KC Rep Announces Monday Night Playwright Series Courtesy of KC Rep KC Rep announces a fantastic line-up of new play readings in our OriginKC Monday Night Playwright Series. The events are free of charge and open to the public. Featuring top local and national playwrights, the Monday Night Playwright Series offers script-in-hand readings of new plays on their journey to becoming future hit shows. Step into the world of a new play as it’s built, and meet the playwrights whose work electrifies stages across the country. Featuring Kansas City heavy hitters, KC Rep’s Resident Playwright Nathan Louis Jackson and Frank Higgins, in addition to the nationally acclaimed playwrights Carey Perloff and Heather Raffo, the Monday Night Playwright Series offers a relevant, muscular body of new plays. The OriginKC new works program gives playwrights the financial, creative, and artistic resources required to develop vital, diverse, theatrical work. This fall, the Rep will also host playwrights Larissa FastHorse (What Would Crazy Horse Do?) and Christina Anderson (Man in Love) for in-house workshops as they continue their revision process towards their world premiere productions in the 2017 OriginKC New Works Festival. There’s something electrifying about experiencing the bare bones of a play – just actors and text. I love welcoming audiences to engage with early drafts of scripts, listening to the text come alive, and giving feedback in our post-reading conversations, said Marissa Wolf, Director of New Works for KC Rep. It’s been a longstanding dream to make a home at the Rep for top playwrights across the country,” added Eric Rosen, Artistic Director. All events are free and open to the public. Seats are limited, so reserve your ticket now. All events take place in the Spencer Theatre donor lounge (4949 Cherry St, Kansas City, MO). Go tokcrep.com/new- works-2016 to make your reservations today! Louie Louie and La Dolce Vita Monday Oct. 24, 2016 7PM By Frank Higgins Directed by Marissa Wolf One of Kansas City’s most renowned playwrights, Frank Higgins, brings us a surprising love story inspired by the actual FBI investigation of the rock and roll song, Louie Louie. Noura Sunday Oct. 30, 2016 3PM By Heather Raffo Directed by Joan Settle Internationally acclaimed performer and playwright Heather Raffo (Nine Parts of Desire), brings us a powerful reimagining of A Doll’s House, in which a Christian Iraqi immigrant family hold tightly to strained bonds one Christmas. Brother Toad Monday Nov. 7, 2016 7PM By Nathan Louis Jackson Mellon Foundation Resident Playwright, Nathan Louis Jackson (Sticky Traps, Broke-ology, When I Come To Die), brings us an arresting new play about two families’ answers to gun violence in Kansas City. The Fit Monday Dec. 12, 2016 7PM By Carey Perloff Directed by Casey Stangl Playwright and A.C.T. artistic director luminary, Carey Perloff (Kinship starring Cynthia Nixon), brings us the hilarious and chilling world of a Silicon Valley venture capital firm whose star player, Sakina, must wage a daily battle to have her voice heard Playwright Slam Monday Jan. 9, 2017 7PM The Playwright Slam brings together Kansas City’s artistic community for a night of theater revelry in which everyone is invited to participate. The public is invited to bring a 1-3 page script that will be read out loud by actors chosen from the audience. Theme to be announced. Final MNPS readings on February 13 and March 13 will be announced shortly About the Artists Frank Higgins (Playwright). Frank Higgins is the author of a number of plays, including Black Pearl Sings which became one of the most produced plays in the U.S., and The Sweet By ‘n’ By, which was produced with Tony winner Blythe Danner and future-Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow. His work has been seen in New York and across the country at the Williamstown Theater Festival, the Old Globe Theatre, Ford’s Theater in Washington DC, Northlight Theatre in Chicago, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theater, Virginia Stage Company, the Barter Theater, and other places. His plays have been published by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing Company, and Pioneer Drama Service. His one act play The True Death of Socrates is included in Best American Short Plays, published by Applause Books, andBlack Pearl Sings is anthologized in the Random House/Vintage anthology Plays For Two. Scenes from his play Gunplay were read on Capitol Hill prior to Congress passing what came to be known as the Brady Bill. He has also written several plays for young audiences, including Anansi the Spider and The Middle Passage and The Country of the Blind. He has also published two books of poetry, and two books of haiku. Heather Raffo (Playwright). Heather Raffo is an award-winning Iraqi-American playwright and actress who has spent the last decade performing off Broadway, off West End in regional theater and in film. She is the author and solo performer of the play 9 Parts of Desire (Lucielle Lortel and Susan Smith Blackburn awards, Drama League, OCC, Helen Hayes nominations), which The New Yorker called “an example of how art can remake the world”. The play ran off Broadway for nine months and has played across the U.S. and internationally over the last ten years. In 2009, Heather created a concert version of the play for The Kennedy Center’s Arabesque Festival with renowned Iraqi maqam musician, Amir ElSaffar. In November, 2016 New York City Opera will present Raffo’s opera Fallujah, detailing the return of a US Marine who served in the Iraqi city in 2004. Her libretto for the opera was developed as part of Kennedy Center’s International Theater Festival and through City Opera Vancouver. Raffo is the recipient of two grants from the Doris Duke Foundation to work in Universities across America and with the Arab American community of New York using theater as a means of bridge building between her Eastern and Western cultures. Through this grant she has developed a storytelling workshop, Places of Pilgrimage, focusing on the Middle Eastern female narrative, which she has taken to universities and community centers both in America and in the Middle East. Her newest play, NOURA, a re-imaging of Ibsen’s Doll’s House came out of her three years of work within these communities and tells the story of an Iraqi refugee family living in New York. www.heatherraffo.com Nathan Jackson (Playwright). Nathan Jackson is an alum of Kansas State University and did his graduate work at The Juilliard School. His plays include Broke-ology, When I Come to Die (world premiere, Lincoln Center in 2011),The Mancherios, The Last Black Play, and Sticky Traps (world premiere, KC Rep 2015). He has received commissions from Lincoln Center, The Roundabout Theater Company, and Manhattan Theatre Club. At K-State, he was actively involved with the Ebony Theatre (as a director and as president) and participated in The Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive. He has twice won the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, is the recipient of the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award, and was awarded the Kennedy Center’s Gold Medallion. This summer Nathan will be workshopping a new play at Lincoln Center. The 16/17 season kicks off the renewal of his three- year residency at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, where three of his plays have been produced. He has written for television as well, with credits forSouthland (NBC), and Shameless (Showtime), and Resurrection (ABC). He is currently writing for Luke Cage and 13 Reasons Why (Netflix). Carey Perloff (Playwright). Carey Perloff is celebrating her 24th season as artistic director of A.C.T. Last season, she staged the New York premiere of Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink at Roundabout Theatre Company (nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Best Revival) before bringing the show to A.C.T. Recent A.C.T. productions also include Testament, Underneath the Lintel, Arcadia, Elektra (coproduced by the Getty Villa in Malibu), Endgame and Play, Scorched, The Homecoming, Tosca Café (co-created with choreographer Val Caniparoli; toured Canada), and Racine’s Phèdre in a coproduction with the Stratford Festival. Known for directing innovative productions of classics and championing new writing for the theater, Perloff has also directed for A.C.T. José Rivera’s Boleros for the Disenchanted; the world premieres of Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War (A.C.T. commission) and her own adaptation (with Paul Walsh) ofA Christmas Carol; the American premieres of Tom Stoppard’sThe Invention of Love and Indian Ink, and Harold Pinter’s Celebration. Perloff is also an award-winning playwright. Her play Kinship premiered at the Théâtre de Paris in October 2014 in a production starring Isabelle Adjani and Niels Schneider and was produced at the Williamstown Theater Festival last summer, starring Cynthia Nixon and directed by Jo Bonney. Waiting for the Flood has received workshops at A.C.T., New York Stage and Film, and Roundabout Theatre. Higher was developed at New York Stage and Film, won the 2011 Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund Award, and received its world premiere in February 2012 in San Francisco. Luminescence Dating premiered in New York at The Ensemble Studio Theatre, was coproduced by A.C.T. and Magic Theatre, and is published by Dramatists Play Service. The Colossus of Rhodes was workshopped at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, premiered at Lucille Lortel’s White Barn Theatre, and was produced at A.C.T. in 2003. General KC Rep Information About Kansas City Repertory Theatre Kansas City Repertory Theatre, one of the oldest and most respected regional theaters, is the center of a great theatre town.