The Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies presents
WRITING IS LIVE 2022
a festival of new work by Brown MFA Playwrights
in collaboration with Sock & Buskin and Brown/Trinity
April 21 – May 1, 2022
Leeds Theatre
The Granoff Center, Fishman Studio
| cheeky little brown by Nkenna Akunna ’22 MFA Fishman Studio – Granoff Center | golf girl by Seayoung Yim ’22 MFA Leeds Theatre |
| Bathhouse.ppt by Jesús I. Valles ’23 MFA Fishman Studio – Granoff Center | The Creature by Alexa Derman ’23 MFA Fishman Studio – Granoff Center |
| Throwback Island by Ro Reddick ’24 MFA Leeds Theatre | The Pardon by Harley Elias ’24 MFA Leeds Theatre |
cheeky little brown
by Nkenna Akunna ’22 MFA
Directed by Kiebpoli Calnek
Thursday, April 21, 8PM
Friday, April 22, 8 PM
Saturday, April 23, 8PM (talkback)
Saturday, April 30, 8PM
Sunday, May 1, 4PM
Fishman Studio, Granoff Center
154 Angell Street, Providence RI 02906
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Lady is in the middle of crashing (and ruining) her best friend Gemma’s birthday party. The two haven’t spoken for six months, Lady’s presence is a surprise, and over the course of the play we untangle the reasons why. cheeky little brown is a failed night out, a musical, and also a one-person show about heartbreak, tending to a body, and the shifting realities of the city they call home.
Nkenna Akunna is an Igbo playwright and performer from London whose work primarily explores dimensions of Black femme life. Plays include Some Of Us Exist in the Future (Papatango Prize; Neukom Institute Literary Award for Playwriting second place; UK audio tour: Bush Theatre, Everyman Theatre Liverpool, Theatr Clwyd, Leeds Playhouse, Laurels Whitley Bay, Chichester Festival Theatre, Stephen Joseph Theatre, an Tobar & Mull Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Bristol Old Vic, Southwark Playhouse, Oldham Coliseum, Trinity Theatre Tunbridge Wells, Lyric Theatre Belfast), cheeky little brown, good god (VoxFest, Brown University), Good Fit (Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award second place, Theatre Renegade, The Dare Tactic), a meal (Polaroid Theatre). BA in Economics and African Diaspora Studies from Dartmouth College, MFA Candidate in Playwriting from Brown University. nkennaakunna.com
Kiebpoli Calnek (they/them), a non-binary queer Black creative, born and raised in New York City/ Lenapehoking, has generated nuanced performances and artistic direction seeped in poetic elements for over two decades.
They’ve practiced physical theatre, co-created fiscally sponsored, large-scale, site-specific, community devised productions, and taught aerial rope acrobatics as a way to empower bodies tapping into universal somatic guidance. Their social enterprise, Black*Acrobat, produces interdisciplinary programming sharing stories of, for, and with fringe communities, celebrating authentic visions and a spectrum of viewpoints through research, access, and collaboration. Curator of The Reparations Show 11/2021- The Kraine Theatre, NYC. Black Trans Stories Matter – TMI Project. Member of the Up Until Now Collective.
Kiebpoli’s works received generous funding and support from Elizabeth Streb, Astraea Foundation, Asian Arts Initiative, and The New York Foundation for the Arts. Member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, SAG-AFTRA, and Actors’ Equity Association. www.kiebpoli.com
golf girl
by Seayoung Yim ’22 MFA
Directed by Carol Ann Tan ’23 MFA
Wednesday, April 27, 8PM
Thursday, April 28, 8PM
Friday, April 29, 8PM, (talkback)
Saturday, April 30, 4PM
Sunday, May 1, 8PM
Leeds Theatre
83 Waterman Street, Providence RI 02912
Blackwolf Run Golf Course, Wisconsin. Rising star Golf Girl is retracing the path of legendary golfer Park SeRi’s historic 1998 US Women’s Open win. Golf Girl and her dedicated father, Golf Dad, have toiled their whole lives for this moment—the chance to win a career-making championship. But when bizarre encounters and grotesque phenomena frustrate her efforts at each hole, Golf Girl begins to wonder what her life might be like just beyond the green.
Seayoung Yim (SHEE young) is a playwright and educator from Seattle. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Playwriting at Brown University, ’22.5, where she is a recipient of the Stephen Sondheim Graduate Fellowship in Theater Arts. She is a 2021 Playwriting Fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a playwright for the New Now Commission.. Her play Jar of Fat won second place for the Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award at The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF). At Cafe Nordo, her play, Persimmon Nights, enjoyed a sold-out run in July 2018. Her first full-length play, Do It For Umma, was directed by Sara Porkalob premiering at Annex Theatre in 2016 to sold-out audiences, winning both the People’s Choice Award for Outstanding New Play at Theater Puget Sound’s Gregory Awards and Seattle’s Gypsy Rose Lee Award for Excellence in Local Playwriting. Her plays have been produced by Seattle Public Theater’s Education Program, The Horse in Motion, Theatre Battery, Pony World Theatre, Mirror Stage, Live Girls! Theater, UW School of Drama, The 14/48 Projects, SIS Productions, Theater Off Jackson, and the Seattle Fringe Festival. www.seayoungyim.com
Carol Ann Tan (Cat) (any) is a Singapore-born director, writer, and dramaturg. Past directing credits include Constellations, Much Ado About Nothing, A View From the Bridge (Brown/Trinity), Warrior Class (The Comrades), Domestic Departure (Haven Theatre), Apartment Complex, Domestic Departure (University of Chicago), as well as staged readings of Bakkhai (Brown/Trinity), The Mark (Babes With Blades), Mine & Yours (Artemisia Theatre), Dialogue and Rebuttal (Silk Road Rising), Natural Shocks (The Comrades), and Fresh Out the Closet (Asian Improv aRts Midwest). Cat 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. Cat’s plays have been performed at Haven Theatre, Other Theatre, Brown/Trinity, 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, Sideshow Theatre, First Floor Theater, The Comrades, SoloChicago Theatre, Three Cat Productions, and Genesis Theatrical Productions. Cat is an MFA Directing candidate at Brown/Trinity (expected 2023), an artistic associate with Silk Road Rising, and a 2017/18 Directors Inclusion Initiate at Victory Gardens. carolanntan.com
Bathhouse.ppt
by Jesús I. Valles ’23 MFA
Directed by Andrew Watring ’23 MFA
Staged Reading:
Saturday, April 30, 11AM
Sunday, May 1, 6PM
Fishman Studio, Granoff Center
154 Angell Street, Providence RI 02906
This play is a group project for perverts. Somewhere between lecture, re-enactment, and cruising ground, an informative presentation on the history of showers & bathing starts to burst at the seams with the ghosts of a bathhouse at the end of the world.
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
Andrew Watring (Andrew) is a Black trans Object-theatre-creator, director, award-winning playwright, producer, performer, and Anarkata-in-training from sweet home Huntsville, Alabama. Andrew’s career has been dedicated to the creation and continued cultivation of Shakespeare is a White Supremacist, a thearical ritual grounded in Shakespeare’s colonizing effect on the American theatre; most recently staged with Main Street Players (Miami-Dade, FL). Select directing credits include: The Henriad, Richard III, White Noise, Hamletmachine, Passing: A Stage Play, Coriolanus. Andrew was a member of the Directors Lab North (2021); graduate of the Theatre Lab Life Stories Institutie (2019); an Honored Playwright at the New South Young Playwright’s Festival. Andrew founded and served as the Artistic Director of the Fractal Theatre Collective, an anti-capitalist arts organization that embraced community-led, direct action as an integral element of theatrical design. Andrew’s projects currently in development: Black. Queer. Providence; The Brilliant Failed Kidnapping of Edgar Allen Poe to Incite Black Revolution in Baltimore in 1849; or The Slave Play; The Decathexis Cycle. Andrew holds a BA in Theatre from American University, and is an MFA candidate at Brown University / Trinity Repertory Company. https://www.andrewwatring.com/
The Creature
by Alexa Derman ’23 MFA
Directed by Molly Houlahan ’23 MFA
Staged Reading:
Saturday, April 30, 6PM
Sunday, May 1, 11AM
Fishman Studio, Granoff Center
154 Angell Street, Providence RI 02906
A near-future play about structures of knowledge, meaning-making, the wild and the speculative – onwards, towards the end of human history. It’s like a baby? It’s not a baby. It’s like a dog? It’s not a dog. It’s like a lab-grown meat product? Kind of, but not really.
Alexa Derman is a playwright from Jersey. Her plays include PSYCHOPSYCHOTIC (Relentless Award Honorable Mention), GIRLISH (Fresh Ink Theatre), and RESTORATION MASTER RESET (Cutting Ball in WAYS TO LEAVE A BODY). She’s been a finalist for 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 nomination for the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, a residency with StageFemmes at Kenyon College, selection as a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow, 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. Alexa is currently pursuing her MFA at Brown, where she is a member of the Brown-RISD Game Developers and recipient of the Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship. alexaderman.com
Molly Houlahan (she/hers) 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.
Throwback Island
by Ro Reddick ’24 MFA
Directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy ’22 MFA
Reading
Thursday, April 28, 6PM
Saturday, April 30, 1PM
Leeds Theatre
83 Waterman Street, Providence RI 02912
Six “sexy singles” go to a secluded island for nostalgia soaked good vibes, #truelove, and a chance to win a $100K. But when a strongman bachelor enters the villa there’s a lot more at stake than a pot of money… Throwback Island is a dark satire that explores homegrown, all-American fascism through a bonkers reality dating show.
Ro Reddick (she/her) is a playwright, performer, songwriter and first year MFA Playwriting student at Brown University. Her plays include Throwback Island (Bushwick Starr Reading Series ‘22), ROBAMA (Williamstown Theater Festival NYC Reading ‘22), Miss Black Syracuse (The Duplex), and The History of Black People Making White People Better People (co-writer Daryl Lathon). Her script The Fam was a semi-finalist for the MACRO x Blacklist Episodic Lab, and her short film A Test In Stamina premiered at the Big Apple Film Festival. Ro is a recipient of the Miranda Theatre Company 2021 Playwright Grant. As an actor, Ro has performed at theaters including the McCarter, Long Wharf, KC Rep, and Hartford Stage, off-Broadway in “Silence! The Musical”, and on screen in The Americans, Louie, and SATC 2. She formerly sang with a country, rock, and blues band and has written over a dozen original songs with musician Ron Gross. She is currently in the Brown Arts Institute Songwriters Workshop. Ro has a BFA in Acting from Ithaca College and an MBA from NYU, which she has no intention of using.
Aileen Wen McGroddy (she/her) is a Chinese- and Irish-American theatre director, educator, and producer of live events. Her work is imaginative, inclusive, and playfully experimental, coming from a robust background in physical theatre and a deep commitment to hospitality. She became a person in New York; a theatre maker in Chicago; and a soon-to-be Master of Fine Arts in Directing (2021) at Brown-Trinity in Providence, RI. Credits include: On The Y-Axis by Lucas Baisch, Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams, Akira Kurosawa Explains his Movies and Yogurt by Julia Izumi, and The Tempest by William Shakespeare adapted by Aileen McGroddy (Brown-Trinity); Or, by Liz Duffy-Adams (Winnipesaukee Playhouse); 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 Pardon
by Harley Elias ’24 MFA
directed by Tara Moses ’24 MFA
Reading
Friday, April 29, 6PM
Sunday, May 1, 1PM
Leeds Theatre
83 Waterman Street, Providence RI 02912
Adultery. Shoemakers. Cults. Stabbings. Beheadings. Betrayal. Cobbler revolutions. Based on an archival document from a Lisbon notary’s office in 1582 that provides the names, dates, and facts, but none of the answers. A play about the unending act of looking back in search of those answers, and the wild kinky world of 16th century Portuguese shoe innovation.
Harley Elias is a playwright from New York. He has been the recipient of residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, with Resonance Ensemble, a Fulbright Grant, two Samuel French OOB Awards, Young Playwrights Award, the Hester-Franklin Prize, and his Play #3 is published by Samuel French. As an actor he has performed in several Broadway shows and national tours. Harley is a first year MFA in playwriting at Brown.
Tara Moses (she/her) is a citizen of Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Mvskoke, director, award-winning playwright, co-Artistic Director in Residence of Red Eagle Soaring, co-Founder of Groundwater Arts, Convening Producer of First Nations Performing Arts, and co-Founder and Executive Producer of #BINGE. She is currently commissioned by Audible, Red Bull Theater, AlterTheatre Ensemble, Kitchen Dog Theater, the New Now Commission with Lauren Gunderson, Geva Theatre Center, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Most recently, her work as a director has been seen with Spectrum Theatre Ensemble (Providence, RI); Red Eagle Soaring and ACT (Seattle, WA); American Indian Community House (New York, NY); Arena Stage (Washington, D.C.); Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (New Haven, CT); Safe Harbors Indigenous Collective (New York, NY); telatúlsa (Tulsa, OK); Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company (Edmond, OK); Serenbe Playhouse (Chattahoochee Hills, GA); and Amerinda (New York, NY). As a playwright, her works have been produced and developed from coast to coast and have been taught and/or are currently in the curriculum at Brown University, the University of Arizona, UCLA, University of Washington, Oklahoma City University, Northeastern State University, and the University of Arkansas. She is a Participant in New York Stage and Film’s inaugural NYSAF NEXUS project (2021); Barbara Whitman Award Finalist (2021); a Cultural Capital Fellow with First Peoples Fund (2020); fellow with the Intercultural Leadership Institute (18/19); member of DirectorsLabChicago (2018); member of the Directors Lab at Lincoln Center (2017); recipient of the Thomas C. Fichandler Award (2016); alum of the Allen Lee Hughes Fellowship (2015-2017); associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society; and Dramatists Guild member. She holds a BA in Theatre from the University of Tulsa and is from the Muscogee Creek Reservation. www.taramoses.com
Writing is Live is made possible through support from an endowed fund for the Adele Kellenberg Seaver ’49 Professorship in Literary Arts