February 7 – 9
Leeds Theatre
A Festival of New Theatre
By the Brown University MFA Playwrights
in collaboration with the Brown/Trinity MFA Program in Acting and Directing
February 7 – 9
Leeds Theatre
2020 Performance Schedule
Friday, February 7, 2020
5:00 PM: On The Y-Axis by Lucas Baisch ’20 MFA
8:00 PM: The Executrix by Emma Horwitz ’20 MFA
Saturday, February 8, 2020
1:00 PM: good god by Nkenna Akunna MFA ’22
4:00 PM: Jar of Fat by Seayoung Yim ’22 MFA
8:00 PM: On The Y-Axis by Lucas Baisch ’20 MFA
Sunday, February 9, 2020
1:00 PM: The Executrix by Emma Horwitz ’20 MFA
4:00 PM: good god by Nkenna Akunna MFA ’22
8:00 PM: Jar of Fat by Seayoung Yim ’22 MFA
Free Admission
Tickets to the readings are free but reservations are required. Please click the button below to order your ticket(s).
On The Y-Axis
by Lucas Baisch ’20 MFA
Directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy ’21 MFA
Friday, Feb 7, 5PM
Saturday, Feb 8, 8PM
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Last Fall, a PG&E power line explodes. A shed catches flame. A tree. A neighborhood. Today, a hard drive tumbles its way out of a hole – out of the home of a burnt corpse – and data item turns into cataclysm. Part climate anxiety, part Book of Revelation, part digital archive: On the Y-Axis presents “play” as a poison to the host body.
Lucas Baisch is a Guatemalan-Mexican-American playwright and visual artist, originally from San Francisco. His work has been read and developed at the Goodman Theatre, The Neo-Futurists, Playwrights Horizons, Chicago Dramatists, Victory Gardens Theater, Links Hall, Gloucester Stage, American Theatre Company, InFusion Theatre Company, Chicago Fringe, The DeYoung Museum, SF Playground, Lambda Literary, etc. Productions include: REFRIGERATOR (First Floor Theatre), The Scavengers (The Healy Theater at DePaul University), A Measure of Normalcy (Gloucester Stage Company), and collaboration on The Arrow Cleans House (The Neo-Futurists). His artwork has been presented at Elsewhere Museum, the Electronic Literature Organization, gallery no one, the RISD Museum, and will be presented at ACRE gallery in 2020. Coming up, his plays import speech_memory will be workshopped at Cutting Ball Theater and On the Y-Axis will have a reading at The Bushwick Starr. Education: DePaul University: BFA Playwriting, Brown University: MFA Playwriting (candidate). To learn more visit www.lucasbaisch.com
Aileen Wen McGroddy is a director who uses the theatre as a social space for interrogating pasts and imagining futures. Her work is imaginative, inclusive, and playfully experimental, integrating elements of clown, puppetry, site-specificity, physical theatre, audience interaction, and live music. She became a person in New York; a theatre artist in Chicago; and a soon-to-be Master of Fine Arts in Directing (2021) at Brown-Trinity in Providence, RI. Credits include: The Tempest, Summer and Smoke, Akira Kurosawa Explains his Movies and Yogurt, and The Tempest (Brown-Trinity); Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical and The Snowy Day (Emerald City Theatre); Montauciel Takes Flight (Lifeline Theatre); Ulysses (The Plagiarists); A Hero’s Journey, The Hunting of the Snark, Robin Hood, and The Pied Piper (The Forks & Hope Ensemble); The Whiskey Radio Hour,Wake: A Folk Opera, Kodachrome Telephone and Sign of Rain (The Whiskey Rebellion); Gentle, The Edge of Our Bodies, Music Hall, The Anyway Cabaret (TUTA); The Nose and Reika and the Wolves (Mudlark Theatre); and In This Final Century (Theatre-Hikes). She has assisted at The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Trinity Rep, Court Theatre, The Actors’ Gymnasium, The Hypocrites, and The House. Before moving to Providence, she was the artistic director of The Forks & Hope Ensemble and the Whiskey Rebellion; she was a company member of TUTA, sat on the steering committee of DirectorsLabChicago, and on the producing team of Physical Festival Chicago.
THE EXECUTRIX
written and directed by Emma Horwitz ’20 MFA
Friday, Feb 7, 8PM
Saturday, Feb 9, 1PM
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Do you ever forget what the word masturbation means? Sorry, I mean: do you ever remember what the word defenestration means? Did I say defenestration, I meant meatballs, did you pick them up from Val Salvio’s? The famous restaurant, yes, the one on Eight with all of the sisters-in-law who you used to love back when Peter your assistant-husband was out getting cake. A new play about where the you of you is, and why we keep houseplants.
Emma Horwitz is a writer from New York City. Her plays have been produced by or developed with Two Headed Rep, The Flea, Williamstown Theater Festival, The Tank’s Pride Fest, Tiny Rhino, Fresh Ground Pepper etc. Her work in fiction has been published in print and online at Moon Missives, Vol. 1 Brooklyn’s Sunday Stories, Joyland Magazine, Two Serious Ladies, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, etc. She currently lives in Providence, RI, pursuing her MFA in Writing for Performance at Brown University, where she received the Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship. Previously, she worked as the Literary Consultant at Alchemation. BA: Bard College, Written Arts. www.emmahorwitz.com
good god
by Nkenna Akunna ’22 MFA
Directed by Carol Ann ‘Cat’ Tan ’22 MFA
Saturday, Feb 8, 1PM
Sunday, Feb 9, 4PM
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Three young women, three cities, and the centuries-old secrets of a New England college town. A post-coming-of-age coming-of-age story layered between four distinct locales, GOOD GOD leaps in graceful bounds across oceans and continents, tracking the diasporic experiences of three bright, brash women who want, want, want
Nkenna Akunna is a British Nigerian writer and performer from London. She graduated with a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College in 2016, and began pursuing playwriting upon moving back to London in 2017. Her work has been staged in both London and New York, including at the Southwark Playhouse and VAULT Festival in London, and at New York’s WOW Cafe Theatre. She is a winner of the VAULT Festival New Writers Award, a finalist for SPACE on Ryder Farm’s Greenhouse Residency, a finalist for the BBC’s Felix Dexter bursary, a member of 2017-2018 Soho Writers’ Lab, and is a member of Soho’s Alumni Group. She also works as a culture writer and script editor.
Carol Ann Tan (Cat) (she/hers) is a Singapore-born director, writer, and dramaturg. She is an artistic associate with Silk Road Rising, having previously served as the resident dramaturg for two seasons. She is also an artistic associate with The Comrades, a 2017/18 Directors Inclusion Initiate with Victory Gardens, and a Brown/Trinity MFA Directing candidate. Past directing credits include Warrior Class (The Comrades), Domestic Departure (Haven Theatre), Apartment Complex, Domestic Departure (University of Chicago), as well as staged readings of Mine & Yours (Artemisia Theatre), Dialogue and Rebuttal (Silk Road Rising), Natural Shocks (The Comrades), and Fresh Out the Closet (Asian Improv aRts Midwest). She has assisted John Gawlik on Doubt (The Gift Theatre), Dexter Bullard on Mies Julie (Victory Gardens), and Elly Green on You for Me for You (Sideshow Theatre). As a writer, Cat’s plays include Trump Card, Apartment Complex, and Domestic Departure. Her plays have been performed at Haven Theatre, Other Theatre, North Central College, and the University of Chicago. Domestic Departure was awarded second place for the Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize. As a dramaturg, Cat has worked with Writers Theatre, Silk Road Rising, TimeLine Theatre, First Floor Theater, The Comrades, SoloChicago Theatre, Three Cat Productions, and Genesis Theatrical Productions. carolanntan.com
JAR OF FAT
by Seayoung Yim ’22 MFA
Directed by Tatyana-Marie Carlo ’20 MFA
Saturday, Feb 8, 4pm
Sunday, Feb 9, 8pm
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In a fantastical fairytale world, two Korean American sisters are deemed too fat to fit in their family grave. With undesirability fastened upon their bodies, how will their souls endure? Will the sisters’ close bond survive under the pressure of their fretful parents, who will spare no effort to get them tinier? Jar of Fat is an absurdist comedy that celebrates and explodes notions of desire, ugliness, and beauty through the eyes of a family who hides from and in the stuff of fat. Crossing intersections between Korean American identity and fatphobia, this play probes a beauty culture that can sometimes look foreign to mainstream American notions of what’s desirable or ugly to behold.
Seayoung (SHEE-young) Yim is a Korean American playwright from Seattle. Her most recent full-length play, Persimmon Nights enjoyed a sold-out run at Cafe Nordo in 2018. Her first full-length production, Do It For Umma, premiered at Annex Theatre where it broke their audience attendance record. She is the winner of the People’s Choice Award for Outstanding New Play at Theatre Puget Sound’s Gregory Awards and Seattle’s Gypsy Rose Lee Award for Excellence in Local Playwriting. Her other work has been produced by or workshopped by Seattle Public Theater’s Education Program, Theatre Battery, Mirror Stage, Live Girls! Theater, The 14/48 Projects, Funhouse Family, Pony World Theatre, and SIS Productions. Her previous writing memberships include: the Asian American playwriting collective, SIS Writers Group, and the 2018 Umbrella Project Writers Group. www.seayoungyim.com
Tatyana-Marie Carlo is a proud Puerto Rican director from Miami, FL who was named the 2019 Matt Harris Directing Fellow at Williamstown Theater Festival. She received her BFA in Acting from the New World School of the Arts. During her undergraduate career she developed a passion for bilingual theatre that continues to influence her career. As the Artistic Director of Micro Theater Miami Tatyana-Marie integrated English-language plays, where previously all the plays were performed in Spanish. While leading the creation process of 15-minute plays in 20 X 8 shipping containers, she was also able to establish Micro-theater for Kids, which was never before seen in the United States. Soon after she became the Associate Director of Seminole Theatre, a performing arts center in Homestead, Fl. In her role she aided in the reestablishment of the theatre after being previously closed for 40 years.
