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Plays & Playwrights 2010
Rx by Kate Fodor
Wild Animals You Should Know by Thomas Higgins
“I mean, don’t you ever want to do something just because you can?” Great grades in school, a letter in soccer, a popular Boy Scout -- everything is so easy for Matthew. Handsome, clever, charming – he’s bored and restless. His father has lost his job and he suspects his scoutmaster is gay. Matthew wants to destroy someone. Sexual tensions churn in this wickedly funny coming of age story about the very young and the very middle aged -- who discover ‘the little beast in us all.’ BIO: Thomas is the author of many plays including, The Blasphemy Tree (Naked Angels Lab), The Family Dungeon (Columbia Arts Initiative), The Home Front (Columbia Arts Initiative), The Wild Life (Source Theatre) and The Dying Breed (Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Winner). His full-length plays, This Modern House, The Elephant Party and The Homemaker have been nominated for the L. Arnold Weissberger Award for Playwriting at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Cherry Lane Mentor project. He graduated from Northwestern University and received his MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University on the Dean's Fellowship. Psalm 151: Heaven Have Mercy by Len Jenkin A new American psalm in nine scenes. A couple is stressed to the breaking point by their autistic son, money troubles, and suburban life. The recession has hit them hard. An old woman at the end of her life tries to make sense of the world and her place in it as wife, mother and lover. Ordinary human beings are shadowed by fate and circumstance
– yet they somehow do their best to give some kind of love, achieve some kind of life in the spirit, and act with nobility in the midst of a country’s meltdown.
BIO: Len is one of America’s most distinguished playwrights having received three OBIE awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Award, an Emmy nomination, and four National Endowment Fellowships. Plays include Port Twilight: A History of Science,Margo Veil, Dark Ride, Pilgrims of the Night, Careless Love, My Uncle Sam, Limbo Tales, and Like I Say. Adaptations include Voltaire’s, Candide (Guthrie Theater), Aristophanes’, The Birds (Yale Rep), and Kafka’s, A Country Doctor (CSC, NY). His plays have been seen in the US, England, France, Denmark, Germany and Japan.
Urge For Going by Mona Mansour Seventeen-year-old Jamila studies for the exam that could get her into college, away from Lebanon, and out of the Palestinian refugee camp that is home. Her father, Adham, has nurtured his daughter's dreams. After all, he made it to London in 1967 to lecture on Wordsworth. Does he now have the courage to support his daughter’s fight for a future he has abandoned? An intimate family portrait fused with fierce global politics.
BIO: Mona's, The Hour of Feeling, was in the Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group Spotlight Series, and its sequel, Urge for Going, in the Public’s New Work Now Series. A Core Writer at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, she trained as an actor at UCSD and SMU. She began writing with L.A.’s The Groundlings. Girl Scouts of America (written with Andrea Berloff) was read at NYTW and produced in NYC Fringe. Television writing includes Dead Like Me (Showtime) and Queens Supreme (CBS). Mona curated 'Nuff Said (with Lisa Kron) – a play for gay, lesbian, and transgender youth at Dance Theater Workshop in NYC. Uncle Ho to Uncle Sam by Trieu Tran A Vietnamese boy's journey with his mother from the fall of Saigon, to a Viet Cong re-education camp in the jungle, to a refugee camp in Thailand, and finally to America. But the New World offers its own challenges as the boy faces a turbulent passage to manhood shaped by his estranged father, and his own estrangement in the land of snow, hip-hop, urban gangs and clashing cultures. This riveting immigrant drama of becoming American while haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam is a one-man show by one of OPC's most compelling new playwrights.
BIO: Trieu appeared as an actor for OPC in T.D. Mitchell's, Beyond The 17th Parallel. He has appeared in numerous theatrical productions through the years. Favorite roles include Alan Strang in Equus and Richard the Third. He won the Dean Goodman Award for his acting in The Legacy Code. TV: Malcolm in the Middle, I'm in the Band, and Men, Women, and Dogs. Films: Tropic Thunder, Hancock, Barry Munday, Last Call, How High, The Chaos Factor. Barcelona by Bess Wohl Late night in Barcelona. A drunken, carefree, careless American woman leaves her own bachelorette party with a tall, dark stranger – an older Spanish man. She goes with him to his daughter’s apartment. An intense, abandoned one-night stand? Perhaps. But each has hidden reasons for being here. He must teach an American a lesson in consequences. She must learn to tell the truth. And both must let go of someone they love. A surprising and sexy pas de deux – as the personal and political passionately intertwine.
BIO: Bess has been at OPC as an actress working with Bill Cain, Lee Blessing and Stephen Belber. Her plays have been developed or produced at the NYC Fringe Festival (Best Overall Production), Vineyard Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Northlight Theatre, TheaterWorks Festival, Geffen Playhouse, and Pioneer Theatre. Upcoming productions include the world premiere of her play In at the Pioneer Theatre. Recent commissions include the book for a new musical about the adult entertainment industry by CTG in Los Angeles, and The Civilians. Bess is a MacDowell fellow.
WRITERS-IN-RESIDENCE 2010
JON ROBIN BAITZ Jon Robin Baitz is one of the most celebrated playwrights in contemporary American theater. His first play, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, originated at L.A. Theatre Works and was ultimately produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club. His second play, Film Society, premiered in Los Angeles and went on to London and New York. In 1990 he wrote and directed his first television script, Three Hotels, for American Playhouse (Humanitas Prize). He later reworked it for stage and it was produced throughout the world. Baitz has created many critically acclaimed plays focusing on family dynamics including, The Substance of Fire, adapted into a 1996 film, and A Fair Country that made him a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Television credits include The West Wing and Alias. He created the current TV series, Brothers & Sisters. At OPC he developed both Chinese Friends and The Paris Letter. Both went on to major productions in New York. He is on the faculty of the Graduate Division of the New School in NY. Mr. Baitz will be working on his newest play, Other Desert Cities, which will have a special presentation in the 2010 Ojai Playwrights Conference.
BEN ROSENTHAL Ben Rosenthal is one of the most promising young theatrical voices in the country. He has developed two plays at the Ojai Playwrights Conference: The Monkey Puzzle Tree, directed by Hal Brooks, and The Bog Lacuna, directed by Michael Garces. Ben’s play Safe debuted in the 2010 Marathon of One-Act Plays at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre, of which Ben is a lifetime member. It was also produced on EST’s Main Stage. He is the recipient of a New Voices Fellowship in playwriting, was nominated for a PONY fellowship in 2008, and his play Welcome Back, Buddy Combs was published by Dramatists Play Service. Rosenthal did his undergraduate work at SUNY Purchase, and received an MFA in Dramatic Writing at the New School for Social Research in 2000. At the 2010 Ojai Playwrights Conference Ben will be working on his new play, Neptune Kelly.
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