PDC and Plays & Payers Announce New Playwrights in Residence

By: Oct. 05, 2010
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The PDC Playwright Residency at Plays & Players aims to provide artistic development for Philadelphia's next generation of professional playwrights. This year's pilot season of the residency will support three local writers who represent the highest potential for further growth and exploration: Joy Cutler, Quinn Eli and Greg Romero.
 
The founders and producers of the PDC Residency at Plays & Players are Daniel Student, Plays & Players Executive Committee member and local freelance director, and Wally Zialcita, PDC Executive Director and local playwright. To select the playwrights, Student and Zialcita, along with Rebecca Wright (local freelance director and InterAct Theatre Company Literary Director and Dramaturg), served on a panel that reviewed 27 writing samples and statements of purpose.
 
The Residency will launch on October 17 at 12pm with a Kick-Off Celebration attended by artistic leaders of the Greater Philadelphia Area. Beginning in November, residents will meet monthly with a variety of guest speakers including artistic directors, professional directors and other collaborating artists, as well as speakers from areas of expertise other than theatre. A panel presentation will take place halfway through the residency for the playwrights to discuss and answer questions about the experience for an audience of PDC and Plays & Players members. A showcase performance of work-in-development is scheduled for July of 2011, at which the residents will present work generated by the residency. Residents will also be given opportunities to write for current Plays & Players programming. On Nov. 5, 2011, Plays and Players will open its 100th Anniversary season. The writing resulting from the residency will be strongly considered for the first production of this season.
 
Joy Cutler lives in the Fairmount area of Philadelphia and has worked as a playwright and performer with the San Francisco performance ensemble Elbows Akimbo and with Berlin theater companies Berlin Playactors and Out To Lunch Theater Group. She has written and performed solo work in Berlin, Amsterdam and NYC and co-created with Priscilla Be the Berlin performance duo, The Flying Buttresses. Her radio plays; Shag, If You See Legs, Don't Bowl and Reaching Beatrice were broadcast on the New York City radio station WBAI between 1998-2000. She co-wrote the film script, Blank Jack, with film director Martin Walz and they will be collaborating on a new script in 2011. Joy moved to Philadelphia in 2007 where her short plays The Frogg Prince and The Craving were performed in the 2009 and 2010 Philadelphia Bake-Off and New Play Festival (Now PIFA New Play Festival). The Frogg Prince went on to be produced at the International School in Jakarta, Indonesia. Joy's script Nightshift(ing) will be performed at West Chester University in a one-act play festival in early 2011. Her play Reaching Beatrice can be seen during the 2011 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Joy has a BFA from The California College of Art and an MA in Experimental and Interdisciplinary Art from San Francisco State University.
 
Quinn Eli lives in Haverford, PA. His short play "Small Portions" appears in 2010's Best American Ten-Minute Plays published by Smith & Krause. Another short play, "Running Amuck," was produced this past summer by Secret Room Theatre and debuted at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Longer works include The Sex Tape Play, developed last year by Philadelphia Theatre Workshop; The Golden Ladder, which received staged readings at Walking Fish Theatre and elsewhere and was developed as part of the PDC Lab Series; Tea for the Fever, a finalist for the Lark Play Development Center's 2006 Playwrights' Week; My Name is Bess produced by Trustus Theatre; and Hot Black/Asian Action, a satire about sexual and racial stereotypes that premiered at the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival. The two-time recipient of Fellowships in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Eli has published fiction and essays in Essence, New York Newsday, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications. His most recent book, Homecoming: The Story of African-American Farmers, is a companion volume to the PBS film.
 
Greg Romero lives in West Philadelphia and is a playwright/theater artist originally from Louisiana whose plays include The Most Beautiful Lullaby You've Ever Heard, The Milky Way Cabaret, The Shelter, The Mishumaa, Dandelion Momma, American Potlatch Road-trip and Tugboat Headache, and have been produced in New York, Philadelphia, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Louisville, Phoenix, New Orleans and other cities around the country. Romero enjoys an ongoing collaboration with electronic music composer Mike Vernusky on "electro-theater" performance works that have been produced live in New York, Philadelphia, Austin and Phoenix, while also receiving airplay in Toronto, Canada as part of New Adventures In Sound Art's Deep Wireless Festival and Zürich, Switzerland as part of Digital Art Weeks. Romero has been a finalist for the Heideman Award, a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award, nominated for the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Theater Artist and was selected as the first-ever Resident Writer of the Arts Edge Residency, created by The Kelly Writers House and The University of Pennsylvania. His works are published by Heinemann Press and Playscripts, Inc. Romero received a BA in Liberal Arts from the Louisiana Scholars College and an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Texas-Austin where he held the James A. Michener Fellowship. Romero is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater at Drexel University.
 
PDC is a growing membership community of playwrights, collaborating artists and audience members dedicated to creating and nurturing new work. PDC develops resources, stimulates creative partnerships and participates in the ongoing national dialogue about how and why theater is created. Membership in PDC grants access to a variety of development programs for both works and artists; members also enjoy the opportunity to post a personal profile and writing samples on the PDC website, and they are offered access to professional networking opportunities with both fellow members and their peers in the extended Philadelphia theatre community through events, through PDC mailing lists and through other Web-based resources. To sign up for membership or for more information visit www.pdc1.org.
 
Plays & Players provides diverse work that ranges from high-voltage, edgy premieres and new takes on classics, selections from the canon of world-renowned plays and musicals, and intimately set dramas and comedies in our Third Floor Skinner Studio. Plays & Players is at once 99 years old and 1 year old, following a new mission to support local artists with professional quality theater, including regularly paying its performers and opening up its doors to a cadre of local artists performing and rehearsing in its historic Plays & Players Theatre. Its season includes four full length productions, a new play festival, a playwright residency program, and performance series such as Super Heroes Who Are Super! and Hear Again Radio Project. A 100th Anniversary celebration is in the works for November, 2011. Plays & Players offers year-round memberships that include both social and entertainment possibilities. To learn more about memberships go to www.playsandplayers.org.

 



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