Writing is Live | Part 2: the thesis shows

Chair

Jayna Brown Chair, Professor

Department Faculty

Michelle Bach-Coulibaly Senior Lecturer

Constance Crawford Adjunct Lecturer

Sarah dAngelo Assistant Professor, DUS

Lisa D’Amour Visiting Assistant Professor

J Dellecave Assistant Professor of the Practice

Nancy Dunbar Senior Lecturer Emerita

John Emigh Professor Emeritus

Becky Gibel Adjunct Lecturer

Spencer Golub Professor Emeritus

Renee Surprenant Fitzgerald Lecturer

Leon Hilton Assistant Professor

Avery Willis Hoffman Professor of the Practice

Julia Jarcho Associate Professor, Head of Playwriting

Melissa Kievman Artistic Producer of Writing is Live Festival, Adjunct Lecturer

Lowry Marshall Professor Emerita

Kym Moore Professor

Iván Ramos Assistant Professor

Stacey Karen Robinson Adjunct Lecturer

Patricia Seto-Weiss Assistant Professor of the Practice

Sydney Skybetter Senior Lecturer

Deborah Salem Smith Adjunct Lecturer

Julie Adams Strandberg Distinguished Senior Lecturer Emerita

Barbara Tannenbaum Distinguished Senior Lecturer

Elmo Terry-Morgan Associate Professor

Paula Vogel Professor Emerita

Richard Waterhouse Adjunct Lecturer

Patricia Ybarra Professor, DGS

Department Staff

Jo Bynum Student Affairs Manager

Ron Cesario Costume Shop Manager, Lecturer

Alexander Eizenberg Sound Designer, Audio-& Video Engineer

Alex Haynes John Street Studio Technical Director, Lecturer

Timothy Hett Technical Director, Lighting Designer, Lecturer

Alex Nurkin Academic Events and Facilities Manager

Max Ramirez Associate Technical Director

Chris Redihan Academic Department Manager

Barbara Reo Production Director, Stage Manager, Lecturer

Fran Romasco Costume Shop Coordinator

Brianne Shaw Communications and Audience Services Manager

Laura Stokes Performing Arts Librarian, University Library

Brown/Trinity Program Faculty

Shura Baryshnikov Head of Movement, DGS, Assistant Professor of the Practice

Angela Brazil Associate Professor of the Practice, Director of MFA Programs

Rachel Christopher Assistant Professor of the Practice

Grant Chapman Adjunct Lecturer, Voice & Speech

Curt Columbus Artistic Director of Trinity Rep, Professor of the Practice

Brian Mertes Head of Directing, Professor of the Practice,

Sophia Skiles Head of Acting, Associate Professor of the Practice

Brown/ Trinity Program Staff

Jeremy Chiang Technical Director

Michael Cline Technical Supervisor

Anne Harrigan Production Manager

Sammi Haskell Program Coordinator

Jill Jann MFA Academic Coordinator

Brown University’s Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies presents

writing is live

a festival of new work by Brown MFA playwrights part 2: the thesis shows

March 15 - 19, 2023

Leeds Theatre

by

Play House

by

Spread

Valles

Festival Staff

Head of MFA Playwriting ...................................... Julia Jarcho

Interim Head of MFA Playwriting........................ Lisa D’Amour

Artistic Producer ........................................... Melissa Kievman

Workshop Leader for MFA Playwriting, Fall 2022.....................

Stacey Karen Robinson

Production Director / Producer ............................ Barbara Reo

Festival Designer/Scenic Artist.... Renee Surprenant Fitzgerald

Audience Services and Communications Manager ...................

Brianne Shaw

Technical Director/Lighting Designer ........................ Tim Hett

Sound Designer/ AV Engineer .......................... Alex Eizenberg

Props Supervisor .................................................. Alex Haynes

Associate Technical Director ............................... Max Ramirez

Costume Shop Manager ....................................... Ron Cesario

Costume Coordinator ........................................ Fran Romasco

Professor of the Practice & Head of Directing for Brown/Trinity Programs ..... Brian Mertes

Associate Professor of the Practice & Head of Acting for Brown/Trinity Programs ........ Sophia Skiles

Run Crew:

Eliza Hartnick, Yike “Coco” Li, Noelle Abeyta, Stephen O’Donnell, Juliana Esteban, Michelle Liu, Sidharth Raj, Stefano Salame

Special Thanks

Brown Arts Institute, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts Staff

Writing Is Live is made possible through support from an endowed fund for the Adele Kellenberg Seaver ‘49 Professorship in Literary Arts.

The Brown University Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies’ 2022-2023 production season is generously supported by the Kathryn and Gilbert Miller Theatre Arts Endowment, the Ben Brown Memorial Fund, and the Irene Lewisohn and Alice Lewisohn Crowley Endowment

Play House

by Alexa Derman ‘23 MFA

directed

by Molly Houlahan ‘23 MFA

Performers:

Claire Koenig ‘23 MFA: Jo

Sophie Zmorrod ‘23 MFA: Mona

David Mattar Merten ‘23 MFA: Drew

Ross Barron ‘23 MFA: Ben

Sofia Tazi ‘26: Thing 1

Maddie Groff ‘23: Thing 2

Myka Cue ‘23 MFA: Puppeteer

Crew:

Ania Briscoe ‘23: Stage Manager

Renée Surprenant Fitzgerald: Scenic & Props Design

Heather C. Freedman: Costume Design

Tim Hett: Lighting Design

Alex Eizenberg: Sound Design

Eli Nixon ‘18 MFA: Puppet Design

Aileen Wen McGroddy ‘22 MFA: Intimacy Coordinator

Maxime Hendrikse Liu ‘23: Fight Director

Josephine Miller ‘24: Assistant Director & Light Board Operator

Anne Washburn: Dramaturg

Play House

by Alexa Derman ‘23 MFA

directed by Molly Houlahan ‘23 MFA

Content Warning:

This production contains depictions of murder, kidnapping, animal death/cruelty, sounds of gunshots, and the use of prop guns, knives, blood, and a sex toy.

Sensory Warning:

Loud noises, screaming, gunshots, abrupt changes in light, haze, and movement in close proximity to the audience seating.

Run Time: Approximately 90 minutes

Special Thanks:

Fresh Ground Pepper BRB Retreat, Jesús Valles, Seayoung

Yim, Nkenna Akunna, Julia Jarcho, Lisa D’Amour, Dhari Noel, Kathy Ng, Ro Reddick, Harley Elias, Shannon Ryu, Fiona Maguire, Mario Gomez, Madison Fiedler, Isabel Kim, Andrew Gombas, Hannah Moloshok.

Alexa Derman is a playwright from Jersey who writes about gender, systems, and speculation. Her plays include PSYCHOPSYCHOTIC (Relentless Award Honorable Mention), GIRLISH (Fresh Ink Theatre), RESTORATION MASTER RESET (Cutting Ball in WAYS TO LEAVE A BODY), and I’LL BE IN MY HANUKKAH PALACE (sold-out at Ars Nova ANT Fest). She is a 2022-2023 Core Apprentice at the Playwrights Center and currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club via the Sloan Foundation. Alexa has been a finalist for Jewish Plays Project, Playwrights Realm’s Writing Fellowship, the Starr Reading Series, Pegasus PlayLab, Kitchen Dog New Works, and Unicorn Playsin-Progress; semifinalist for Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the O’Neill. Other honors and experiences include Orchard Project Audio Lab, Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB Retreat, an upcoming residency with Ragdale, nomination for the Cherry Lane Mentor project and the Susan Smith Blackburn, a residency with StageFemmes at Kenyon College, 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. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Brown and is a staff writer on an upcoming Netflix series. alexaderman.com

Molly Houlahan (she/hers) is a Providence based queer director. She is the previous Associate Artistic Director of Congressional AwardWinning 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 University.

Spread

by Jesús I. Valles ‘23 MFA

directed by Sierra Riley ‘24 & Jesús I. Valles ‘23 MFA

Performers:

Dhruv Anand ‘25: Jordan M.

Will Benjamin ‘23.5: Jeffrey R.

Cameron Curney ‘24: Chris V.

Anirudh Narsipur ‘24: Andrew R.

Crew:

Sophie Rockwell ‘26: Stage Manager

Renée Surprenant Fitzgerald: Scenic Design

Fabian Aguilar: Costume Design

Tim Hett: Lighting Design

Mauricio Escamilla: Sound Design

Alex Haynes: Props Design

Kai Tshikosi ‘23 MFA: Intimacy & Violence Coordinator

Tatyana-Marie Carlo ‘20 MFA: Directing Consultant

Navaiya Willaims ‘25: Sound Board Operator

Ford Rowe ‘24: Sound Board Operator

Spread

by Jesús I. Valles ‘23 MFA

directed by Sierra Riley ‘24 & Jesús I. Valles ‘23 MFA

Content Warning:

Brief mentions of colonial rape, enslavement, inappropriate teacher/student relationships, and school shootings, descriptions of sex acts, occasional use of homophobic, mysoginisitc, fatphobic, and disability-related slurs, sounds of murder, and moaning.

Sensory Warning:

A general sensory warning: this show includes moments of loud school bells, screaming, sounds of someone being murdered and moaning.

Run Time:

Approximately 90 minutes

Special Thanks:

My immense gratitude to Julia Jarcho, Lisa D’Amour, Melissa Kievman and Brian Mertes for their guidance in my attempts to direct. Though they are credited for their labor, it bears repeating that the entire cast, design, and support team for the show have made this play come to be in such generous, sweet, kind ways. I’m so honored to have had this group of people gift this play so much care and love for the last few weeks. My deep gratitude, too, for the writers of the MFA playwriting workshop in the spring of 2022 - they were the first people to voice these kids. Thank y’all!

Playwrights Note:

This play was written with a great deal of love for the students at Akins High School. I offer the play in loving memory of Christy Mata, who was a phenomenal colleague, and Isaac Villafranco, who was a sweet, kind student. I offer this play, too, to the students at A Place Called Home, who assured me that there is an audience for this kind of story.

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 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

Sierra Riley is a theatre and history major from Kalispell, Montana. Since elementary school theatre camp, he has explored as many facets of theatre-making as he could, from acting to tech to management to producing. He completed a production internship at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival last summer, and is excited to continue his professional experience this summer as an apprentice with Montana Shakespeare In The Parks. He plans to bring together all he has learned on- and back-stage (and in history books) as a director. His work as a director to date includes Poe’s Midnight Dreary, The Rocky Horror Show, Talk To Me Like The Rain And Let Me Listen, and On The Town. He is very grateful to have another opportunity to work on WIL with Jesús, having assistant directed their play bathhouse.ppt for last year’s festival. When not in the theatre, you can find him in an antique shop, skateboarding, or jamming out to his record collection.

Up Next in TAPS

Festival of Dance

produced by Patricia Seto-Weiss

May 4 - 7

Ashamu Dance Studio

Tickets available in April

This year’s Festival of Dance opens with a performance that showcases new works by Theatre Arts and Performance Studies faculty Shura Baryshnikov and J Dellecave.

Shura Baryshnikov and Providence-based cellist Adrienne Taylor will perform their co-created work Two. Interested in deeply tuning to the other, Taylor and Baryshnikov’s new work focuses on the vulnerable passage between pre-composed materials and improvisatory scoring. Within this fundamental pursuit, the duo has pursued true horizontality, creating new - common - languages and modes of understanding through the tender states revealed in patient, creative research.

J Dellecave will present an excerpt of the work-in-progress Connect Four or Railroad Legacy—an original dance theater work made in collaboration with Brooklyn-based performers Rosza Daniel Lang/Levitsky and Zavé Martohardjono. Through complex walking patterns, hits and misses, and a healthy dose of restarts, this new work explores the rhythms, contours, and textures of missed connections and reconnections.

The weekend shows feature student performers and new dances developed within course settings. Represented styles range from contemporary dance and ballet to FlexN. Choreographers include Deidra Braz, J Dellecave, Maree Remalia, Elias Schwartz ’23, Patricia Seto-Weiss, Paul Singh, and Marc Spielberger.

Department Staff

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR: Barbara Reo

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR/ LIGHTING DESIGNER: Tim Hett

ASSOCIATE TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: Max Ramirez

SOUND DESIGNER / ENGINEER / A/V COORDINATOR: Alex Eizenberg

JOHN STREET STUDIO TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: Alex Haynes

JOHN STREET STUDIO ASSISTANTS: Noah Medina '23.5

Josephine Miller '24, Cleo Petty '23.5, Navaiya Williams '25

COSTUME SHOP MANAGER: Ron Cesario

COSTUME SHOP COORDINATOR: Fran Romasco

COSTUME SHOP ASSISTANTS: Abigail Bachenberg '23

Evangeline Bilger '23, Glory Lee '23, Ines Sawiris '24

Kayla Walford '26, Charlotte Knutsen '26, Skye Robinson ‘25

DEPARTMENT MANAGER: Chris Redihan

STUDENT AFFAIRS MANAGER: Jo Bynum

EVENTS AND FACILITIES MANAGER: Alex Nurkin

CUSTODIAN: Achim C Tah

COMMUNICATIONS & AUDIENCE SERVICES MANAGER: Brianne Shaw

MARKETING ASSISTANT: Aizhaneya Carter '23 MFA

FRONT OF HOUSE AND ASSISTANTS: Grace Martin '26, Alex

Pelsor '24, Owen Ryan '23

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.