2009 RECIPIENTS
The 20/20 New Play Commission Program
Now in its second year, InterAct Theatre Company’s 20/20 New Play Commission program is an ambitious initiative that was established with the goal of awarding twenty new play commissions over a period of six seasons to playwrights who are addressing the issues society will face over the next twenty years. The program was developed with the goal of supporting the creation of new work that fits into InterAct’s mission of producing plays that explore the social, political, and cultural issues of our time. Awards range from $2,500 developmental grants, which are given to works already in progress, to $5,000 - $10,000 new play commissions, which go to new, previously (or substantially) unwritten plays.
Including the three World Premieres slated for this season, InterAct has presented 64 main stage productions in its 21 year history, including 28 world premieres, 2 U.S. premieres, and more than 30 Philadelphia premieres. Of the 28 world premieres, 12 have gone on to over 80 subsequent productions around the world. Long established as one of the country’s most devoted producers of challenging, forward-thinking new scripts, InterAct has introduced a canon of plays exploring the most relevant issues of the past two decades, written by some of the U.S., Canada, and Europe’s most provocative playwrights.
If you are interested in donating to the 20/20 New Play Commission program, please contact Managing Director Dave Brown via email or at 215.568.8077.
The 2009 Awardees
Kara Lee Corthron | Untitled New Play
In Kara Lee Corthron’s new untitled work, a black American ex-patriate living in Iceland with her Icelandic husband and bi-racial daughter, becomes entranced by Barack Obama and begins to feel cutoff from her native land. That is, until a mysterious stranger appears in her art studio and her husband gives their daughter a commemorative reprinting of the Icelandic children’s classic Tiu Litlir Negrastrakar (Ten Little Niggers) for her fourth birthday.
About Kara Lee Corthron
Kara Lee Corthron’s plays have been produced or developed at CenterStage (Baltimore), New Georges, ACT Seattle (Hansberry Project), HERE, ManhattanTheatreSource, EST, Electric Pear, Shalimar Productions, Horizon Theatre (Atlanta), Page 73, African Continuum Theatre (D.C.), and Voice & Vision. Her play HOLLY DOWN IN HEAVEN won the 2008 Princess Grace Award and will be workshopped at the Vineyard Theatre in the spring. Kara plans to spend a month in 2009 as playwright-in-residence at Skriduklaustur Arts Center in Egilsstaðir, Iceland. She is currently a staff writer for the NBC drama, KINGS. Kara’s honors include the Helen Merrill Award, the Lecomte du Nouy Foundation Award (three-time recipient), an EST/Sloan Commission, the Theodore Ward Prize, and residencies at MacDowell, the Millay Colony for the Arts and Ledig House. Kara is an alumna of the Juilliard School and Interstate 73 (P73’s inaugural writers group), member of the BMI/Lehman Engel Librettist Workshop, the Dramatists Guild, ‘Wright On (co-founder), Blue Roses, the Writers Guild of America, and is a New Georges Affiliated Artist.
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig | LIDLESS
In LIDLESS, a former Guantanamo detainee dying of cirrhosis of the liver journeys to the flower shop owned by his U.S. Army Interrogator to demand half her liver for the damage she wreaked on his body and soul during her interrogations.
About Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
For her commissioned play, LIDLESS, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is the winner of the 2009 Yale Drama Series award in playwriting. As part of the award, LIDLESS will be performed in a staged reading at the Yale Repertory Theater later this year and will be published by Yale University Press. Frances is a graduate of Brown University, the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre, and the International School of Beijing. She is in her final semester of a three-year fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, and was recently awarded the Glimmer Train New Writers Award for her short story "Monkeys of the Sea." She has been a finalist for the Jerome and Julliard fellowships, the O'Neill Institute, the Bay Area Playwright's Festival, and the Yale Emerging Playwright's Award.
Peter Gil-Sheridan | RITU COMES HOME
In RITU COMES HOME, Zane and Kevin – a 30-something gay couple – proudly sponsor a child from Bangladesh through a program of monthly payments and occasional correspondence. One day, in the midst of their comfortable middle-class American life, the now 15 year-old child (Ritu) appears in their living room. Zane and Kevin are forced to confront the reality of their do-gooder values and reframe their lives as they try to form a new kind of family in this globalized world.
About Peter Gil-Sheridan
Peter Gil-Sheridan is a multi-disciplinary artist whose play TOPSY TURVY MOUSE was named the winner of the Smith Prize, awarded by the National New Play Network for an outstanding political play. The same play, written at the Sundance Institute’s Writer’s Retreat at Ucross, was developed by the New York Theatre Workshop and performed by The Cherry Lane Theatre, Borderlands in Tucson, and Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. The play will be published Spring 2009 by Playscripts. Peter was the recipient of a Jerome Fellowship and spent a year-in-residence at the Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis. He also held month-long residencies at the Ucross Foundation in Clearmont, Wyoming, the Millay Colony in Austerlitz, NY, and has an annual residency with A Theatre Group in Silverton, Colorado. His work has also been seen at and developed by The Lark, The Kennedy Center, the New York International Fringe Festival, and The University of Colorado at Boulder. His play WHAT MAY FALL, written on commission for the Guthrie Theatre, will be performed there in April 2009. Peter received his B.A. from Fordham and his M.F.A. from University of Iowa.
Sean Christopher Lewis | THE ROAD TO EDEN
In THE ROAD TO EDEN, a woman fresh from South America is herded from her work place in Iowa one afternoon. Unable to speak English or get in touch with her son, she is sent to a holding cell in Nebraska. Her son returns home that afternoon to an empty house, with no knowledge of her whereabouts, and no way to find her through “official” channels. So, he sets out on his own, eventually landing on a patch of land in Eden, Utah, where unidentified “illegals” are buried.
About Sean Christopher Lewis
Sean Christopher Lewis is the inaugural recipient of the Rosa Parks Award for Social Justice in Playwriting from the Kennedy Center. A former NNPN Emerging Playwright in Residence at InterAct Theatre Company, he has toured his critically lauded solo shows I WILL MAKE YOU ORPHANS (Uno Festival of Solo Performance, Intrepid Theatre, Available Light 01 Festival, Equinox Theatre, Riverside Theatre, Center for Independent Artists, Galapagos Art Space, Hyde Park Theatre, TIXE Arts Center, Bowery Poetry Club), THE GONE CHAIR (Penn State University’s Cultural Conversations Festival, Openstage Harrisburg’s Flying Solo Festival, Riverside Theatre) and CITY OF NUMBERS (Baltimore Centerstage First Look, Interact Theatre, Lawrence Arts Center/KCACTF, Penn State University Cultural Conversations Festival, Gerald W. Lynch Theatre, CSPS/Legion Arts and Hollins University/Studio Roanoke). His other plays include MILITANT LANGUAGE (National Premiere at Know Theatre of Cincinnati, Halcyon Theatre of Chicago, Bang and Clatter in Cleveland and Theater for the New City in NY) and THE APERTURE (Cleveland Public Theatre). He has been a playwriting fellow at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and has had his work developed at the PlayPenn New Play Conference, The Lark New Play Development Center, Orlando Shakespeare Festival’s Harriet Lake Festival of New Work and at the National Center for New Plays at Stanford University. |
