What It Is
Dragon Productions' Artist in Residence, Jeffrey Lo, will produce three staged readings of plays written by Bay Area playwrights in 2012. The New Play Development Factory seeks to provide an opportunity for local playwrights to hear their new work out loud and to give them time to continue to develop their piece throughout the festival.
Three full-length new works will have staged readings at the three-week festival, which runs from April 17 to May 6th, 2012. The selected plays will have one staged reading each week of the festival with time for the playwrights to fine tune their piece in between each reading. Each play will get their own director and cast of local talent from throughout the Bay Area. The new works will be directed by up and coming local directors Jeffrey Lo, Cara Phipps, and Heather Noelle Robinson. The playwrights will be on hand at each performance to take audience feedback and discuss their writing process.
Final Selections Chosen
The New Play Development Factory has chosen the three plays that will be a part of their inaugural festival. Hosted by Palo Alto’s Dragon Productions Theatre, the New Play Development Factory will workshop three original plays by three Bay Area playwrights over a three-week period. Each play is developed with a director and actors who will rehearse and perform a staged reading of the piece at the end of each week of the festival. After each performance, the playwrights will take what they heard during the reading, as well as audience feedback, and will further refine the piece for the following weekend’s reading.
“We’ve tried to set up the New Play Development Factory in a way that puts the focus on the playwrights and what they need to take their work to the next level,” said NPDF producer Jeffrey Lo. “The festival really embodies the Bay Area’s commitment to supporting work from our local artists. Our plan is to make this an annual festival that Bay Area playwrights can rely on as a vehicle for their work.”
The New Play Development Factory’s staged readings will be performed at the Dragon Theatre in downtown Palo Alto on the following days (Play schedule TBA):
April 20 – 8 PM April 27 – 8 PM May 4 – 8 PM
April 21 – 8 PM April 28 – 8 PM May 5 – 8 PM
April 22 – 2 PM April 29 – 2 PM May 6 – 2 PM
Bennett Fisher's Don't Be Evil directed by Heather Noelle Robinson
In a dark comedy about information technology and advanced interrogation techniques, a computer programmer is arrested after the search engine he designs gives a disquieting answer to an ethical question.
Evelyn Jean Pine's Astonishment Directed by Cara Phipps
In 1895 Paris, the patrons of the Grand Café are shocked by the demonstration of the first motion picture: a train arriving at a station. Maxim, a millionaire, decides to give all his money away. Paul, an anti-materialist poet, decides to masquerade as a wealthy investor. Jeanne, a pregnant housemaid, decides to get rid of her baby and become a telephone operator. And Marcelle, Maxim’s paramour, decides to conjure up a baby out a montage of stories, photographs, postcards and bills.
Tom Bruett's Intelligent Men Ask for Directions Directed by Jeffrey Lo
A raucous comedy about deviance, in Intelligent Men Ask For Directions, Patrick and his pregnant wife Lacy are kidnapped on their way home from the hospital. Patrick, a sensitive, intelligent man must assert himself and evaluate his moral standing in order to save his baby, his wife and his liver.
Honorable Mention:
Like Poetry by Kristian O’Hare
Bones by Ross Peter Nelson
Tickets are $10 per show or $27 for a three-pack and will be available online shortly.
For more information about the festival, or to set up an interview with the playwrights or directors, please contact Jeffrey Lo at JeffreyJFLO@gmail.com
Playwright Bios
TOM BRUETT (Intelligent Men Ask for Directions) - As a playwright and lyricist, Tom's work has been produced at the Player's Theatre, NJ Rep, ReGroup Theatre, the Megatroyd Festival, PianoFight, and The Playwright's Center of San Francisco, among others. His short play, Fear Sells, was a finalist for the 2011 Heideman Award. As a lyricist, Tom was selected to be part of the prestigious Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project in 2011. Tom is currently the FutureWorks Fellow at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, check out www.TomBruett.com.
EVELYN JEAN PINE (Astonishment) writes plays about moments when people feel their lives are brand new.
A recipient of the June Anne Baker Award, she is a five-time PlayGround Emerging Playwright Award Winner.
Evelyn has received three full-length play commissions from PlayGround. In addition to Astonishment, her PlayGround commissions are The Secrets of the World, about the Indians Columbus brought back to Spain for Queen Isabella, and Altair, about the fight between computer hobbyists and Bill Gates at the beginning of the personal computer revolution. (First staged reading of Altair is Monday, May 7 at the Thick House in San Francisco.)
She has written two full-length plays for the SF Olympians Festival: Hephaestus and the Three Golden Robots and Walking the Starry Path, a California country and western musical, retelling the myth of Uranus with music by Tom Darter. Her one-act about the forgotten Titans twins, Coeus and Crios, will be staged by the SF Olympians in December.
Her short play, Sweet Dreams, launched the Manhattan Shakespeare Project’s Emerging Voices Festival in October 2010. Her award-winning short plays have been staged around the country. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State where she teaches performance studies. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
BENNETT FISHER'S (Don't Be Evil) one acts Exchange, Query, Pure Baltic Avenue, and The Bird Trap appeared in the last three BOA Festivals. His plays have been performed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as New York, New London, Boston, and Chicago. No Nude Men’s production of his full-length play Hermes where it was hailed as one of the top eleven cultural highlights of 2011 by The Huffington Post. The play in a collection of other plays from the San Francisco Olympian Festival published by Exit Press and has been translated into Greek by Dimitris Kontos of the National Theater of Northern Greece, where it was recently workshopped. As a playwright, actor, director, and dramaturg, Bennett has collaborated with the Cutting Ball Theater (where he is the Literary Manager), Threshold Theater (Associate Artist), AtmosTheater (Associate Artist), Campo Santo and Intersection for the Arts, Marin Shakespeare Company, Adirondack Shakespeare Company, Stanford Summer Theater, Playwrights Foundation, and many others. He is a founding director of the San Francisco Theater Pub and the Flying Island Lab, in residence at the Palo Alto Art Center. He teaches English creative writing at the Crystal Springs Uplands School.
Director Bios
JEFFREY LO (director) - Recently named the "Emerging Artist" Laureate by the Arts Council of Silicon Valley, Jeffrey Lo, Dragon's Artist-in-Residence, is a Bay Area based playwright and director. An alumnus of the UC Irvine Drama department, Jeffrey's recent credits include writing and directing A Kind of Sad Love Story, and Barcelona Love Song with The 06 Ensemble which he is the founding artistic director of as well as serving as the assistant director for Superior Donuts, Snow Falling on Cedars, and The Pitmen Painters at TheatreWorks, The Last Romance at San Jose Rep and The Language Archive at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
CARA PHIPPS (director) is a Bay Area based director. Prior to relocating back to her home state, she spent time in Portland, Oregon, working with several companies including Portland Center Stage and Artists Repertory Theatre. She recently worked with Renegade Theatre Experiment, stage managing their production of Eat the Runt. Upcoming projects include assistant directing credits on A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Pear Avenue Theatre and Now Circa Then at TheatreWorks. Cara is a graduate of the Drama program at the University of Portland where she directed her capstone piece, Stop Kiss.
HEATHER NOELLE ROBINSON (director) - Heather Noelle Robinson is a director, producer, writer, and Bay Area native. She is the Literary Manager at Renegade Theatre Experiment, and recently developed and directed Our American Myth: a theatrical Experiment with Bindlepunks in San Jose. Recently, she has assistant directed for Leah Gardiner on the world premiere of Clementine in the Lower Nine (TheatreWorks), as well as for Brad Dalton on Idomeneo (a collaboration between Opera San Jose and the Packard Humanities Institute). Other directing work includes: workshops and staged readings at Z Space, City Lights, Bindlepunks, Writing Man Productions, and The Shakespeare Theatre of NJ. Other assistant directing includes: Tosca, Le Nozze di Figaro, and many others at Opera San Jose; Henry IV, Part One, The Bald Soprano, and many others at The Shakespeare Theatre of NJ. Producing: staged readings with Playwrights Foundation. She graduated from NYU's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Theatre (Directing) and a Minor in Music History.
JONATHAN AMORES (production stage manager) is a proud Bay Area native. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he received a BA in Theater and Performance Studies and a BA in Mass Communications and was the Producer of Theatre Rice! Modern Asian American Theatre. He considers one of his recent crowning achievements to be directing Pumpkin Fiesta! The Musical at a local elementary school for the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre. Jonathan currently works in the marketing department of TheatreWorks.
