|
spring 2009 Reading Series Thursday, april 30 Two plays by two playwrights: Lo Mein & Tequila A hot summer evening in NY: Eduardo, a recently divorced Mexican worker and activist, reluctantly rents a room of his Brooklyn flat to Beatriz, a Spanish linguist and professor, thanks to the intercession of a common friend from Eduardo’s village in Mexico, where Beatriz had lived for some time. These two characters have another very important thing in common: They both know deeply and have been touched by Griselda, Eduardo’s ex-girlfriend and Beatriz’s best friend in Mexico….but today’s dinner is going to be affected by some devastating news...The play is in fact dedicated to Mexican activist for the human rights of the Totonacan nation, Griselda Tirado. Angelina Llongueras is a Mediterranean (Catalan) actress, playwright, director, theatre arts professor and researcher relocated to San Francisco. She has done a bit of everything in her life: toured two years in Europe and Asia as the main actress of Metamorfosis by La Fura dels Baus; played twice under the direction of Pedro Almodovar; written 4 plays (and a half); directed a reading of Richard II by Shakespeare within a Shakespeare Super-Intensive in Berkeley, presented her one woman show Phoolan is all of us in English-Spanish-Catalan in Guayaquil, Barcelona, Madrid, New York, Miami, Las Palmas, Chicago, San Francisco and Berkeley; performed a monologue based on texts by Subcomandante Marcos in Dutch! in Amsterdam; created a show out of some erotic poems by Nicaraguan Gioconda Belli and performed it all over Mexico…what next? together with: Love in the Time of Zombies Four survivors escape a zombie plague and barricade themselves into a small, isolated cabin. Two of the survivors -- Rex and Shelly -- immediately engage in a non-stop bout of sexual frenzy, but the more neurotically inclined Joe is afraid of moving things too quickly with fellow survivor Mac. Afraid of playing out a promiscuous gay stereotype, Joe frets over Mac’s long-term potential. As Joe tries to decide whether pairing up with the last gay man on Earth is "just settling," the cabinmates struggle to suppress the bloodthirsty zombie attacks, eventually stumbling upon the dark significance of their remote hiding place. Kirk Shimano was named after Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise – his fate as a nerd has been sealed ever since. Shimano’s Tripped was produced as a Ram’s Head Original Winter One Act and was later featured in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. His Billy’s Got Issues was published in Masque, a journal of queer art and literary expression. Shimano currently works as a Technical Director at Industrial Light & Magic. Tuesday, May 26 The Gilley Room The streets of Oakland, California, are red hot during the summer of 1986 and bus drivers are in the thick of it. Integrating memory and speculation, The Gilley Room is a drama about a group of bus drivers during the drug wars of the 1980s. The drivers’ tight-knit relationships are disintegrating amidst ambition, greed, spirituality, love and intergenerational discord. As a new playwright, Richard Cartwright is simply trying to make sense of the complexities and frailties of human life through words, characters, intentions and consequences. To understand the world as it is and what it could be drives him to write. In addition to his first play, The Gilley Room, he is also writing another a full-length play, Gathering JuJu and two one-act plays, Drapetomania and Trichotomies for 2009. In his past life, he has contributed articles to The Crisis Magazine, magazine of the NAACP, San Francisco Downtown and SFist.com. He was Associate Producer for Living Room, a national public affairs program on Pacifica Radio, 1440 (an arts and culture program) and creator of a bi-weekly education program for Pacifica Radio, Education Today. Thursday, May 28 Renaissance Two of the greatest political minds battle to outwit each other to forge the future of their nation. Richard Ciccarone graduated from Boston University’s Theatre Arts Program and has since written reality television programs, advertising copy, magazine articles and a children’s video series. He has won The One Show Award and the Communication Arts Award both for outstanding copy. His first theatrical production, The American Gallery premiered in San Francisco and was then remounted at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Since then Richard has created a bi-coastal sketch comedy group, Funny But Mean, which performs both in New York City and San Francisco. He also wrote, directed, and produced The Lady Macbeth of Martinez which premiered in San Francisco this year and his short Taking Stock will appear in The American Globe Festival in New York in May. Thursday, June 11 The Letter From Mt. Idy Mt. Idy is the story of a gay Amish-Mormon couple’s life and predicaments as they marry and raise a family in rural America. What happens when an irresistable libido meets and old, immovable credo? Bob Hayden’s plays have been produced locally, nationally and in Australia. Black Box Plays, a collection of his short plays, is due out in August, and other plays appear in the anthology Levity and Longevity. Full length plays Beloved Catamite; Killing Christopher Rhone; Nun, Set and Match; and Blood, Bath and Beyond are due out next year. Tuesday, June 16 Driven It’s nearly Christmas Eve, and Harriet, the Wilder family matriarch, seems to have acquired an imaginary friend. Her daughters Joy and Jessie are flummoxed. Is “Annabelle” a symptom of mental illness --- or a real person with sinister motives? Everyone has something to hide in Driven: a holiday comedy about family resentments, the pursuit of celebrity, and slammin’ gingerbread cookies. Patricia Milton is a playwright, and frequent collaborator with Andrew Black. Their plays include Porn Yesterday; Strange Bedfellows (winner of the 2005 Absolute Time Play Festival); and It's Murder, Mary, commissioned by the New Conservatory Theatre Center of San Francisco, and which premiered in 2008. Her solo-written works include The Only Virgin in Jubilee County, which won the 2007 Hill Country Playwriting Festival, was produced by Hill Country Community Theatre, and was published by Eldridge Publishing under the title, A Hitch in Her Plans. Solving Sunflowers was third place winner in the 2009 Eudora Welty Playwright Competition. Her short plays have appeared in Bay Area One Acts, San Francisco Fringe Festival, Sheherezade, and at theatres nationwide. She is a member of Dramatists Guild, Theatre Bay Area, Play Cafe and the Central Works Writing Group, and is President of Playwrights Center of San Francisco.
|