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Winners of National Playwrighting Competition make off-Broadway debuts.
By Daniel Rothberg Two one-act plays, first written for the 2008 Harvard-Westlake Playwrights Festival, were performed professionally off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theater from Jan. 11 to 13. Among the winners this year were Maddy SprungKeyser ’09 and Justin Kuritzkes ’08. The plays were performed as part of a conference hosted by Young Playwrights Inc., an organization founded by acclaimed dramatist Stephen Sondheim. Every year, Young Playwrights Inc. hosts a conference for the winners of its National Playwrighting Competition. At the conference, the young playwrights participated in workshops, had rehearsals and met with professional playwrights. Sprung-Keyser’s winning play, “Family Portrait,” explores what happens when police arrive at the home of a couple bearing nude pictures of their two-year-old daughter that were developed at a one-hour photo shop. “For the first time, I actually got to sit in the rehearsals and work with the director,” Sprung-Keyser said. “I had so much fun and learned a lot about the editing process.” Kuritzkes’ play, “An Autobiography About My Brother,” is about a man who attempts to write his autobiography on the eve of the execution of his brother, a serial killer. “You learn something new every time your work gets read in front of an audience. What exactly that is, is hard to say because it’s so specific to the play that you’re currently working on,” Kuritzkes said. “Maybe I learned —Maddy that I overwrite a lot of the time.” Young Playwrights Inc. flew Kuritzkes and Sprung-Keyser ‘09
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IT HAS CERTAINLY MOTIVATED ME TO CONTINUE PURSUING PLAYWRIGHTING EVEN IN THE HECTIC WORLD THAT COLLEGE IS.”
Feb. 10, 2010
Sprung-Keyser, along with the eight other winning playwrights, to New York and put them up in midtown Manhattan for the weeklong conference. On the second day of the conference, the young dramatists sat in an office for 13 hours straight, listening to cold readings of the plays. “Sounds terrible? It was probably one of my favorite parts,” Sprung-Keyser said. “It was not only fun to hear the plays but [it was also fun] to watch the actors, who had never heard, seen, or read the plays before, figure their characters out.” At night, the playwrights often saw shows in New York City. “It’s always interesting to see what other people in our generation are writing, especially in the context of a festival like this one, where you’ve got people from all over the country,” Kuritzkes said. “I’d have to say that was probably the most interesting thing about the conference.” The young writers also had the opportunity to take workshops and have dinner with distinguished playwrights while in New York. “It has certainly motivated me to continue pursuing playwrighting even in the hectic world that college is,” Sprung-Keyser said. In fact, because of the conference, Sprung-Keyser, a freshman at Amherst College, is considering a double major so that she may “pursue playwrighting more fully.” Sprung-Keyser is currently working on two plays and hopes to devote more time to them in the spring once her swim season is over. Kuritzkes, a sophomore at Brown University, is also currently working on a new play. “What it’s about is something that I’m still trying to figure out,” he said. The National Playwrighting Competition is not the first time Kuritzkes and Sprung-Keyser have been recognized for their writing. In 2008, Kuritzkes’s play “Hawaii” was performed at a birthday charity fundraiser for the writer of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Edward Albee. Additionally, two of Sprung-Keyser’s plays were staged at the Blank Theatre Company’s Young Playwrights Festival. “I can’t be any prouder of them,” Harvard-Westlake Playwrights Festival Director Christopher Moore said.
photo courtesy of Brooke LEvin
centerstage: Brandon Levin ’09, a freshman at Yale University, sings a solo while peforming with his a capella group, the Yale Spizzwinks, in St. Michaels church.
Alum solos with Spizzwinks(?) at St. Michaels By Lauren Seo
As all 19 members of America’s oldest underclassman a cappella group took the stage at St. Michael’s Church, the audience erupted in applause, anticipating the widely acclaimed performance by the Yale Spizzwinks(?). The performance took place on Saturday Jan. 2 and was the first concert to start their winter tour. The set included about 19 songs, each one arranged by a Yale student or alum, and was performed in front of about 300 people that night. The songs were diverse in their musical genres and included everything from country to pop to American folk. Among those performed were “On
Broadway,” “Bless the Broken Road” and “Shenandoah”. Jilli Marine ’10, who sang with Levin in Chamber Singers last year, said she was very impressed with Brennan Caldwell’s solo in “Grace Kelly.” “He was amazing – he sounded exactly like Mika [, the original performer],” she said. In its tradition of comedy, the Spizzwinks(?) also included a skit comically depicting the folly of a Harvard football player. Brandon Levin ’09, who arranged the performance, said he was glad to be performing again near his high school. “It was nice to sing in front of family and friends,” he said. A few days following their performance, the
Spizzwinks(?) also came on campus to perform an abridged set for students in Bel Canto and Chamber Singers. “I really liked it,” Megan Fleming ’10 said. “The music choices were fun and all the guys were really talented.” During their tour, which lasted for nine days, the Spizzwinks(?) performed about 20 concerts at such venues as the Peninsula Beverly Hills and various high schools. The group, which started in 1914, rehearses for seven hours a week. They plan on touring South America and Asia during Spring Break and the summer, respectively, and will be performing in such countries as Ecuador, Brazil, Paraguay, Hong Kong and Thailand.