The Festival takes place on the 4th floor of the Centene Center for Arts and Education: 3547 Olive Street, just east of Grand near the Kranzberg Arts Center in Grand Center.
2011 Festival Schedule:
Friday, November 18th @ 7pm
Release Point
Saturday, November 19th @ 7pm
Goodbye Ruby Tuesday
Sunday, November 20th @ 4pm
Shake and Be Saved
Mentions/Awards/Kudos for the GreenHouse:
Kevin Kline Award Accolades for HotCity New Plays:
2006 “Famous Monsters” (Nominee - Best New Play)
2007 “The Probe” (Nominee - Best New Play, Winner - Best Ensemble)
2008 “Demons... and Other Blunt Objects” (Winner - Best New Play)
2009 “Men With Clubs” (Nominee - Best New Play)
2010 “Cockeyed” (Nominee - Best New Play)
2011 "The Sinker" (Nominee - Best New Play)
The New Play Festival is...
... a national festival taking place in November and composed of two parts: A week-long workshop and a staged public reading of three selected plays.
Three plays "in progress" are chosen from over 300 submitted by playwrights all over the world. Each script is given a workshop that includes professional directors on staff at HotCity, a professional dramaturg (a literary drama scholar) and professional local actors. This workshop provides a springboard for re-writes, culminating in readings at the festival by professional actors and adjudicated by HotCity artistic staff. At the festival event, scripts are performed as staged readings, followed by talkback sessions where you, the patrons, are given the opportunity to offer your thoughts and ask questions of the playwrights.
How do I, and why should I attend?
It's free. Just show up, no reservations needed.
There is one new script reading every night by local professional actors. These are often read by the same actors who work with the MUNY, Repertory Theatre, Stages St. Louis, and with us!
After each reading, be a part of the important and often riveting post-show discussion with the playwright and dramaturg. These are usually 20 minutes long and offer the playwright important feedback on audience perception and opinions. This is your chance to let us know what you think and make a difference about what you might see in the future as one of the finalists will be chosen to premiere on the Kranzberg Mainstage in the following year. Be the first to see it in its first incarnation!
Lastly, join us in a post-discussion reception with the playwrights, actors, and staff on the roof of the Centene Center. It's tasty, beautiful, and again, free!
The featured playwrights and their scripts:
Release Point by Gino Dilorio
Directed by John Pierson
Actors: Chopper Leifheit, Maggie Conroy, Caroline Adams
Mike is a convicted pedophile who has just been released from a fifteen-year prison sentence. He lives in the garage on the outskirts of town, piecing together a living doing odd jobs. His son and ex-wife refuse to see him or hear from him, but Kerry, his 22 year old daughter, has some sympathy for him and has tried to re-establish contact. Release Point is the story of a father and daughter and the uneasy truce that they develop that allows them to survive, day by day.
Gino’s new play “The Jag” was the winner of the 2010 Firehouse Theatre’s Great American New Play Award and also a finalist in the 2011 Laurents Hatcher Award Competition. “Reparation” was a Yale Drama Series Finalist in 2010 and will be produced by Luna Stage in February of 2012. “Dead Ringer” received its world premiere at the New Jersey Rep in 2009 and its 2nd production at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. The play won 1st place in the BBC’s 2005 International Playwriting Competition and was performed on BBC Radio. “Darwin at Down” won 2nd place in the 2007 Julie Harris Playwriting Competition. “Centennial Casting”, co-written with Nancy Bleemer, has had productions at Penguin Repertory Theatre, the Virginia Stage Company and the Arclight Theatre in NYC. “Apostasy” was given its world premiere at the New Jersey Rep in July of 2006. The play received its New York premiere at the Urban Stages Theatre in April of 2007. Gino was the winner of the 2007 Urban Stages Emerging Playwrights Award. He also has won a Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award (2003) and a Higgins School Grant (2001). Gino is Professor of Theatre at Clark University in Worcester, MA.
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday by EM Lewis
Directed by Annamaria Pileggi
Actors: Julie Layton, Lavonne Byers, John Contini, Antonio Rodrigues, Michael Kastelein, Travis Estes
In one hour, Lynn is going to climb onto a Greyhound bus, leaving her home, her husband, her job and her family behind to work on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska; her family has decided that they’ll do anything to make her stay. "Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday" is a comedy about trying to explain why you have to go find yourself to people who don't want anything to change.
EM Lewis won the 2009 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award from the American Theater Critics Association for "Song of Extinction," which premiered in Los Angeles. The play was a finalist for HotCity's Greenhouse Festival in 2008, won University of Oregon’s EcoDrama Festival, the Ashland New Plays Festival, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Production of the Year from the LA Weekly Awards. It was published in Dramatics magazine and by Samuel French, leading to productions in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, at Ion Theater in San Diego, and at the Guthrie. Lewis also wrote the Primus Prize-winning Iraq War hostage drama "Heads," and "Infinite Black Suitcase," (now available from Samuel French). Lewis is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the recipient of a 2010-2011 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and just returned from workshopping her new play "Magellanica: A New and Accurate Map of the World" at the William Inge Center for the Arts. www.emlewisplaywright.com
Shake and Be Saved! by Christopher Wall
Directed by Shaun Sheley
Actors: Adam Flores, Lexi Tomkins, Steve Isom, and two others TBD
Scared of dirty bombs? Weaponized anthrax? Benson sure is, and he’s dedicated his company to eradicating these terrors from America. After five years of research he’s finally done it. By mixing his medication with table salt, all people have to do is shake some on their food and voila! Instant protection from the greatest threats we face. Salting fries has become an patriotic act. An hour before the product launch, Benson discovers that his new Patriotic Salt has an unfortunate side effect, and he has less than an hour to figure out what’s wrong before the product is released. Shake and Be Saved! is a comedy about Homeland Security, nymphomania, and God.
Christopher’s newest play, “Dreams Of the Washer King,” premiered Off Broadway at the Playwrights Realm at the Cherry Lane Theater and was declared a Critic’s Pick by Backstage. The play was a semi-finalist at the 2009 HotCity Greenhouse New Play Festival. His play “Couldn’t Say” won the Literary Prize at the 2001 Washington Theatre Festival and was subsequently produced by Charter Theatre in DC. It premiered in New York to wide acclaim in 2008 at the Midtown International Theatre Festival. From a field of over 300 plays produced at festivals that summer in New York, Talkin’ Broadway recognized “Couldn’t Say” as an Outstanding New Play — a designation shared with only three other shows. His other productions include “Some Other Place”, Black Dog Theatre (2000), produced with a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts; “No One Talks To The Mailman,” developed in part at Abingdon Theatre and Round House Theatre in Maryland, winner of the HD Lewis Award for playwriting at the Washington Theatre Festival (1999); “Elmo On The Half Shell,” Washington Theatre Festival (1998); “Forks and Knives,” nominated for Best Play at the Washington Theatre Festival (1997); and “Head Games,” Shadowbox Cabaret (2002) and Source Theatre 10-Minute Play Competition (1997). He has a BA in English from Dartmouth, an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University, and an MFA in dramatic writing from New York University, where he teaches as a lecturer. More information about his writing is available at www.christopherwall.org.
Critics' Reviews
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