Michaela Murphy July 7, 2011 773-398-4522 Photos Available at [email protected]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Michaela Murphy July 7, 2011 773-398-4522 Photos Available at [email protected] www.playwrightsfoundation.org TOP BAY AREA ACTORS, DIRECTORS AND DRAMATURGS TAPPED FOR 2011 BAY AREA PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL TheatreWorks’ Meredith McDonough, Marin Theatre Company’s Ryan Rilette & Bay Area Actors, Naomi Newman, Nicol Foster and Dan Hiatt Among the Artists Supporting our Playwrights in Annual New Play Festival SAN FRANCISCO – The 34th annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF) has completed assembly of its artistic teams and is sure to continue its tradition of producing exciting, innovative theatrical experiences. The Festival lineup includes seven new plays in the making – allowing audiences to witness the creative process as it unfolds – and partake in a rich diversity of voices and topics, ranging from the challenges of welcoming home an Iraqi war veteran to Australian racial identity to life and death on the streets of Oakland. With exceptional directors orchestrating a cast of top Bay Area actors who bring their keen artistic sensibilities to each piece and talented dramaturgs helping the writers further shape their work (a dramaturg’s function is similar to that of a book editor), each play has been carefully staffed to provide playwrights and audiences with an amazing experience in new play development. As in years past, the Festival has attracted some of the most exciting up-and-coming directing talent who are eager to tackle the exciting new work brought by the emerging playwrights. Dan Dietz’s Home Below Zero will be directed by Meredith McDonough, who, despite being a relative newcomer to Bay Area theater, has made a significant mark since her arrival in 2009. As the Director of New Works for Palo Alto’s acclaimed TheatreWorks, McDonough is very familiar with the challenges and joys inherent in working with brand new plays; she received critical acclaim for her staging of the brand new comedy Auctioning the Ainsleys and the new musical [title of show]. Prior to joining TheatreWorks, McDonough worked with such esteemed organizations as Actors Theatre of Louisville, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and The Public Theatre. McDonough’s recent San Francisco directing endeavor was the first act of The Lily’s Revenge at The Magic Theatre. McDonough is joined as a director by talented colleagues such as Ryan Rilette (Marin Theatre Company Producing Director) who has distinguished himself as a director last season with Tarell McCraney’s In the Red and Brown Water and Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay Abaire, and Desdemona Chiang (Impact Theatre, Barestage Productions) in directing an extraordinarily talented group of actors, including such local luminaries as Naomi Newman and Dan Hiatt and Nicol Foster. Other directors working on the festival are: M. Graham Smith (Aurora Theatre/Brava Theater), Eric Ting (Long Wharf Theatre), Edris Cooper Anifowoshe (Lorraine Hansberry Theatre) and Marissa Wolf (Crowded Fire Theater). Ms. Newman, a longtime participant in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival who appears in Kate E. Ryan’s Science is Close, is nothing less than a local legend. Cofounding A Traveling Jewish Theatre (TJT) in 1978, Ms. Newman has had a long and storied career in the Bay Area and around the world, serving as a critically acclaimed and award-winning director, writer and performer. Her solo show Snake Talk toured the U.S. and Europe, and enjoyed three extended runs in the Bay Area, and her work at TJT included more than a dozen acclaimed original pieces that include Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon, Dance of Exile and See: Under Love. The San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum will soon publish an oral history about her life and career. Nicol Foster, who appears in Lauren Gunderson’s Rock Creek: Southern Gothic, has deep roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. A graduate of San Francisco State University, Nicol is a native of Oakland. She has recently returned to The Bay from Oregon Shakespeare Festival where she appeared in Idiot's Delight, Playboy of the West Indies and Oo-Bla-Dee..Her Bay Area return engagement was Tarell McCraney’s In the Red & Brown Water. Dan Hiatt who also appears in Science is Close, is another long-time resident of the Bay Area who has appeared on all of the area’s most esteemed stages, most recently in To Kill a Mockingbird at Center Rep Titus Andronicus at California Shakespeare Theater. Mr. Hiatt also holds many credits at TheatreWorks (including The 39 Steps—for which the Examiner pronounced him “fantastic”—and Spinning Into Butter), American Conservatory Theatre (Round and Round the Garden, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Dinner with Friends) and many others. Among the 39 members of BAPF acting company this year are also the exceptional talents of Liam Vincent, Soren Oliver, William Elsman, Reggie White, Cindy Im, Jessica Lynn Carroll, Jackson Davis, Jack Powell and Daveed Diggs. Collaborating with top talent, BAPF playwrights will have the indispensible resources needed to fully investigate the structure and character development of their new works, and help them to bring their new plays one step closer to completion. Unique to the BAPF are the integration of dramaturgs to each artistic team who serve the playwright in honing the play’s story line, structure and historical accuracy. Joining us this year are Nakissa Etemad, a national professional who has worked extensively across the country with artists such as Arthur Miller, Lynn Nottage and Marcus Gardley (Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi), Jayne Wenger, Sonia Fernandez, Anthony Clarvoe, Doyle Ott and Suehyla El Attar. This year’s Festival includes five previously unproduced new full-length plays by Clarence Coo, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Dan Dietz, Lauren Gunderson and Amelia Roper, as well as two one-act plays for the Bay Area SHorts (BASH!) program by Chinaka Hodge and Kate E. Ryan. About the 2011 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Plays, Playwrights and Artistic Teams: Beautiful Provence (Belle Province) by Clarence Coo Fifteen-year-old Jimmy flees his Rust Belt life by driving across Quebec with Mr. Green, his high school French teacher. Will the end of the road lead to Jimmy’s sexual and linguistic awakening -- or to something far more tragic? Learning another language has never been this reckless. Clarence Coo has had work developed and produced by the Kennedy Center, the Mark Taper Forum, East West Players, Round House Theatre, the Inkwell Theatre and the Young Playwrights Festival. His play Removing the Glove has been performed around the country and in Canada, England and South Africa. Bahala Na was produced by Theater Mu at the Mixed Blood Theatre. His work has also been published in Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology by the New Press. Clarence was an Allen Lee Hughes Fellow at Arena Stage and studied under Charles Mee in the graduate playwriting program at Columbia University. He is currently the Program Administrator of Columbia’s MFA Writing Program. M. Graham Smith (director) has been the producer of The Global Age Project at Aurora Theatre for the last two years. He is the Artistic Director of Precarious Theatre. He has directed at the Walnut Theater in Philadelphia and the HERE American Living Room series in New York City. In San Francisco he has directed at the Yerba Buena Garden’s Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the ACT’s Masters program, Aurora Theatre, The EXIT Theatre, Asian American Theatre Company, PlayGround, BRAVA, Berkeley Playhouse, Golden Thread and New Conservatory Theatre. Most recently he directed the West Coast Premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera in San Francisco for Ray of Light Theatre. He teaches physical theatre, movement and mask classes at ACT and in Barcelona, Spain. Jayne Wegner (dramaturg) is a director and dramaturg whose exclusive focus is on original material. She is the past Artistic Director of the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation and Women’s Ensemble of New York. She has developed the emerging work of acclaimed playwrights throughout the country. Recent work includes The Winter Bear, focused on the teen suicide epidemic in the Native communities by Alaskan playwright Anne Hanley (Cyrano’s Playhouse); Men Think They Are Better Than Grass, a dance theater collaboration with Deborah Slater (Z Space); Anne Galjour’s You Can’t Get There From Here (Dartmouth College and Z Space); an adaptation of Ann Lamott’s first novel, Hard Laughter (AlterTheater); and A Most Notorious Woman about the Irish pirate queen, Grace O’Malley (EXIT Theatre). She teaches workshops on the direction and dramaturgy of new plays throughout the country. Jayne is a member of The Dramatists Guild, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the League of Professional Theatre Women, and serves as an advisor for the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska For more information about Jayne, visit her website: www.jaynewenger.com. Home Below Zero by Dan Dietz Fresh out of Iraq, Khaled shows up at his best friend's doorstep in America. Problem is, Jeff’s been in a coma since a bomb blew up his Humvee three weeks earlier—and Jeff's father blames Khaled and everyone who looks like him. But Khaled has traveled far with no one else to turn to and the two men are forced to wait it out together. In the long silence an unexpected common language emerges unleashing centuries of rage and resentment...and music. A heavy metal clash between Midwest and Middle East. Dan Dietz’s plays include tempOdyssey, Americamisfit and The Sandreckoner. His work has been commissioned, developed and presented at such venues as Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Guthrie Theater, the Public Theater, the Kennedy Center, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Playwrights’ Center and the Lark Play Development Center.

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