Chair & Associate Chair Janet Blume
Deputy Dean of the Faculty, Interim Chair Associate Chair, DUS, Senior Lecturer, Dance
Sydney Skybetter
Department Faculty Ariel Ashbel Assistant Professor of the Practice Michelle Bach-Coulibaly Senior Lecturer, Dance Rachel Balaban Adjunct Lecturer, Dance Constance Crawford Adjunct Lecturer Sarah dAngelo Assistant Professor Lisa D’Amour Visiting Assistant Professor, Interim Head of Playwriting J Dellecave Visiting Assistant Professor Nancy Dunbar Senior Lecturer Emerita John Emigh Professor Emeritus Spencer Golub Professor Tiffany Greene Adjunct Lecturer Leon Hilton Assistant Professor Julia Jarcho Associate Professor, Head of Playwriting Lowry Marshall Professor Emeritus Kym Moore Professor Iván Ramos Assistant Professor Patricia Seto-Weiss Visiting Lecturer Julie Adams Strandberg Distinguished Senior Lecturer, Dance Renee Surprenant Fitzgerald Lecturer Barbara Tannenbaum Distinguished Senior Lecturer Elmo Terry-Morgan Associate Professor Richard Waterhouse Adjunct Lecturer Avery Willis Hoffman Visiting Professor of the Practice Patricia Ybarra Professor Brett Zehner Visiting Assistant Professor
Department Staff
Jo Bynum Ron Cesario Alexander Eizenberg Alex Haynes Timothy Hett Alex Nurkin Max Ramirez Chris Redihan Barbara Reo Fran Romasco Brianne Shaw Laura Stokes
Academic Coordinator Costume Shop Manager, Lecturer Sound Designer, Audio-& Video Engineer John Street Studio Technical Director, Lecturer Technical Director, Lighting Designer, Lecturer Event and Facilities Manager Assistant Technical Director Academic Department Manager Production Director, Lecturer Costume Shop Coordinator Communications and Audience Services Manager Performing Arts Librarian, University Library
Brown/Trinity Faculty Shura Baryshnikov
. Head of Movement, DGS, Assistant Professor of the Practice Angela Brazil Director of MFA Programs Rachel Christopher Assistant Professor of the Practice Curt Columbus Artistic Director of Trinity Rep, Professor of the Practice Melissa Kievman Creative Producer of MFA Programs, Adjunct Lecturer Brian Mertes Head of Directing, Professor of the Practice, Josh F. S. Moser Interim Head of Voice and Speech Sophia Skiles Head of Acting, Associate Professor of the Practice
Brown/ Trinity Staff Jeremy Chiang
Michael Cline Sammi Haskell Jill Jann Anne Harrigan
Technical Director Technical Supervisor Program Coordinator Program Manager Production Manager
Brown University’s Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies presents
writing is live a festival of new work by Brown MFA playwrights in collaboration with Sock & Buskin and Brown/Trinity
April 21 - May 1, 2022 Granoff Center for the Arts & Leeds Theatre
~the thesis shows~ cheeky little brown
by Nkenna Akunna ‘22 MFA directed by Kiebpoli Calnek 4/21 8 PM | 4/22 8 PM | 4/23 8 PM 4/30 8 PM | 5/1 4 PM Fishman Studio, Granoff Center
golf girl
by Seayoung Yim ‘22 MFA directed by Carol Ann Tan ‘22 MFA 4/27 8PM | 4/28 8PM | 4/29 8PM 4/30 4PM | 5/1 8PM Leeds Theatre
~the staged readings~
Fishman Studio, Granoff Center
bathhouse.ppt
by Jesus I. Valles ‘23 MFA directed by Andrew Watring ‘23 MFA 4/30 11AM | 5/1 6PM
the creature
by Alexa Derman ‘23 MFA directed by Molly Houlahan ‘23 MFA 4/30 6PM | 5/1 11AM
~the readings~ Leeds Theatre
throwback island
by Ro Reddick ‘24 MFA directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy ‘22 MFA 4/28 6PM | 4/30 1PM
the pardon
by Harley Elias ‘24 MFA directed by Brian Mertes 4/29 6PM | 5/1 1PM
hi. you’re in for a treat. welcome to the 2022 edition of WRITING IS LIVE. this is an annual festival where we take brand new plays by MFA playwrights and invite a host of collaborators to help us mess with them: - treasured directors and actors from the Brown/Trinity MFA program! - dramaturgical great brains from the Performance Studies PhD program! - amazing undergraduate artists of all stripes! - deft and rad colleagues on the faculty and staff! - and yet more fantastic and generous artists from the wider professional world! is “process” a fetish? yes! and it’s ours. writing is LIVE because we keep changing it and because it keeps changing us. this is also true about theater. theater shows us how to manage the wild fact that things are always different AND ALSO very often always the same. and writing for theater helps us think about this weird fact, helps us live through it, i.e. enjoy it. this year, we proudly present six projects in three stages of development. CHEEKY LITTLE BROWN and GOLF GIRL are workshop productions, the thesis work of third-year MFA playwrights NKENNA AKUNNA and SEAYOUNG YIM. But we also have a store of other snacks for you to savor: staged readings of new work by second-years JESÚS I. VALLES and ALEXA DERMAN and readings of even fresher stuff by first-years RONICA REDDICK and HARLEY ELIAS. here is where we talk about how much we missed live, in-person theater, how glad we are it seems to be back, how much we want the power structures that have made it and hurt it to change now that it is back. but actually, let’s stop talking for a sec and SHOW you the worlds these artists are building. these worlds are different. they are weird, f*ed-up even. and they do a much better job than this program note of showing what we want theater to be. thanks for being here and now with us. yours sincerely, Julia Jarcho, head of playwriting in concert with visiting professor Lisa D’Amour and artistic producer Melissa Kievman
Festival Staff Head of MFA Playwriting ................................................ Julia Jarcho MFA Playwriting Thesis Advisory and Visiting Professor..................... Lisa D’Amour Artistic Producer .................................................... Melissa Kievman Production Director / Producer ..................................... Barbara Reo Festival Designer/Scenic Artist..............Renee Surprenant Fitzgerald Audience Services and Communications Manager ...... Brianne Shaw Technical Director .............................................................. Tim Hett Sound Designer/Engineer ......................................... Alex Eizenberg Props Supervisor ........................................................... Alex Haynes Assisant Technical Director .......................................... Max Ramirez Costume Shop Manager ................................................ Ron Cesario Professor of the Practice & Brown/Trinity Director of Graduate Studies ......................................................... Brian Mertes Associate Professor of the Practice & Head of Acting for Brown/Trinity Programs ................. Sophia Skiles Sock & Buskin Festival Producers.... Faith Hardy ‘23, Dylan Lewis ‘22 Sock & Buskin Thesis Producers .................... Marielle Buxbaum ‘24, Ellie Leibner ‘24, Madeleine Adriance ‘23.5 Sock & Buskin Staged Readings Producer...................Josie Miller ‘24 Sock & Buskin Readings Producers.... Lydia Riess ‘24, Ryan Jones ‘24 Photographer ......................................................... Erin X. Smithers
Run Crew Bailey Bellamy ‘25, Teniayo-ola Macaulay’ 25, Uriel Richardson ‘25 Peter Robin ‘25, Autumn Qui ‘25, Hyung Jin Lee ‘25, Brandon Lee ‘25 Cynthia Wang ‘25, Abigail Powell ‘25, Victoria Gong ‘22, Ben Kobliner ‘25, Charlotte Knutsen ‘25, Ben Moshes ‘25, Stephen Perle ‘25, Anas Ahmed ‘25, Yasmine Abdelaziz ‘25
Thank you Brown Arts Institute, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts Staff Mike Cline, Brown/Trinity Writing Is Live is made possible through support from an endowed fund for the Adele Kellenberg Seaver ‘49 Professorship in Literary Arts.
cheeky little brown by Nkenna Akunna ‘22 MFA directed by Kiebpoli Calnek Performers: Nkenna Akunna ‘22 MFA Rafay Rashid Crew:
Musical Arrangement .......................................... Rafay Rashid Set Designer ............................... Renee Surprenant Fitzgerald Lighting Designer ............................................... Alonzo Jones Sound and Projections Designer ...................... Alex Eizenberg Costume Coordinator .......................................... Glory Lee ‘23 Additional Musical Arrangement ......................... Dennis Ryan Singing Coach ................................................ Rachael Warren Associate Designer ................................... David Onabanjo ‘22 Somatic Coach .................................................... Jules Pashall Assistant Director .............................................. Abbi Page ‘22 Stage Manager ............................................... Ania Briscoe ‘23 Dramaturg ............................ Mysia Anderson, PhD Candidate
Content Warning:
Excessive Drinking, Substance Abuse, Disordered Eating
Sensory Warning:
Flashing LED lights, loud screaming
Run Time:
Approximately 90 minutes
Special Thanks:
Rachel Christopher, Molly Houlahan and Andrew Watring, Ashley Frith, Florence Wallis, New Georges, Bushwick Starr, Jenn Kidwell, Jian Jung, Ro Reddick
Nkenna Akunna is an Igbo playwright and performer from London whose work primarily explores dimensions of Black femme life. Plays include Some Of Us Exist in the Future (Papatango Prize; Neukom Institute Literary Award for Playwriting second place; UK audio tour: Bush Theatre, Everyman Theatre Liverpool, Theatr Clwyd, Leeds Playhouse, Laurels Whitley Bay, Chichester Festival Theatre, Stephen Joseph Theatre, an Tobar & Mull Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Bristol Old Vic, Southwark Playhouse, Oldham Coliseum, Trinity Theatre Tunbridge Wells, Lyric Theatre Belfast), cheeky little brown, good god (VoxFest, Brown University), Good Fit (Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award second place, Theatre Renegade, The Dare Tactic), a meal (Polaroid Theatre). BA in Economics and African Diaspora Studies from Dartmouth College, MFA Candidate in Playwriting from Brown University. nkennaakunna.com
Kiebpoli Calnek (they/them), a non-binary queer Black creative, born and raised in New York City/ Lenapehoking, has generated nuanced performances and artistic direction seeped in poetic elements for over two decades. They’ve practiced physical theatre, co-created fiscally sponsored, large-scale, site-specific, community devised productions, and taught aerial rope acrobatics as a way to empower bodies tapping into universal somatic guidance. Their social enterprise, Black*Acrobat, produces interdisciplinary programming sharing stories of, for, and with fringe communities, celebrating authentic visions and a spectrum of viewpoints through research, access, and collaboration. Curator of The Reparations Show 11/2021- The Kraine Theatre, NYC. Black Trans Stories Matter – TMI Project. Member of the Up Until Now Collective. Kiebpoli’s works received generous funding and support from Elizabeth Streb, Astraea Foundation, Asian Arts Initiative, and The New York Foundation for the Arts. Member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, SAG-AFTRA, and Actors’ Equity Association. www.kiebpoli.com
golf girl by Seayoung Yim ‘22 MFA directed by Carol Ann Tan ‘23 MFA Performers:
Golf Girl ......................................................... Shannon Ryu ‘23 Astrid ............................................................ Maddie Groff ‘23 Golf Dad ..................................... Michael Hisamoto ‘22.5 MFA Ajumma ................................ Jenny Nguyen Nelson ‘22.5 MFA Announcer .............................................. Ross Barron ‘23 MFA
Crew:
Set Designer ............................... Renee Surprenant Fitzgerald Lighting Designers .................................................... Tim Hett Autumn Qiu ‘25 Sound Designer ................................................... Caroline Eng Costume Designer................................. Christine Mok ‘13 PhD Assistant Set Designer .................................... Leane Pajot ‘22 Assistant Director ............................................... Erika Lee ‘24 Stage Manager ............................................... Grace Keefe ‘22 Dramaturg ............................... Talley Murphy, PhD Candidate
Content Warning: Racism
Run Time:
Approximately 90 minutes
Special Thanks:
Alexa Derman, Charles Nguyen, Courtney Lau, Jesús I. Valles, Jian Jung, Jihan Haddad, Julia Jarcho Lisa D’Amour, Mario Gómez Anaya, Melissa Kievman, Myka Cue, Nkenna Akunna, Sherry Kramer, Sophia Skiles, Sophie Zmorrod Laruelle
Seayoung Yim (SHEE young) is a playwright and educator from Seattle. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Playwriting at Brown University, ’22.5, where she is a recipient of the Stephen Sondheim Graduate Fellowship in Theater Arts. She was a 2021 Playwriting Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a playwright for the New Now Commission. Her play Jar of Fat is the 2022 winner of the Yale Drama Series Prize and second place winner for the Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award at The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF). At Cafe Nordo, her play, Persimmon Nights, enjoyed a sold-out run in July 2018. Her first full-length play, Do It For Umma, was directed by Sara Porkalob premiering at Annex Theatre in 2016 to sold-out audiences, winning both the People’s Choice Award for Outstanding New Play at Theater Puget Sound’s Gregory Awards and Seattle’s Gypsy Rose Lee Award for Excellence in Local Playwriting. Her plays have been produced by Seattle Public Theater’s Education Program, The Horse in Motion, Theatre Battery, Pony World Theatre, Mirror Stage, Live Girls! Theater, UW School of Drama, The 14/48 Projects, SIS Productions, Theater Off Jackson, and the Seattle Fringe Festival. www.seayoungyim.com Carol Ann Tan (Cat) is a Singapore-born director, writer, and dramaturg. Past directing credits include Constellations, Much Ado About Nothing, A View From the Bridge (Brown/Trinity), Warrior Class (The Comrades), Domestic Departure (Haven Theatre), Apartment Complex, Domestic Departure (University of Chicago), as well as staged readings of Bakkhai (Brown/Trinity), The Mark (Babes With Blades), Mine & Yours (Artemisia Theatre), Dialogue and Rebuttal (Silk Road Rising), Natural Shocks (The Comrades), and Fresh Out the Closet (Asian Improv aRts Midwest). Cat has assisted John Gawlik on Doubt (The Gift Theatre), Dexter Bullard on Mies Julie (Victory Gardens), and Elly Green on You for Me for You (Sideshow Theatre). As a writer, Cat’s plays include Trump Card, Apartment Complex, and Domestic Departure. Cat’s plays have been performed at Haven Theatre, Other Theatre, Brown/Trinity, North Central College, and the University of Chicago. Domestic Departure was awarded second place for the Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize. As a dramaturg, Cat has worked with Writers Theatre, Silk Road Rising, TimeLine Theatre, Sideshow Theatre, First Floor Theater, The Comrades, SoloChicago Theatre, Three Cat Productions, and Genesis Theatrical Productions. Cat is an MFA Directing candidate at Brown/Trinity (expected 2023), an artistic associate with Silk Road Rising, and a 2017/18 Directors Inclusion Initiate at Victory Gardens. carolanntan.com
bathhouse.ppt
by Jesús I. Valles ‘23 MFA directed by S. Andrew Watring ‘23 MFA
Cast: Clew ‘23 MFA Luis Ra Rivera ‘23 MFA Ben Connor ‘22 Anson Shyu ‘22.5 John Coady ‘23 Kai Thomani Tshikosi ‘22 MFA Rebecca-Anne Whittaker ‘22 MFA Assistant Directors ............................................. Abbi Page ‘22 Sierra Riley ‘24 Stage Manager ................................................. Will Malloy ‘25 Dramaturg ........................... Amanda Macedo, PhD Candidate
Content Warning:
Racism, references to specific radicalized violence, sexually explicit content, fetish, simulated sex, explicit bodily functions, discussions of human excrement, drug use, suicidal ideation, gun violence, mass murder, historic trauma, slurs, colonial violence.
Run Time: TBD
Approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes + 10 minute intermission Jesús I. Valles (they/them) is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, storyteller, and performer from Cd. Juarez/El Paso. Jesús is a 2021 CantoMundo fellowship recipient at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, a 2019 Lambda Literary fellow, a 2019 Walter E. Dakin Playwriting Fellow of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a recipient of the 2019 Letras Latinas Scholarship from the Community of Writers’ Poetry Workshop, and a poetry fellow at Idyllwild Arts Writers Week.
Jesús I. Valles cont. Jesús is also a 2018 Undocupoets Fellow, a 2018 Tin House Scholar, a fellow of The 2018 Poetry Incubator, and the runner-up in the 2017 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Their work has been published in The Shade Journal, The Texas Review, The New Republic, Palabritas, The Acentos Review, Quarterly West, The Mississippi Review, Palette, The Adroit Journal, BOAAT, The McNeese Review, and PANK. Their poetry has also been featured on NPR’s Code Switch, The Slowdown, The BreakBeat Poets’ LatiNext Anthology, and the Best New Poets 2020 anthology. As an actor, they are the recipient of four B. Iden Payne Awards, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama (2018), and Outstanding Original Script (2018) and they were nominated for the Mark David Cohen New Play Award for their play, (Un)Documents. They most recently starred as Penny Marshall in Victor I. Cazares’ Pinching Pennies with Penny Marshall: Death Rituals for Penny Marshall for New York Theatre Workshop. Jesús is currently OUTSider festival’s OUTsider-in-residence and an MFA playwriting student at Brown University Andrew Watring (Andrew) is a Black trans Object-theatre-creator, director, award-winning playwright, producer, performer, and Anarkata-in-training from sweet home Huntsville, Alabama. Andrew’s career has been dedicated to the creation and continued cultivation of Shakespeare is a White Supremacist, a thearical ritual grounded in Shakespeare’s colonizing effect on the American theatre; most recently staged with Main Street Players (Miami-Dade, FL). Select directing credits include: The Henriad, Richard III, White Noise, Hamletmachine, Passing: A Stage Play, Coriolanus. Andrew was a member of the Directors Lab North (2021); graduate of the Theatre Lab Life Stories Institutie (2019); an Honored Playwright at the New South Young Playwright’s Festival. Andrew founded and served as the Artistic Director of the Fractal Theatre Collective, an anti-capitalist arts organization that embraced community-led, direct action as an integral element of theatrical design. Andrew’s projects currently in development: Black. Queer. Providence; The Brilliant Failed Kidnapping of Edgar Allen Poe to Incite Black Revolution in Baltimore in 1849; or The Slave Play; The Decathexis Cycle. Andrew holds a BA in Theatre from American University, and is an MFA candidate at Brown University / Trinity Repertory Company. https://www.andrewwatring.com/
the creature
by Alexa Derman ‘23 MFA directed by Molly Houlahan ‘23 MFA
Cast: Madeleine Adriance ‘23.5 Myka Cue ‘23 MFA Cosima Gardey ‘24 Claire Koenig ‘23 MFA Fiona Maguire ‘23 MFA Gabby Momah ‘23 MFA Hillel Rosenshine ‘22 Madeleine Russell ‘23 MFA Chingwe Padraig Sullivan ‘23 MFA
Assistant Director ............................................. Lydia Riess 24 Stage Manager ............................................... Jessie Jing ‘22.5 Dramaturg ........................... Beckett Warzer, , PhD Candidate
Content Warning:
Medical/obstetric violence, sexual violence, gun violence, death
Run Time:
Approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes
Alexa Derman is a playwright from Jersey. Her plays include PSYCHOPSYCHOTIC (Relentless Award Honorable Mention), GIRLISH (Fresh Ink Theatre), and RESTORATION MASTER RESET (Cutting Ball in WAYS TO LEAVE A BODY). She’s been a finalist for Playwrights Realm’s Writing Fellowship, the Starr Reading Series, Pegasus PlayLab, Kitchen Dog New Works, and Unicorn Plays-in-Progress; semifinalist for Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the O’Neill. Other honors and experiences include nomination for the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, a residency with StageFemmes at Kenyon College, selection as a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow, and at Yale the Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting. Her work has been developed with Cutting Ball Variety Pack and Fresh Ink. BA from Yale in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. Alexa is currently pursuing her MFA at Brown, where she is a member of the Brown-RISD Game Developers and recipient of the Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship. alexaderman.com Molly Houlahan (she/hers) is the previous Associate Artistic Director of Congressional Award-Winning Hypokrit Theatre Company. Hypokrit has developed work with institutions such as The Public, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, New Georges, Rattlestick, Lincoln Center/LCT3, and UNICEF amongst others. Houlahan’s select directing credits include Transhumance (Austin,TX Fringe, Auckland Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe), In Search of Maria Theresa (Cell Theatre), Gospel of the Marys (Furnace Festival), R+J (Access Theatre), How To Succeed as an Ethnically Ambiguous Actor starring Zenobia Shroff from “The Big Sick” (Castillo Theatre), Scorched (The Araca Project), and Still Life (NYC International Fringe Festival). Molly has assistant/associate directed for Kate Whoriskey, Anne Kauffman, Rebecca Taichman, Les Waters, Dan Sullivan, Tony Taccone, Lynne Meadow, and Mary Zimmerman among others at institutions such as The Public, Playwrights Horizons, Encores! at NYCC, The Town Hall, Berkeley Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the New York Philharmonic. She has worked in the producing department at The Public, the artistic department at Steppenwolf, and as the assistant to the Artistic Director at Berkeley Rep. She has assisted artists such as Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding”) and Sarah Jones (“Sell/Buy/Date”). 2019 Manhattan Theatre Club Directing Fellow, 2017 Playwrights Horizons Directing Fellow, 20152016 Bret C. Harte Directing Fellow at Berkeley Rep, and the winner of the Louis Sudler Prize upon graduating Yale
throwback island
by Ro Reddick ‘24 MFA directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy ‘22 MFA
Cast: The Voice ................................................... Boniat Ephrem ‘22 Ashanti ............................................... Gabby Momah ‘23 MFA Demarcus ............................................. JaQuan Jones ‘23 MFA Kayla .............................................. Madeleine Barker ‘22 MFA Madison ............................................ Sophie LaRuelle ‘23 MFA Paulie ...................................................... Hillel Rosenshine ‘22 Jackson ........................................Gunnar Manchester ‘22 MFA Tyler ....................................................................Amit Levi ‘24 Assistant Director ........................................ Peter Zubiago ‘22 Stage Manager ...................................... Sophia Decherney ‘25 Dramaturg .................................... JD Stokely , PhD Candidate Music Credits “Throwback Island Theme” Lyrics: Ronica Reddick Music & Music Production/Arrangement: Nick Pulito “Fallin’” Music & Lyrics: Ronica Reddick Music Production/Arrangement: Nick Pulito
Content Warning:
Anti-blackness and racism, queerphobia, sexism, White Supremacy, alcohol use, descriptions of graphic imagery, images of violent coercion
Sensory Warning: Loud noises
Run Time:
Approximately 90 minutes
Ro Reddick (she/her) is a playwright, performer, songwriter and first year MFA Playwriting student at Brown University. Her plays include Throwback Island (Bushwick Starr Reading Series ‘22), ROBAMA (Williamstown Theater Festival NYC Reading ‘22), Miss Black Syracuse (The Duplex), and The History of Black People Making White People Better People (co-writer Daryl Lathon). Her script The Fam was a semi-finalist for the MACRO x Blacklist Episodic Lab, and her short film A Test In Stamina premiered at the Big Apple Film Festival. Ro is a recipient of the Miranda Theatre Company 2021 Playwright Grant. As an actor, Ro has performed at theaters including the McCarter, Long Wharf, KC Rep, and Hartford Stage, off-Broadway in “Silence! The Musical”, and on screen in The Americans, Louie, and SATC 2. She formerly sang with a country, rock, and blues band and has written over a dozen original songs with musician Ron Gross. She is currently in the Brown Arts Institute Songwriters Workshop. Ro has a BFA in Acting from Ithaca College and an MBA from NYU, which she has no intention of using. Aileen Wen McGroddy (she/her) is a Chinese- and Irish-American theatre director, educator, and producer of live events. Her work is imaginative, inclusive, and playfully experimental, coming from a robust background in physical theatre and a deep commitment to hospitality. She became a person in New York; a theatre maker in Chicago; and a soon-to-be Master of Fine Arts in Directing (2021) at Brown-Trinity in Providence, RI. Credits include: On The Y-Axis by Lucas Baisch, Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams, Akira Kurosawa Explains his Movies and Yogurt by Julia Izumi, and The Tempest by William Shakespeare adapted by Aileen McGroddy (BrownTrinity); Or, by Liz Duffy-Adams (Winnipesaukee Playhouse); Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical and The Snowy Day (Emerald City Theatre); Montauciel Takes Flight (Lifeline Theatre); Ulysses (The Plagiarists); A Hero’s Journey, The Hunting of the Snark, Robin Hood, and The Pied Piper (The Forks & Hope Ensemble); The Whiskey Radio Hour, Wake: A Folk Opera, Kodachrome Telephone and Sign of Rain (The Whiskey Rebellion); Gentle, The Edge of Our Bodies, Music Hall, The Anyway Cabaret (TUTA); The Nose and Reika and the Wolves (Mudlark Theatre); and In This Final Century (Theatre-Hikes). She has assisted at The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Trinity Rep, Court Theatre, The Actors’ Gymnasium, The Hypocrites, and The House. Before moving to Providence, she was the artistic director of The Forks & Hope Ensemble and the Whiskey Rebellion; she was a company member of TUTA, sat on the steering committee of DirectorsLabChicago, and on the producing team of Physical Festival Chicago.
the pardon
by Harley Elias ‘24 MFA directed by Brian Mertes
Cast: Margerida ................................................... Peyton Strong ‘22 Francisca/Marcellus .............................. Elizabeth Edwards ‘24 Narrator/Ensemble ....................................... Sean Toomey ‘24 Garcia/Marta/Felix ....................................... Ishani Sharma ‘24 Diogo ................................. Chingwe Padraig Sullivan ‘23 MFA Gaspar ................................................. Luis Ra Rivera ‘23 MFA Antonio/Abbas/Albus ......................................... Clew ‘23 MFA Assistant Director .................................... Jenna Benzinger ‘22 Stage Manager ..................................................... Julia Vaz ‘25 Dramaturg .................. Mohammad Kimiagari, PhD Candidate
Content Warning:
Religious violence, antisemitism, depiction of suicide, sexual themes, violence, drowning/asphyxiation, self-harm kink (themes of domination)
Run Time:
Approximately 90 minutes
Harley Elias is a playwright from New York. He has been the recipient of residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, with Resonance Ensemble, a Fulbright Grant, two Samuel French OOB Awards, Young Playwrights Award, the Hester-Franklin Prize, and his Play #3 is published by Samuel French. As an actor he has performed in several Broadway shows and national tours. Harley is a first year MFA in playwriting at Brown.
In Memoriam: James O. Barnhill ,Professor Emeritus James Orris Barnhill, born on May 23, 1922 and died October 16, 2021. Born in Sumner, Mississippi, a son of the late Reverend James A. and Louise (Sullivan) Barnhill, and brother of the late Joseph M. Barnhill. He was a Providence resident for over 60 years. He was educated at Mississippi College, Yale University (B.A. 1947), and New York University (M.A. 1949) before returning to Yale for School of Drama (M.F.A. 1954). He taught for one year at Dubuque University in Iowa and started as an Instructor at Brown University in Providence in 1954, where he became an Assistant Professor of English in 1958 and Professor in 1975. He was appointed Professor of Theater Arts in 1978 and was one of the founding members of Brown’s Theatre, Speech, and Dance Department, serving as its first Chairperson and facilitating the founding of the Rites and Reason Theatre of the Africana Studies Department. He remained active with the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies after his retirement in 1987. He was instrumental in setting up Brown’s joint programs with Tougaloo College in Jackson, MS and taught there in 1979-1980 and 1984-1985. He was also a Fulbright Professor of English at Calicut University, Baroda, Gujarat, India in 1983-84, taught at RI School of Design 1986-1994, and taught at the University of the Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan from 1995 to 1997. During WWII, he was in the US Navy in the Pacific Theatre and was the Executive Officer of a landing craft participating in the Okinawa campaign and in the Occupation of Japan. In Providence, he was one of the founders of Trinity Square Repertory Theatre, working for 3 seasons with the company and serving in a variety of positions, including stage manager and actor. During his time at Brown, he directed over 200 plays and at RISD he started a cabaret with Visiting Professor Szymon Bojko and Agnieszka Taborska from Poland. At Brown, Barnhill had many students who became well-known actors and theatre practitioners, including James Naughton, Kate Burton, Aunjanue Ellis, Jobeth Williams, Laura Linney, John Lee Beatty, Richard Foreman, and many others.
Don B. Wilmeth, Professor Emeritus Don B. Wilmeth (Ph.D., U. of Illinois, 1964), born in Houston, Texas, in 1939, was an Asa Messer Professor Emeritus and Emeritus Professor of Theatre and of English, Brown University, retiring in 2003 after thirty-six years there, sixteen as chair of the theatre department. He was the author, editor, coeditor, or series editor of over four dozen books, including the award-winning three-volume Cambridge History of American Theatre, which has been issued in a paperback edition. In 2007 he completed a new edition of the Cambridge Guide to American Theatre.In addition to Brown, he taught at Smith College, Tufts University, and Trinity University (Texas), and was a distinguished speaker at various universities and professional meetings, including the Universities of Indiana, Washington, and Wisconsin, and the Mid-American Theatre Conference where he served as respondent. He is considered a pioneer in the serious study of American popular entertainment and an established authority on the history of American theatre and drama. A former president of the American Society for Theatre Research and dean emeritus of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, Don Wilmeth served as vice president of the International Shaw Society, hosting an international Bernard Shaw conference at Brown, June 2006. He was the recipient of career and research recognitions from the New England Theatre Conference, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the Society for Theatre Research (UK), the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Theatre Library Association. ATHE also honored him for his work as an editor. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Mr. Wilmeth was an actor and director, and an ardent collector of theatre and entertainment ephemera and memorabilia, as well as books on the history of the theatre (over 5,000). He was a proud member of the local (Keene) Hourglass Readers. He mounted exhibits drawn from his collection at Franklin Pierce University as well as one at the Cheshire County (NH) Historical Society. During the Brown University commencement in 2008 he received the William Williams Award, the most prestigious honor given by the Brown University Library.