a playwrights` collective

2013 – 2016
A PLAYWRIGHTS’
COLLECTIVE
THE WELDERS HAVE ASSEMBLED • TO INSPIRE,
CHALLENGE AND MOTIVATE ITS MEMBERS IN
THE CREATION OF NEW PLAYS • TO ESTABLISH AN ORGANICALLY-EVOLVING, NON-INSTITUTIONAL ALTERNATIVE PLATFORM FOR PLAY
DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION • TO USE
THAT PLATFORM TO PRODUCE ONE PERFORMANCE OF WORK CREATED BY EACH OF OUR
FIVE FOUNDING PLAYWRIGHTS OVER THE
COURSE OF THREE YEARS • TO GIVE THE PLATFORM TO ANOTHER GENERATION OF FIVE DC
PLAYWRIGHTS; AND • TO PROVIDE ONGOING
SUPPORT TO THAT NEXT GENERATION DURING
ITS OWN THREE-YEAR TENURE AS STEWARDS.
Ryan Mercer
SWIMMING WITH WHALES
Catholic University of America
Photo by C. Stanley
BOB BARTLETT
Playwright
Forty years later and areas of the District
of Columbia are still recovering from the
violence that followed the assassination
of Martin Luther King, Jr. My unwritten
play – set on Thursday, April 4, 1968
– concerns the relationship between a
middle-aged, white woman and business
owner, and Aaron, an African American
student at Howard University whom she
treats like a son – until the day he must
choose between her and the growing
radicalism exploding across the city.
Bob’s plays include Swimming with Whales (formerly Whales), The
Accident Bear, Bareback Ink, Falwell, Kansas, Death by Hibachi, Kuchu
Uganda, Fallout, Hunter Rising, and xphiles unrequited. His work has been
performed or developed at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, the Lark
New Play Development Center, the Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage
Festival, Source Festival, DC’s First Draft, Theatre J, Active Cultures,
Rorschach Theatre, The Theatre Lab, and the Capital and Edinburgh Fringe
Festivals. Swimming with Whales was awarded runner-up for both
KCACTF’s 2011 David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award and Mark
Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting. It was a semi-finalist for the 2012
O’Neill Playwrights Conference and a finalist for the 2011 Kendeda
Graduate Playwriting Competition, and it recently received readings in
Atlanta (Alliance Theater), NYC (The Lark), Washington, DC (National New
Play Network/DC Area Writers Showcase at the Kennedy Center), and
NYC’s Stellar Productions. The Accident Bear recently received readings
by NYC’s ID Theatre and kef productions and Kansas is a semi-finalist for
the 2013 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. Bob is the most recent
addition to the theatre faculty at Bowie State University in Maryland and
holds an MFA in Playwriting from Catholic University of America. He is a
recipient of a 2012 Individual Artists Award from the Maryland State Arts
Council and a member of The Dramatists Guild of America. Bareback Ink
gets a run at Baltimore’s Iron Crow Theatre Company in May 2014.
Will Gartshore and Kimberly Gilbert
THE RELIGION THING
Theater J
Photo by C. Stanley
RENEE CALARCO
Playwright
I learned how to write plays by improvising—by making up stories instantly, based
on a suggestion or two, and using only
what’s on hand in the performance space.
Because the energy and architecture of
spaces has always fascinated me, my
project will be site-specific. Because I’m
oddly comfortable with artistic uncertainty, I’ve not yet chosen the site. It might
be a church. Or a hotel conference room.
Or a Chinese restaurant. The only thing I
do know is that the characters who live in
this world are old and young; multi-ethnic; rich and poor; dreamers and thinkers.
That’s all I know. It’s risky and ridiculous.
Renee Calarco lives in Washington, DC. Her play Short Order
Stories received the 2007 Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New
Play. Her play The Religion Thing was a 2013 nominee for the Charles
MacArthur Award. Other plays include Keepers Of The Western Door,
The Mating Of Angela Weiss, Bleed, and If You Give A Cat A Cupcake
(commissioned by Adventure Theatre in 2011). Her 10-minute play
Warriors was published by One Act Play Depot in 2010. Other short
plays include Semper Fidelis, Pounds Aweigh, and First Stop: Niagara
Falls. In addition to being a founding member of The Welders, she’s an
artistic associate with First Draft, the program coordinator for Naked
Ladies Lunch, and a proud member of both DC Area Playwrights and
The Dramatists Guild of America. She teaches playwriting at George
Washington University and improvisational comedy at The Theatre Lab,
and is a licensed professional tour guide.
Mundy Spears and Andrew Ferlo
CAESAR AND DADA
WSC Avant Bard
Photo by C. Stanley
ALLYSON CURRIN
Playwright
I am fascinated by the kind of theatrical
story-telling that uses magical realist
elements and fantasy in a way that bypasses technology. My play The Redneck
Holy Grail is an Alice-down-the-rabbithole tale of a girl in search of a grail she
doesn’t even believe in. I will use my
Welders’ slot to explode, re-structure and
reinvent this play and figure out just how
ingenious theatre artists can be without
the immediately available ease of pushing
a button. I’m not against technology –
but the value of theatre is that it places
real people in a real room with real
imagination. I want to remind myself of
what that looks like.
Allyson Currin is the award-winning author of over twenty plays: Caesar
And Dada (WSC Avant Bard), Benched (Pinky Swear Productions),
Hercules In Russia (Doorway Arts Ensemble), Treadwell: Bright And Dark
(The American Century Theatre), Unleashed (John F. Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts), The Dancing Princesses (Imagination Stage), Love And
Whiskey (Equity Members Code Workshop), Church Of The Open Mind*
and The Subject (Charter Theatre), Learning Curves (Washington
Shakespeare Company), Amstel In Tel Aviv* and Dancing With Ourselves
(Source Theatre Company). *She has twice been nominated for the Helen
Hayes’ Charles D. MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play and has
been the Playwright-in-Residence for the “Locally Grown” Initiative at
Theatre J and First Draft Reading Series. Her commissioned work has
premiered at the National Museum for Women in the Arts and Strathmore
Arts Center. She is currently working on a new commissioned musical
(with Matt Conner) for Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre and a new
commissioned work for Cincinnati Playhouse. She teaches in the Theatre
and Dance Department at The George Washington University. She is also
the Chair (Region 2) of the National Playwriting Program for The Kennedy
Center’s American College Theatre Festival. She is a proud member of
Actors Equity Association, SAG/AFTRA and The Dramatists Guild.
Students in the American University
production of
ELSEWHERE IN ELSINORE:
THE UNSEEN WOMEN OF HAMLET
Photo by Hope Leigh Rollins
CALEEN SINNETTE JENNINGS
Playwright
Not Enough Lifetimes looks at the pitfalls
and possibilities of communicating
across age, racial, class and generational
divides. Frank, a well-meaning, white,
50-something car mechanic, can’t understand why his son, Ian, dropped out of
medical school to live and work in what
he considers the ghetto. When Ian
disappears, Frank must learn to
communicate with Ian’s black roommate
and South Asian girlfriend. The play’s
structure and content are Hip Hopinspired.
Caleen Sinnette Jennings is Professor of Theatre at American
University in Washington, D.C. She received the Heideman Award from
Actor’s Theatre of Louisville for her play Classyass, which was produced
at the 2002 Humana Festival and has been published in five anthologies.
She is a two-time Helen Hayes Award nominee for Outstanding New Play.
In 2003 she won the award for Outstanding Teaching of Playwriting from
the Play Writing Forum of the Association of Theatre in Higher Education.
In 1999 she received a $10,000 grant from the Kennedy Center’s Fund for
New American Plays for her play Inns & Outs. Her play, Playing Juliet/
Casting Othello was produced at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in 1998.
In 2012, Ms. Jennings’ play, Hair, Nails & Dress, was produced by
Uprooted Theatre Company of Milwaukee, and by the D.C. Black
Theatre Festival. Her most recent publication is Uncovered, in the 2011
Eric Lane and Nina Shengold anthology, Shorter, Faster, Funnier. Dramatic
Publishing Company has published: Chem Mystery, Elsewhere in Elsinore:
the Unseen Women of Hamlet, Inns & Outs, Playing Juliet/Casting Othello,
Sunday Dinner, A Lunch Line, and Same But Different. Ms. Jennings is also
an actor and director. She received her B.A. in Drama from Bennington
College and her M.F.A. in Acting from the N.Y.U. Tisch School of the Arts.
Marcus Kyd and Kimberly Gilbert
LET X
Taffety Punk Theatre Company
Photo by Scott Suchman
GWYDION SUILEBHAN
Playwright
I’m planning to develop a new solo piece
that combines the non-fiction work I’ve
been doing as a speaker with the
heightened storytelling inherent in my
career as a playwright. Think of a
highly-theatricalized TED talk with a
very biased narrator and significant
audience engagement. And my subject:
the seven great books that have built the
United States of America... and how to
destroy them.
Gwydion Suilebhan is a DC-based playwright and theater blogger. The
author of Reals, The Butcher, Hot & Cold, Abstract Nude, The Constellation, Let X, The Faithkiller, Cracked, and The Great Dismal, Gwydion serves
as DC’s representative for The Dramatists Guild. His work has been
commissioned, produced, and developed by theaters in New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles, DC, Baltimore, and St. Louis, including the
Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theater J, Centerstage, Theater Alliance, the
National New Play Network, dog & pony DC, Active Cultures, Source
Theater Festival, HotCity Theatre, Forum Theatre, Rorschach Theatre, and
the Taffety Punk Theatre Company. A 2013 resident playwright of The
Theatre Project in New York, Gwydion has received two fellowships from
the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and in 2009 he was a
finalist for Outstanding Emerging Artist at the DC Mayor’s Arts Awards. In
2012, he joined the Board of Governors for theatreWashingon’s Helen
Hayes Awards. Gwydion earned his master’s degree in poetry from Johns
Hopkins University. He lectures on theater and the arts around the
country; his recent engagements include South by Southwest 2013,
TEDxWDC, TEDxMichiganAve, and the Ethical Society. In addition, his
commentary about theater appears on HowlRound, 2am Theatre, The
Dramatist, and Stage Directions, as well as www.suilebhan.com.
Gwydion’s other publications include Inner Harbor: Ten Poems; more than
75 articles on poetry, education, grammar, and cuisine; and the Foreword
to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grammar and Style.
JOJO RUF
Executive and Creative Director
Jojo Ruf is the General Manager of the National New Play Network, an
alliance of nonprofit theaters across the US that champions the
development, production and continued life of new plays, and the
Coordinating Producer for the Laboratory for Global Performance and
Politics at Georgetown University. She is a freelance writer for
theatreWashington, a Teaching Artist for Ford’s Theatre, and has worked
with Arena Stage, the Kennedy Center, Theater J, the Provincetown
Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, and Georgetown University as a
freelance producer and director.
Over the next three years I will be serving
as an embedded critic/dramaturg for
each of the five plays The Welders
produces. I will be working to help
contextualize the productions through
a series of blog posts, interviews, open
rehearsals, discussion forums, and various
other initiatives. Our aim is to deeply
engage with local audiences, to make
work for and with our community, to
connect the stories we tell to the everyday
lives of the people in the DC area, and
through that process become even more
rooted to the place we all call home.
Jojo graduated from Georgetown University with a dual degree in English
and Theater and Performance Studies. In 2010 she assistant directed and
co-adapted In Search of Duende: The Ballad of Federico Garcia Lorca as
part of the UNESCO/ITI World Festival of Theater Schools in Peru, and
represented Georgetown as the lone US delegation among representatives
from dozens of the world’s leading theater academies. She was the
Coordinating Producer for the Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival,
presented by Georgetown University and Arena Stage, and served as the
Coordinator for Theater J’s Spinozium and other Beyond the Stage events
for New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza. She also
produced Will the Circle be Unbroken: Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a
Faith, a Georgetown University/Arena Stage Collaboration.
THREE YEARS.
FIVE PLAYS.
PASS IT ON.
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