2011 | New Works Festival

¡CENOTE!

By Isabella Russell-Ides, directed by Lorca Peress; with Jen Anaya, Joshua Torrez, Gabriel Gutierrez, Fidel Vicioso, Miguel Sierra, Laura Lebron-Rojas, Robmariel Olea, Denia Brache, Lillian Rodriguez

This love story slips between the portals of the past and the present, and takes us on a timeless and exciting journey.

ISABELLA RUSSELL-IDES, winner of Echo Theatre’s Big Shout Out 2010 (The Early Education of Conrad Eppler), Nora’s Playhouse, NYC Outstanding New Play 2009 (Leonard’s Car), DFW Critics Forum Best New Play 2008 (Coco & Gigi). Lawson Taitte: “A tour de force…ingenius, proof that once is not enough.” Mark Lowry: “More significant than any new work by a local playwright…in my nine years of attending festivals.” Alexandra Bonafield: “Brilliant…the charmed audience holds its collective breath.” In 2009 the playwright’s inter-racial romance The Big Bend opened simultaneously in NYC (Estrogenius) and L.A. (TowneStreet). In 2010, The International Center For Women Playwrights selected Seventeen Tiaras and Pagan Babe for “Babes And Beginnings (Mother/Daughter monologues)” Volume I. Also a published poet and essayist, this post-historical Queen of Spain is still looking for the new world and she sees signs everywhere.

REMEMBRANCE

By Jeffrey Harper, directed by Robert Kalfin; with Sam Guncler, Jason Collins, Ylfa Edelstein, Michael Lawrence Eisenstein, Michael-Kennan Miller, Natalie Mosco, Larry Pine, Joseph Urla

An imaginative and expressionistic meditation on memory, where three friends encounter the savant Solomon Sherashevsky as they desperately attempt to survive Stalin’s Terror and make life and death choices about who and what they will choose to remember.

JEFFREY HARPER: In the Valley of the Shadow, a true-crime drama with gospel music (winner Playwrights First Award, readings in NYC and Los Angeles w/Tim Daly and Andrew McCarthy); My Mariners, co-written with Damon Dimarco (2004 Sundog Theatre); If You Could See: The Alice Austen Story, book and lyrics by Harper, Louis Tucci composer (NYC 2011); Eden, about Rwandan genocide (readings at Jermyn Street Theatre in London, NYC w/ Tony nominee Jayne Atkinson and David Margulies); Borderlines, a political thriller (readings in NYC and Los Angeles w/Bruce Davison and Richard Portnow; optioned by Zuckerman Entertainment Film). Harper is a past playwright-in-residence at New River Dramatists in Healing Springs, NC, was awarded a Canada Council playwriting grant for A Cross for Vimy Ridge, a drama about WWI veterans; and is a graduate of Harvard University where he was awarded the Eliot Director’s Bowl. heatre Representation: Marta Praeger at Robert Freedman Dramatic Agency; Film/TV: Jeffrey Thal of Ensemble Entertainment.

LITTLE VOICES

By Chris Longo, directed by Tea Alagic; with Richarda Abrams, Alec Beard, Michele LaRue, Christiana Nelson, Anna O’Donoghue, Keoni Scott

An Evening of Dreams and Poetry with the Absolutely Fabulous Katherine Mansfield in a fusion play that charts the brief life of the early 20th Century feminist short story writer.

Chris Longo born and raised in the US, has lived in Italy, Latin America, and was been a permanent resident of Argentina for twenty years, where he teaches, writes, and works in theatre and film. His plays have been produced in NYC, Hawaii, Los Angeles and Argentina: The Assassin’s Notebook; Abracadabra; The Yankee Doodles Blues; The Street of Dark Shops; Machu Picchu; A Tango for Two Women; Piccola Memoria; Saturday Night at the Thundering Hooves Motel; Take Off Those Wings, Faye Seraphim; I Hear Ya Knockin’ But Ya Can´t Come In; White Tennis Shoes. Memberships: Theatre West, The Group Theatre, First Stage, Actors Studio West, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Writers Guild Of America, West And Actors Equity. AWARDS, HONORS: Nantucket Short Play Contest Winner (2nd) 2005, 2009; MultiStages New Works Playwriting Contest (Finalist); The National Repertory Foundation Award; Office Of Advanced Drama Research Selection (Three Times); The Peter Pauper Press Prize; The John Golden Award For Creative Writing. Films: Adventure in the Andes (Translation and adaptation of screenplay originally entitled Magic Week, KCET Public Television; Aztecs in a Field of Flowers (developed for public television, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.); Footprints of the Pheasant in the Snow (American-Chinese co-production filmed in Mainland China, Tower Film Corporation, a division of Cyrus Eaton Enterprise); Bugatti (writer/developer project on the life of Ettore Bugatti, John Travolta Productions, division of Orion Pictures).