| Ensemble Studio Theatre announces EST/Sloan Science & Technology Project 2021 First Light Festival | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 05:12 pm EST 02/15/21 | |
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| ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES EST/SLOAN SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY PROJECT 2021 FIRST LIGHT FESTIVAL FEBRUARY 25-MARCH 29, 2021 (New York) ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE (EST) (William Carden, Artistic Director) and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Doron Weber, Vice-President and Program Director) are pleased to announce details for the 2021 First Light Festival, part of the EST/Sloan Project to develop plays exploring science and technology. The 2021 First Light Festival will be held virtually from February 25 to March 29, 2021. All presentations are free to attend, but reservations are required and can be made at estnyc.org/firstlight . Since 1998, the EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Projecthas developed hundreds of new plays that question and broaden the view of science in the popular imagination. Each play's life onstage begins with the First Light Festival, an annual presentation of new readings, workshops and productions. The 2021 First Light Festival includes public presentations of the following works-in-progress: Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays By Amanda Quaid Thursday February 25 at 4pm ET A story about amateur scientist Eunice Foote, one big discovery, scientific legacy, and the ever-rising levels of carbon dioxide. Henry Makes a Bible By AJ Clauss Monday March 1 at 3pm ET The creation story of the world's most famous medical textbook created by two college students in 1850, Henry and Henry. Henry Makes a Bible is a story of gentle eyes and cold bones. Smart By Mary Elizabeth Hamilton Thursday March 4 at 3pm ET When called to fix a virtual home assistant, a tech support worker becomes infatuated with her client. Smart examines the real-life implications of our virtual interactions. Lemuria By Bonnie Antosh Wednesday March 10 at 3pm ET In the animal kingdom and in our own, how does a queen pass the crown to another queen? Lemuria is a queer King Lear set in a North Carolina lemur lab. The Reservoir By Jake Brasch Monday March 22 at 4pm ET A lost, queer, neurotic mess of a twenty-something moves home to get sober. Struggling with memory loss, he finds unlikely allies in his four unpredictable grandparents. Good Hair By Phaedra Michelle Scott Monday March 29 at 3pm ET Told through three timelines, Good Hair tangles together the lives of women and the central question: Does the pursuit of acceptance outweigh its cost? The 2021 First Light Festival also includes invitation-only presentations of the following works-in-progress: Po¯ e Ao [darkness & light] By Susan Soon He Stanton Dramatizing the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope, Po e Ao explores the intersections of the sacred, science, capitalism, and tradition in modern Hawai'i. Beyond Words By Laura Maria Censabella Beyond Words dramatizes the mysterious relationship between human beings and birds through a 30-year groundbreaking experiment that captures our longing to communicate with animals. Las Borinqueñas By Nelson Diaz-Marcano Las Borinqueñasis the story of the first birth control pill mass trial and the Puerto Rican women who risked their own health for the breakthrough to occur. Throughout the First Light Festival, EST is encouraging patrons to donate to the non-profit organization Black Girls Do STEM. Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Visit bgdstem.com to learn more and support them today. ABOUT ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE The Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST), founded by Curt Dempster in 1968, has been under the artistic direction of William Carden since 2007. In over 50years, EST has developed thousands of new American plays and has grown into a company of over 600 actors, directors, playwrights, and designers. EST's mission is to develop and produce original, provocative, and authentic new work. A dynamic community committed to a collaborative process, EST is dedicated to inclusion across all aspects of identity and perspective, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexuality, physical or mental ability, physical or mental health, and recovery while acknowledging and working to end systemic marginalization and oppression at all levels of its organization. EST discovers and nurtures new voices and supports artists throughout their creative lives. This extraordinary support and commitment to inclusivity are essential to yield extraordinary work. EST's primary programs include Youngblood, a collective of emerging professional playwrights under the age of 30; the EST/Sloan Project, a partnership that commissions, develops, and produces new works about science and technology; and the biennial Marathon of One-Act Plays, a landmark New York theatre festival since 1977. ABOUT THE EST/ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY PROJECT The EST/Sloan Project (Graeme Gillis, Program Director; Linsay Firman, Associate Director) is designed to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling new theatrical works that explore the worlds of science, technology, and economics in order to challenge existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in popular culture. Since its inception in 1998, the EST/Sloan Project has commissioned, developed, and produced the work of more than 300 playwrights, choreographers, composers, and theatre companies. Recent notable plays include Behind the Sheet by Charly Evon Simpson, Isaac's Eye by Lucas Hnath, Fast Company by Carla Ching, and Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler. ABOUT THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York based, philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that makes grants in three areas: research in science, technology, and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan's program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater, and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience. Over two decades of support the Foundation's pioneering theater program, begun with a 1997 grant to Ensemble Studio Theatre for Arthur Giron's play about the Wright Brothers, Flight, has helped usher in the science play as a regular part of the theater canon. Commissioning close to 20 new plays each year through its two flagship partners, EST and Manhattan Theatre Club-and working with the National Theater in London and Playwrights Horizons in New York, among others-the Foundation has made "a Sloan" a coveted commission for any playwright embarking on a new play with a science and technology theme or character. Beginning with such renowned science plays as Proof, Copenhagen and Alan Alda's QED, more recent grants have supported Bess Wohl's Continuity, directed by 2019 Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin; Charly Evon Simpson's New York Times Critic's Pick Behind the Sheet; Chiara Atik's Bump; Lucy Kirkwood's Mosquitoes; Leigh Fondakowski's Spill; Nick Payne's Constellations, a Broadway hit starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson; Nell Benjamin's The Explorer's Club; Lucas Hnath's Isaac's Eye and Anna Ziegler's Photograph 51, a 2015 prize-winner in London's West End starring Nicole Kidman. Sloan also has a nationwide film program that includes support of twelve film schools, screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, SFFILM, Film Independent, the Black List, the Athena Film Festival, and the North Fork TV Festival, and has helped develop and distribute over 30 feature films including Tesla, Radium Girls, Adventures of a Mathematician, One Man Dies a Million Time, To Dust, The Sound of Silence, The Catcher Was a Spy, The Imitation Game, The Man Who Knew Infinity, Operator and Experimenter. The Foundation has also supported theatrical documentaries such as Picture a Scientist, Coded Bias, In Silico, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, Particle Fever and Jacques Perrin's Oceans. The Foundation's book program includes early support for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, the best-selling book which became the Oscar-nominated film and a social and cultural milestone. For more information, visit www.sloan.org or follow @SloanPublic on Twitter and Facebook. # # # BIOS BONNIE ANTOSH is a playwright and performer from both Carolinas & New York. Her plays include Cluck Deluxe (winner, 2019 Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival), Persephone At the River (finalist, 2019 Red Bull Short New Play Festival), Rare (Yale Playwrights Festival), The Wilderness Needs Your Whole Attention (Rule of 7x7) and I Told You It Would End Like This (co-written with Avery Deutsch). She studied theater at Yale, where she received both the Louis Sudler Prize and the Shana Alexander Research Fellowship in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work as an actress includes seasons with Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare on the Sound and Nebraska Shakespeare. Bonnie is a '20-'21 EST/Sloan commission recipient and the Literary Manager of "Playing on Air," a podcast and public radio show devoted to contemporary short plays. She currently writes and lives in Asheville, NC. BonnieAAntosh.com JAKE BRASCH is a playwright + lyricist + composer + pianist + performer + clown + baker and a fancy-free queer sober Jew from Colorado. Proud member of Ensemble Studio Theatre's Youngblood, The Farm Theater's Development Workshop, and the LAByrinth 2020 Intensive Ensemble. Jake has worked at The New Ohio, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Denver Center Theatre Company, The Farm Theater, Eden Theatre Company, LAByrinth Theatre Company, The Tank, Dixon Place, Curious Theatre Company, DSA at the Edinburgh Fringe, The 14th St Y, Planet Connections, and NYU-Tisch. Currently under commission from the EST/Sloan Project and The Farm Theater. Jake has written music for several films, plays, and podcasts. BFA: NYU-Tisch, Experimental Theatre Wing/New Studio on Broadway. forever seeking the sunlight of the spirit. LAURA MARIA CENSABELLA's play Paradise (IRNE Award Best New Play, Elliott Norton Nomination Outstanding New Script, Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Science Foundation Commission) recently made its sold-out U.S. west coast premiere in L.A. at The Odyssey Theatre (Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, producers) and premiered on the east coast at Underground Railroad/Central Square Theater in Cambridge. She then wrote the screenplay for Vicangelo Films and JuVee Productions. Ms. Censabella is the recipient of the $10,000 William Saroyan Human Rights Award for her play Carla Cooks the War, three grants in Playwriting and Screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and two Daytime Emmy Awards. Other plays and musicals have been developed or produced at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, the Women's Project and Productions, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Portland Stage, the New Harmony Project, Gulfshore Playhouse, The Working Theatre, Luna Stage, Passage Theatre, and Urban Stages, among others. She directs the Ensemble Studio Theatre's Playwrights Unit and teaches at the New School for Drama where she received the Distinguished University-Wide Teaching Award. She is a graduate of Yale--Wole Soyinka, Nikos Psacharopoulos, Michael Roemer, Anthony Davis, and Henry Louis Gates were some of her teachers--and is a proud member of HONOR ROLL! an action and advocacy group of women+ playwrights over 40. AJ CLAUSS is a playwright and performer forged from mountain dew and the cornfields of Indiana, currently living in NYC. AJ is a member of Youngblood, Ensemble Studio Theatre's Obie Award-winning playwright collective. Recently AJ's plays have been seen in Seattle (React Theatre at 12th Ave Arts), Baltimore (Trupenny Collective at The Mercury Theatre), and will soon present a new queer play to their small-town in Indiana, thanks to a grant from the Indiana Arts Council and Arts Midwest (some day). Plays include When You Were Small, Close Your Eyes and Sleep and Salty. BFA: University of Evansville. Light seeks light. NELSON DIAZ-MARCANO is a Puerto Rican NYC-based theater maker, activist and community leader whose mission is to create work that challenges and builds community. His plays have been developed by Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, Vision Latino Theater Company, Milagro Theatre, The William Inge Theatre Festival, Classical Theatre of Harlem and The Parsnip Ship, among others. He currently serves as the Literary Manager for the Latinx Playwright Circle and as the Community Outreach Coordinator for Atlantic Theater Company, as well as being a member of the Clubbed Thumb writers group. Recent credits include The Diplomats (Random Acts Chicago); Paper Towels (INTAR); Misfit, America (Hunter Theatre Company); I Saw Jesus in Toa Baja (Conch Shell Productions) and World Classic (Jayuya Theatre). MARY ELIZABETH HAMILTON was a Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow at The Juilliard School and a Jerome New York Fellow at The Lark. She has participated in The O'Neill Theater Conference, EST/Youngblood, I-73, New Georges' The Jam, and Play Penn. Mary holds her MFA in playwriting from The University of Iowa. Her play 16 Winters won the American Shakespeare Center's New Contemporaries Award. She has developed work with Clubbed Thumb, Rattlestick, Studio Theater, EST and Page 73. She was a Story Editor on the television show "Why Women Kill" and is developing a tv pilot with AMC. Mary is a resident playwright with New Dramatist and lives in Brooklyn with her daughter. AMANDA QUAID's plays include The Clam (Playing on Air, a winner of the 2019 James Stevenson Prize), The Extinctionist (EST Marathon of One-Act Plays) and Echo and Narcissus (Red Bull Short New Play Festival). Libretto: The Extinctionist (upcoming at Heartbeat Opera). Screenplay: English. Other works have been read and developed by Colt Coeur, Culture Project, HB Playwrights and the National Arts Club. Amanda also directed and animated an award-winning stop-motion short film called Toys, which was screened across North America as part of LUNAFEST. PHAEDRA MICHELLE SCOTT is a playwright and dramaturg based in New York City. Her play Diaspora! was a commissioned work through SpeakEasy Stages's The Boston Project. She is a past resident at SPACE on Ryder Farm for her play Plantation Black and is currently a member of the Obie Award-winning playwriting ensemble Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theatre and Pipeline Theatre Company's PlayLab. Currently, she is developing her newest play Good Hair, recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant. She has been an arts and culture journalist for WBUR, Boston's NPR station, and a content developer at the USS Constitution Museum where she made maritime history accessible through storytelling and media. She is the resident dramaturg of New Harmony Project. Scott has received a Bly Creative Capacity Grant for her work as dramaturg for Black Theater Commons as well as the recipient of the Frederick Douglass Fellowship for her research on August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle. She is a crocheter, horror fan and obscure history enthusiast. She/Her/Hers. phaedrascott.com SUSAN SOON HE STANTON. Plays include we, the invisibles (Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival), Today Is My Birthday (Page 73), Takarazuka!!! (Clubbed Thumb and East West Players), Moana Jr. (book)for Disney Theatrical Group, Navigator (Honolulu Theatre for Youth), and more produced regionally and around the world. She was a Sundance Theater Lab Resident Playwright and was awarded Leah Ryan FEWW, and the Venturous Playwrights Fellowship at the Lark. Commissions include Yale Repertory, American Conservatory Theater/Crowded Fire, South Coast Repertory, and Ensemble Studio Theatre. She is a member of New Dramatists and MaYi's Playwright's Lab and was an alumnus of Primary Stages' Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, the Public's Emerging Writer's Group and SoHo Rep's Writer Director Lab, among others. Susan is a producer and writer for HBO's "Succession," for which she has also won WGA and Peabody Awards. susansoonhestanton.com |
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| Link | http://estnyc.org/firstlight |
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