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Jason Witter received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from the University of New Mexico in 2004. He is an avid writer, director, actor, and producer of theatre and film. Mr. Witter is the founder of the comedy troupe Eat, Drink and Be Larry, whose shows, among others, include Hamlet: the Vampire Slayer, MacBeth in Space, and Dracula Goes to College. His other passions include bowling, comic books, dogs, and Scrabble. Mr. Witter lives in Albuquerque.
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Romulus Linney was the author of three novels, many short stories, and forty plays, staged throughout the United States and abroad. They include The Sorrows of Frederick, Holy Ghosts, Childe Byron, Heathen Valley, and a stage adaptation of Ernest Gaines's novel, A Lesson Before Dying. He won two Obie Awards, one for Sustained Excellence in Playwriting, two National Critics Awards, three DramaLogue Awards, and many fellowships, including grants from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. He was the Founding Playwright of Signature Theatre Company. Stories appear in many literary journals and in the anthologies Pushcart Prize, New Stories from the South, Best of the Year, 2001 and 2002. His 1960s novels, Heathen Valley and Slowly, By Thy Hand Unfurled, were republished by Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington, D.C. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which gave him its Award in Literature and The Gold Medal For Drama.
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The 24 Hour Plays (est. 1995, Mark Armstrong, artistic director) bring together creative communities to produce plays and musicals written, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours. Through our radically-present approach to theater, we make work that responds immediately to the world around us, builds communities and generates new artistic partnerships. Our events include The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway and The 24 Hour Musicals, as well as productions from London to Los Angeles, Dublin to Minneapolis, Finland to Mexico and more. Since March 2020, The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues have generated 600+ new free-to-view theater pieces featuring over 1000 artists that have been viewed millions of times and archived in the Library of Congress. \n
\nEach summer, we bring together early-career actors, directors, playwrights, producers and composers for a free professional intensive culminating in their own production of The 24 Hour Plays in an off-Broadway theater. Over eleven years, The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals have introduced audiences and collaborators to a generation of artists changing the game in theater, television and film. The 24 Hour Plays are an enduring New York City institution, while licensed affiliates and partners produce The 24 Hour Plays and Musicals in theaters and schools worldwide, impacting everyone from celebrities to students.\n
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The 52nd Street Project (The Project) is dedicated to the creation and production of new plays for, and often by, kids between the ages of nine and eighteen who reside in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in New York City. The Project does this through a series of unique mentoring programs that match kids with professional (and volunteer!) theater artists. The Project was founded in 1981 by actor/playwright and 1994 MacArthur Fellow Willie Reale in response to a deepening need to improve the quality of life for New York's inner-city children. Mr. Reale, an actor, playwright, and company member of the Ensemble Studio Theater (EST), used his company privileges to reach out to the children of the neighborhood by creating theatrical endeavors specifically for them. This was done with the cooperation and support of EST and its across-the-street-neighbor, the Police Athletic League's Duncan Center. The Project is now an independent not-for-profit organization that creates over eighty new plays and serves over 115 children every year. The Project is about making children proud of themselves. The Project is not about teaching children to act, although they will learn to. It is not about teaching them to write plays, although they will learn that as well. What it is about is giving a kid an experience of success. It is about giving a kid an opportunity to prove that he or she has something of value to offer, something that comes from within that he or she alone possesses, something that cannot be taken away. Past artist/volunteers have included Billy Crudup, Edie Falco, Malcolm Gets, Spalding Gray, Dana Ivey, Susan Kim, Henry Krieger, Robert Sean Leonard, Natasha Lyonne, Roma Maffia, Jesse L. Martin, James McDaniel, Paul McCrane, Frances McDormand, James Naughton, Oliver Platt, Martha Plimpton, Theresa Rebeck, Jose Rivera, Lili Taylor, Pam Tyson, Wendy Wasserstein, Frank Wood, and hundreds of others. Many return regularly, as they find the experience fulfilling and artistically stimulating. For its first fifteen years, the Project relied on borrowed spaces in which to implement its programs. In 1996, the Project established The Clubhouse, a center where children can flourish in the heart of, but sheltered from, the tough neighborhood in which they live. The Clubhouse lounge, equipped with computers for kids' use, is a rare, quiet place for study and creative work. A kitchen makes it a warm and welcoming environment for kids after a hard day at school. The Clubhouse makes it possible for the Project to expand its operations and maintain a permanent and vital presence in the neighborhood.
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Dinorah MárquezDinorah M rquez Abadiano was born in Mexico City, Dinorah emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 10, when she began her musical studies. Although she continued her musical activities throughout college, Ms. M rquez received a degree in American Studies at Northwestern University and a minor in International Studies at the University of Florence, Italy. After working as Assistant Press Secretary to Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, she returned to music full-time in both the US and Mexico. In 2002, Ms. M rquez established the award-winning Latino Arts Strings Program in order to provide immigrant Latinx children with the musical training she received as an immigrant child. After years of arranging traditional music for her students, Dinorah collaborated with playwright Alvaro Saar Rios to compose and arrange the music for On the Wings of a Mariposa.
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George Abbot was born in Forestville, New York, on June 25, 1887. In 1912 he enrolled in a playwriting course at Harvard University and won one hundred dollars for his play THE MAN IN THE MANHOLE. He began his professional career as an actor on Broadway in THE MISLEADING LADY in 1913. He was named one of the ten best performers of 1923 for his work in ZANDER THE GREAT. He had his first hit as a playwright and director with BROADWAY (1926). His later directorial credits include the plays TWENTIETH CENTURY (1932), THREE MEN ON A HORSE (1935), BROTHER RAT (1936,) and TOO MANY GIRLS (1939). He directed his first musical, Rodgers and Hart's JUMBO, in 1935. Other musical directorial credits include ON YOUR TOES (1936), THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE (1938), PAL JOEY (1940), ON THE TOWN (1944), BEGGAR'S HOLIDAY (1946), HIGH BUTTON SHOES (1947), WHERE'S CHARLEY (1948), CALL ME MADAM (1950), WONDERFUL TOWN (1953), PAJAMA GAME (1954), DAMN YANKEES (1955), ONCE UPON A MATTRESS (1959), FIORELLO! (1959), TENDERLOIN (1960), A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (1962), and FLORA, THE RED MENACE (1965). He received numerous awards, including the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for FIORELLO!, the 1960 New York Drama Critics Circle Award, four Donaldson Awards (1946, 1948, 1953, and 1955), four Tony Awards (1955, 1956, 1960, and 1963) and the Handel Medallion from the City of New York (1976). He was a Kennedy Center honoree in 1983. He passed away in 1995 at the age of 107.
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Laura Abbott is a native Vermonter who graduated from Milton Jr./Sr. High School in June 2007. Her play, Trapped, has been performed at a regional one-act festival in St. Johnsbury as well as at a Vermont state one-act festival in Rutland. With Trapped, she went on to be one of the top 20 finalists in Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwrights Festival (2007). She is currently working towards her B.A. in Drama at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. Her college credits include: Ensemble member, The Vagina Monologues; Assistant director, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; and Amanda, Dying to Be Thin. An Active Minds production in liaison with playwright, Linda Carson, Dying to Be Thin was split into eight separate, gender-neutral monologues and was performed in order to heighten the awareness of bulimia and other eating disorders. Ms. Abbott continues to write; she will be directing her new play, "The Memory Project" (working title) through IC Players. The show, about a family coping with death and memory loss, will be staged at Ithaca College in early December 2008.
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Paul Ableman was born on June 13, 1927, in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. In 1958, his first novel, I HEAR VOICES, was published in Paris; it was later published in England where it received critical acclaim. After writing AS NEAR AS I CAN GET in 1962, he began to write short surrealistic plays which were first performed at the Edinburgh Festivals. The world premiere of his first full-length play, GREEN JULIA, was staged at the 1965 Edinburgh Festival by Traverse Theatre productions; it then transferred to the New Arts Theatre in London, where it ran successfully. Subsequently, Ableman continued to write for the theater and television, as well as a range of experimental prose.
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Sean Abley is one of the founding members of the Factory Theater in Chicago. While there, he adapted the films Corpse Grinders, Reefer Madness, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians for the stage, and wrote the original plays Bitches, Attack of the Killer Bs, and Nuclear Family. He also contributed to the ensemble-created works Hooray!, Second City Didn't Want Us..., and P, a comedy adaptation of the "P" volume of the encyclopedia.\n \nCommissioned and published works include the new musicals Welcome to the Afterlife! and Horror High: The Musical, and The Adventures of Rose Red (Snow White's Less-Famous Sister), Dr. Frankincense and the Christmas Monster, Bad Substitute, We Wish You a Marry Spendmas!, Historically Bad First Dates, Two-Faced: a Tragedy...Sort Of, Camp Killspree, Confessions of a Male Pin-up, The RISE of the House of Usher, Dracula's Daughters: A Family Comedy, Horror High, Elevator Games, and Double Trouble on the Prairie. He contributed to the collections Exposed! Eight 10-Minute Tales About What Really Happened! and What Would Happen If...? Six 10-Minute Tales of Improbability. His scripts are available through Playscripts, Brooklyn Publishers, Eldridge Plays and Musicals, and Next Stage Press. He recently launched Plays To Order (www.playstoorder.com), a service to create new plays for high school and community groups based on their specific needs -- cast size, themes, length, etc.\n \nAs a screenwriter for both TV and film, Mr. Abley has written for the shows So Weird (Disney Channel), Sabrina the Animated Series (ABC), Digimon and Mega Babies (both Fox Family) as well as several pilots including Bench Pressly, the World's Strongest Private Dick starring Bruce Campbell and Tim Curry. His produced screenplays include Rope Burn, Socket, and all the video material for Rip Torn in the Men In Black: Alien Attack park attraction at Universal Studios, Florida.\n |
Emily Ackerman is a playwright and actor based in NYC. Her first play (co-authored with KJ Sanchez) ReEntry, is based on interviews with members of the Marine Corps and was commissioned by Two River Theater Company. ReEntry received critical acclaim both at Two River in 2009 and at Urban Stages, NYC, where it received a production in 2010. Ms. Ackerman is also a member of The Civilians, an Obie award winning company that specializes in documentary work. With The Civilians: This Beautiful City (Original Collaborator/Performer; Colorado Springs, ATL/Humana Festival 2008, Studio Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Vineyard Theatre), Gone Missing (Barrow Street Theatre, Off-Broadway Cast Album, Actor's Theatre of Louisville), and developmental workshops of The Great Immensity, and Shadow of Himself. Other collaborative writing/performance work includes The Charlotte Cushman Project, with The Laramie Project head writer Leigh Fondakowski (workshop co-produced by Tectonic Theatre Project and About Face Theatre), and Four Short Plays, Four Big Ideas with KJ Sanchez (commissioned by Grant Makers in the Arts for the Council on Foundations National Conference). As a performer, Ms. Ackerman has performed in several theaters across the country such as Arena Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, California Shakespeare Theater, Seattle Repertory Theater, Actor's Theater of Louisville, and Center Theatre Group.
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