WRITING IS LIVE 2023
featuring new pays in progress by Brown MFA Playwrights
Part 2: The Thesis Shows
March 15 – 19
FEATURING
| Play House by Alexa Derman ’23 MFA directed by Molly Houlahan ’23 MFA | Spread written and directed by Jesús I Valles ’23 MFA |
SCHEDULE
| Wednesday, March 15, 2023 8:00 PM: Play House by Alexa Derman ’23 MFA | Thursday, March 16, 2023 8:00 PM: Spread by Jesús I Valles ’23 MFA | Friday, March 17, 2023 1:00 PM: Spread by Jesús I Valles ’23 MFA 8:00 PM: Play House by Alexa Derman ’23 MFA |
| Saturday, March 18, 2023 1:00 PM: Play House by Alexa Derman ’23 MFA 8:00 PM: Spread by Jesús I Valles ’23 MFA | Sunday, March 19, 2023 1:00 PM: Spread by Jesús I Valles ’23 MFA 8:00 PM: Play House by Alexa Derman ’23 MFA |
Free Admission
Tickets to the readings are free but reservations are required.
Click here to order your ticket(s).
(tickets available mid-January)
Play House
by Alexa Derman ’23 MFA
Directed by Molly Houlahan ’23 MFA
3/15 8 PM
3/17 8 PM
3/18 1 PM
3/19 8 PM
Jo and Mona are married, Jo and Mona live in a beautiful house, Jo and Mona have wonderful friends visiting for the weekend, Jo and Mona don’t know about the two Teen Things lurking in the shadows, waiting, waiting… A queer horror play about freaky deer, performing adulthood, pre-prom rituals, and the violent pleasures of Kitchen-Aid stand-mixers.
Alexa Derman is a playwright from Jersey who writes about gender, systems, and speculation. Her plays include PSYCHOPSYCHOTIC (Relentless Award Honorable Mention), GIRLISH (Fresh Ink Theatre), RESTORATION MASTER RESET (Cutting Ball in WAYS TO LEAVE A BODY), and I’LL BE IN MY HANUKKAH PALACE (sold-out at Ars Nova ANT Fest). She is a 2022-2023 Core Apprentice at the Playwrights Center and currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club via the Sloan Foundation. Alexa has been a finalist for Jewish Plays Project, Playwrights Realm’s Writing Fellowship, the Starr Reading Series, Pegasus PlayLab, Kitchen Dog New Works, and Unicorn Plays-in-Progress; semifinalist for Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the O’Neill. Other honors and experiences include Orchard Project Audio Lab, Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB Retreat, an upcoming residency with Ragdale, nomination for the Cherry Lane Mentor project and the Susan Smith Blackburn, a residency with StageFemmes at Kenyon College, and at Yale the Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting. Her work has been developed with Cutting Ball Variety Pack and Fresh Ink. BA from Yale in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Brown and is a staff writer on an upcoming Netflix series. alexaderman.com
Molly Houlahan (she/hers) is a Providence based queer director. She is the previous Associate Artistic Director of Congressional Award-Winning Hypokrit Theatre Company. Hypokrit has developed work with institutions such as The Public, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, New Georges, Rattlestick, Lincoln Center/LCT3, and UNICEF amongst others. Houlahan’s select directing credits include Transhumance (Austin,TX Fringe, Auckland Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe), In Search of Maria Theresa (Cell Theatre), Gospel of the Marys (Furnace Festival), R+J (Access Theatre), How To Succeed as an Ethnically Ambiguous Actor starring Zenobia Shroff from “The Big Sick” (Castillo Theatre), Scorched (The Araca Project), and Still Life (NYC International Fringe Festival). Molly has assistant/associate directed for Kate Whoriskey, Anne Kauffman, Rebecca Taichman, Les Waters, Dan Sullivan, Tony Taccone, Lynne Meadow, and Mary Zimmerman among others at institutions such as The Public, Playwrights Horizons, Encores! at NYCC, The Town Hall, Berkeley Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the New York Philharmonic. She has worked in the producing department at The Public, the artistic department at Steppenwolf, and as the assistant to the Artistic Director at Berkeley Rep. She has assisted artists such as Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding”) and Sarah Jones (“Sell/Buy/Date”). 2019 Manhattan Theatre Club Directing Fellow, 2017 Playwrights Horizons Directing Fellow, 2015-2016 Bret C. Harte Directing Fellow at Berkeley Rep, and the winner of the Louis Sudler Prize upon graduating Yale University.
Spread
Written and directed by
Jesús I Valles ’23 MFA
3/16 8 PM
3/17 1 PM
3/18 8 PM
3/19 1 PM
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Take some dry ramen and throw it in a plastic bag. Add Hot Cheetos, beef jerky bits, beans, Hot Fries, and hot water. Mayonnaise or mustard (if you like that shit). Let it sit. Enjoy. Anything can be lunch in 9th grade. Anything can be anything. Jeffrey, Andrew, Chris, and Jordan are 9th grade boys and they’re trying their absolute best, and the thing about 9th grade is nobody knows what they’re doing. Here they are, at lunch. Here they are, at home. Here they are, together, in 9th grade, hoping they’ll get through it.
Jesús I. Valles (they/them) is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, storyteller, and performer from Cd. Juarez/El Paso. Jesús is a 2021 CantoMundo fellowship recipient at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, a 2019 Lambda Literary fellow, a 2019 Walter E. Dakin Playwriting Fellow of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a recipient of the 2019 Letras Latinas Scholarship from the Community of Writers’ Poetry Workshop, and a poetry fellow at Idyllwild Arts Writers Week. Jesús is also a 2018 Undocupoets Fellow, a 2018 Tin House Scholar, a fellow of The 2018 Poetry Incubator, and the runner-up in the 2017 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Their work has been published in The Shade Journal, The Texas Review, The New Republic, Palabritas, The Acentos Review, Quarterly West, The Mississippi Review, Palette, The Adroit Journal, BOAAT, The McNeese Review, and PANK. Their poetry has also been featured on NPR’s Code Switch, The Slowdown, The BreakBeat Poets’ LatiNext Anthology, and the Best New Poets 2020 anthology. As an actor, they are the recipient of four B. Iden Payne Awards, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama (2018), and Outstanding Original Script (2018) and they were nominated for the Mark David Cohen New Play Award for their play, (Un)Documents. They most recently starred as Penny Marshall in Victor I. Cazares’ Pinching Pennies with Penny Marshall: Death Rituals for Penny Marshall for New York Theatre Workshop. Jesús is currently OUTSider festival’s OUTsider-in-residence and an MFA playwriting student at Brown University
Writing is Live is made possible through support from an endowed fund for the Adele Kellenberg Seaver ’49 Professorship in Literary Arts