykowski, a Chicago playwright, writes to explore the many facets of the female identity. Rachel is an award-winning playwright with plays produced and workshopped across the United States. Rachel is the winner of the 2020 Getchell New Play Award, 2019 SETC/Stage Rights Ready to Publish Award, runner-up for the 2018 Todd McNerney Playwriting Award, top 20 finalist for CulturalDC’s Source Theatre Festival in 2017, and received Honorable Mention for the Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award. Her full-length play Rev is published by Stage Rights Publisher. Her full-length, 28 Light Years From Now, was a semi-finalist for both Premiere Stages at Kean University and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2020. 28 Light Years was recently workshopped with Renaissance Theaterworks in Milwaukee, WI for their new play festival in 2020. Her full-length play, Tight End, has been featured with The National New Play Network (NNPN) in a workshop at the Kennedy Center for the MFA Playwrights’ Festival in 2016. Recently, Tight End was featured in a reading with Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, IN in collaboration with Women4Change Indiana to raise awareness to violence against women. Tight End received its world premiere production in Chicago, IL with 20% Theatre Company and regional premiere in Las Vegas, NV with Majestic Repertory Theatre. Tight End will be digitally produced and available on-demand in April of 2021 with Relative Theatrics in Laramie, WY. Rachel is currently working on a true crime fictional podcast series called Murder, We Spoke that is in workshop with Tantrum East Theatre in New York, NY. Rachel is a playwriting alumna with NNPN and a member of the Dramatists Guild. She received her BFA in playwriting from the Theatre School at DePaul University and her MFA from Ohio University. www.rachelbykowskiplays.com
Spencer Huffman
Chicago, IL
CONTENT WARNING
​
Adult Language
PG
The Baseball Gods
by Spencer Huffman
Directed by Rob Kimbro
Saturday, May 1, 2021 @ 3pm
Synopsis:
When nine-year-old Jamie met a boy named Sam who taught him how to throw a baseball, he knew he’d found his best friend. Over the next ten years of sleepovers and batting practice, whenever Jamie’s troubled family seemed on the brink of falling apart, Sam would be there to help. But with the State Championship and their high school graduation just days away, Sam reveals that he’s been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Suddenly, Jamie is faced with an unfamiliar and painful question: How do you take care of someone who has always taken care of you? A dark comedy about two young men who love baseball almost as much as they love each other, The Baseball Gods is an intimate and tender portrait of adolescent masculinity in the midst of untimely tragedy.
Biography:
Spencer Huffman is a playwright, director, and actor based in Chicago. His plays include: The Baseball Gods, When We Were Little, Shine Down On Us, The Swamp Play, Like Some Deep Booming, The Vastness of the North, and If Only We Were Ghosts. His plays have earned recognition from theatres and festivals across the country, including The National Playwrights Conference, American Stage’s 21st Century Voices New Play Festival, Landing Theatre Co. New American Voices Festival, Southwest Theatre Production’s Rising Artists Playwriting Competition, and Relative Theatrics, among others. He has been a writer-in-residence at The Millay Colony and The Marble House Project and is currently in-residence at the Kerouac Project of Orlando. As a director, Spencer’s work includes site-specific productions of Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, Bug by Tracy Letts, and Aaslt by Duncan McLean and Pol Heyvaert, among others. Spencer is a graduate of the School at Steppenwolf and an ensemble member at Bramble Theatre Co in Chicago. BA: Kenyon College. www.jspencerhuffman.com
David Davila
New York, NY
CONTENT WARNING
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Adult Themes
Strong Language
Violence
Sexual Trauma
R
Aztec Pirates, A Latinx Fantasia on National Themes
Part One: The Insignificance of Life on Mars
by David Davila
Directed by Laura Moreno
Sunday, April 2, 2021 @ 3pm
Synopsis:
Johnny Montenegro is an ICE agent trying to put back the pieces of his life after an ugly incident in the field got him suspended from duty. While arresting a man he had already deported two years earlier, he was called a traitor to his race and he beat the accuser half to death, but he couldn’t shake the idea that had been planted within him: was he a traitor to his race? Equipped with only his commands Johnny embarks on an odyssey as he searches for the truth about his country, his culture, and his memory. However with every answer that he finds, there is something inside of him that becomes less clear. His quest to clear his conscience leads him from strip bars to courtrooms to hospitals to morgues, as he seeks the validation he needs to continue living complicitly. Across borders and allegiances this two part play takes you on a harrowing and disturbing adventure that examines life for Latinx people caught between embracing their roots and conforming to the mob mentality of a Trump-era USA.
Biography:
David Davila is a playwright, performer, director, composer, and stand-up comedian from the border of South Texas where the wall has stood since George W’s administration. An alumnus of The Second City Training Center in Chicago and the Primary Stages ESPA Playwriting School in Manhattan, he dedicates his life to telling the varied stories of Latinx and gay people living in the United States. His theatre works include Manuel vs the Statue of Liberty: an undocumented musical comedy (NYMF, Princeton University, Gallery Players, O’Neill Finalist, Yip Harburg Award for Lyrics), Promesa: a Mariachi Musical (Musical Theatre Factory), Animal Husbandry (NYC Fringe, Feast, Barn Arts Maine), Aztec Pirates, a Latinx Fantasia on National Themes, Part One: the Insignificance of Life on Mars (San Diego Rep, Brooklyn Cultural Arts Center), Part Two: the Inequity of Sacrifice (Latinx Playwrights Circle, Brooklyn Cultural Arts Center), Hotel Puerto Vallarta, a legitimate work of dramatic theatre (Variations Theatre Co, The PlayGround Experiment), Vox Pop: a musical parable (Musical Theatre Factory, 54 Below New Musicals), Pyramid (Lincoln Center - Across a Crowded Room Series), #52SONGS: a year-long song cycle (Beechman, Triad, West End Lounge), Tales from Highway 281: a song cycle (Intar Theatre, Grass/New Roots Festival), Adan y Julio y la Frontera 2003 (Viva San Antonio, O’Neill Semi-Finalist), Men of God (Lone Star Theatre, ESPA), The Mesquite Tree (PlayGround Experiment), Butt Babies Never Live (Poetic Theatre Productions), Recuerdos of My Life (UTPA), and several short plays and films with Second City Chicago, NYMadness, Lone Star Theatre, Primary Stages, the Magnet Theatre, and the PlayGround Experiment. David Davila is the founding artistic director of Lone Star Theatre Company, a proud member of the Musical Theatre Factory, the Rogue Writer’s Group, the Latinx Playwright Circle, Selfish Shellfish Sketch Comedy Troupe, Star Wars Bingo (the award winning Second City improv team), and ASCAP; as well as a Rockwell Scholar, an Askins Fellow, and the son of a preacher man. He most recently founded the Voices of America Writers Workshop in response to the inequality of opportunities available to marginalized communities. He studied Opera Theatre at the University of North Texas, and Arts Administration at the University of Texas San Antonio. Follow him at @davidodavila or visit his website at www.daviddavila.net.