New Year, New Plays…
Hot off the Printer…Fresh Baked Scripts!
The 2016 PTC@Play Festival of New Work is coming! Join us at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre in celebrating the American playwright in Philadelphia!
Thursday, March 3rd – Sunday, March 6th
The festival will present a series of staged readings showcasing brand new plays by national and local talent including new work by Mark St. Germain (Freud’s Last Session, Becoming Dr. Ruth) and more!
Oh, and it’s all FREE!!! – RSVP to the PTC Box Office: 215-985-0420.
[hr]THURSDAY, MARCH 3rd @ 6:30pm
The 24-Hour Dash: An Evening of Breakneck Shorts
A Collaboration with Directors Gathering and The Foundry Playwrights
Four directors, four playwrights, and eight actors in a race against time! Each playwright will be given 24 hours to write a short play. Actors and directors will get one rehearsal for that newborn play. The result? The audience will get a most surprising, entertaining night at the theatre with four plays so brand spanking new the ink is still wet, hot and other suggestive comparisons.
The Foundry
The Foundry offers local emerging writers the opportunity to develop their craft while also giving them insight into the business of theatre and providing networking opportunities.
Directors Gathering (DG) is a service organization advancing the craft of theatre directing through community, advocacy, and education.For more information on (DG)’s programming and events: www.directorsgathering.org.
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FRIDAY, MARCH 4th @ 6:30pm
Rinne Groff’s Fire In Dreamland
“Hij heeft te veel noten op zijn zang.” (He has too many notes in his song.) ~ Dutch saying
In this powerful coming-of-age story from Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting Writers Award winner, Rinne Groff, Kate is seduced by the vision of an upstart Dutch filmmaker who has thrown himself into an epic film about the tragic 1911 fire on Coney Island. As past and present converge in this haunted, battered landscape, Kate must find a way to rebuild her own life amidst the ruins.
Rinne Groff
Rinne Groff is a playwright and performer. Her plays and musicals, including 77%, Compulsion, Saved, What Then, Jimmy Carter was a Democrat, Orange Lemon Egg Canary, Inky, The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem, and The Ruby Sunrise, have been produced by the Public theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, Trinity Repertory Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, P. S. 122, Target Margin theatre, Clubbed Thumb, and Andy’s Summer Playhouse, among others. Ms. Groff is a founding member of Elevator Repair Service theatre Company and a member of New Dramatists and the Dramatists Guild. TV: staff writer on Weeds, season two. A recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Obie Award grant, Ms. Groff was trained at Yale University and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she currently teaches.
[hr]SATURDAY, MARCH 5th @ 7:30pm
Mark St. Germain’s Relativity
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” ~ Albert Einstein
From the playwright who brought us Freud’s Last Session and Becoming Dr. Ruth comes a play that pulls genius down to earth in Princeton, NJ. In 1902 Albert and Mileva Einstein had a baby daughter. After 1904 she was never seen or spoken of again. Drama – and a talking parrot – ensue.
Mark St. Germain
Mark has written the plays Freud’s Last Session (Off-Broadway Alliance Best Play), Becoming Dr. Ruth, Camping with Henry and Tom (Outer Critics Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award), Out of Gas on Lover’s Leap, Best of Enemies and Forgiving Typhoid Mary (Time Magazine’s “Year’s Ten Best”) , Ears on a Beatle, The God Committee and Out of Gas on Lover’s Leap. His play Dancing Lessons premiered in August, 2014 at the Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires and his latest play, Relativity, was presented this spring at the Florida Studio theatre.
Mark co-wrote the screenplay for Carroll Ballard’s Warner Brothers film, Duma. He directed and co-produced the documentary, My Dog, An Unconditional Love Story. My Dog features Richard Gere, Lynn Redgrave and Glenn Close among many others Television credits include Writer and Creative Consultant for The Cosby Show, and Dick Wolf’s Lifestories and Crime and Punishment.
With Randy Courts, he has written the internationally produced musical The Gifts of the Magi, Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller, winner of an AT&T “New Plays for the Nineties Award” and Jack’s Holiday at Playwrights Horizons. His musical, Stand By Your Man, The Tammy Wynette Story was created for Nashville’s Ryman theatre and has toured nationally. He co-wrote the libretto for Charles Strouse’s American Tragedy.
Mark wrote the children’s book Three Cups, illustrated by April Willy, and published by Thomas Crown. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists, where he was given the Joe A. Callaway Award, a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writer’s Guild East and an Associate Artist of the Barrington Stage Company. He was awarded the “New Voices in American Theatre” award at the William Inge Theatre Festival.
[hr]SUNDAY, MARCH 6th @ 7:30pm
Sam Henderson’s The Brownings
“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.” ~ Robert Browning
Direct from the hilariously twisted mind of Philadelphia’s own, Sam Henderson, comes an unusual marriage play about one of the most familiar couples in literature. Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning write, love, hate, fight, slam dope, and have weird sex in an immoderate re-telling of the great love of the 19th century. The Brownings is an unconventional, rudely comic exploration of the purpose of art and the nature of love.
Sam Henderson
Sam Henderson is a Philadelphia actor and 2nd year Foundry member. Productions: His work has appeared at the Plays & Players 2013 24-Hour Play Festival and the 2014 Solow Festival. Readings include the 2013 215 Festival, Writer’s Night In America, and the 2014 Philadelphia New Play Initiative Local Writer’s Weekend. He is a first-year member of Interact Theatre’s Core Writer’s Program 2014-2016.