Mad Cow Theatre's 7th Annual Science Play Festival

7th Annual

June

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202 , 6 2 & 25

r t a e h T w o C Mad E N I L N O

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VIRTUAL DRAMA CLUB

June 25, 2020

What is a Science Play? This event, moderated by Jim Braswell, a Central FL performer seen in Mad Cow Theatre’s SPF Festival (The Water Engine), Fences, The Brothers Size, and Yellowman, will look into the relationship between science and art at the intersection of theatre.

Special Guests

Denise Gillman is an Associate Professor of Directing & Dramatic Literature at Christopher Newport University (CNU) in Newport News, VA and a Stage Directors and Choreographers Union member. Science-themed plays have been a major focus of her teaching, research and scholarship and both her professional and educational directing activity. She has created, along with some former and current students, a science plays catalogue website (scienceplays.org/) that provides information about published science plays. She previously directed Photograph 51 at Mad Cow Theatre.

Lauren Gunderson is a playwright, screenwriter and short story author from Atlanta, GA. She received her BA in English/Creative Writing at Emory University, and her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch. She was named the most produced playwright in America by American Theatre Magazine in 2017 and 2019 and many other distinguished awards.

Her plays Silent Sky and Ada & The Engine have been featured in past Science Play Festivals with Silent Sky being fully produced in 2018.

Laura Maria Censabella is the recipient of multiple EST/Sloan Project commissions and has had her plays produced all across the country. She has won three grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts for her plays Abandoned in Queens and Carla Cooks The War, and her screenplay Truly Mary and is the winner of two daytime Emmys for writing on As the World Turns. Graduate: Yale College, B.A. in Philosophy. Her play Paradise was featured sin a past Science Play Festival.

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CLIMATE CHANGE THEATRE ACTION June 26, 2020

Every other year, fifty professional playwrights, representing all inhabited continents as well as several cultures and Indigenous nations, are commissioned to write five minute plays about an aspect of climate change. Mad Cow Theatre has selected a few of these for your enjoyment.

In order of reading:

Bare Spaces by Angella Emurwon Featuring: Rachel Finley Directed by Cynthia Beckert Angella Umurwon (Uganda) is an award-winning playwright, stage director, and filmmaker. Her first full length play, Strings, was selected to open the 2017 Kampala International Theatre Festival and at the 2015 PEN World Voices International PLay Festival. When she is not dreaming and writing in small-town Tororo, she is a screenwriting mentor for the Maisha Film Labs (East Africa) and a willing odd-jobs doer.

About That Chocolate Ba r … by Joan Lipkin Featuring: Katie DeBari & Susi Rivera Directed by Jessica Kaschube

Joan Lipkin is a United States based Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre Company, award-winning playwright, director, producer, educator and social activist. She specializes in devising/producing work with underserved populations, helping people to tell the stories of their lives that have both individual and collective relevance. Her plays are widely anthologized, have been both produced and published internationally, and are included in several other rapid-response theatre projects, including Every 28 hours and After Orlando.

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A Holiday on Ice in a Warm Climate by Julie McKee Featuring: Gail Bartell & Tommy Keesling Directed by Cynthia Beckert Julie McKee (US/New Zealand) is a playwright whose plays have been performed all over the US, New Zealand and Germany. The Sloan Foundation of Science and Technology/EST Project commissioned The Secret Life of Seaweed. Her plays are published by Smith & Kraus and Playscripts Inc. Julie has received fellowships from New York Foundation of the Arts, Sundance Playwrights Lab, MacDowell Colony, VCCA, and St. James Cavalier in Malta. She is graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Blood on the Leaves by Madeline Sayet Featuring: Katie DeBari & Susi Rivera Directed by Jessica Kaschube Madeline Sayet (Mohegan) is an award-winning theater maker who believes the stories we pass down inform our collective possible futures.

For her work, she has been honored as a 2019 Drama League Director-In-Residence, a 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Hollywood & Entertainment, TED Fellow, MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, National Directing Fellow, and a recipient of The White House Champion of Change Award from President Obama. www.madelinesayet.com

Pond Life by Elyne Quan Featuring Julie Snyder & Susi Rivera Directed by Jessica Kaschube Elyane Quan (Canada) is a writer, actor, and director for theatre, film, and interactive media. Playwriting credits include Souvenirs of Home, Stray, Surface Tension, Lig & Bittle (co-written/co-performed with Jared Matsunaga-Turnbull), and Cuisine for CCTA 2015. She is a former President of the board of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University and a BA Honours degree in Drama from the University of Alberta.

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The Donation by Jordan Hall

Featuring Rachel Finley & Justin Schneyer Directed by Cynthia Beckert Jordan Hall (Canada) is a playwright and screenwriter based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work focuses on climate change, inequality and the development of the fully-realized female protagonist.

She is the author of Kayak and How to Survive an Apocalypse. As a screenwriter, Jordan co-created Carmilla: The Series (Winner: CSA, Digital Fiction) for Shaftesbury Entertainment, and was Carmilla’s lead writer for three seasons and subsequent movie. She teaches screenwriting at Capilano University. www.jordanhall.cam

The Reason by Stephen Sewelll Featuring Katie DeBari & Anthony Pyatt Directed by Jessica Kaschube Stephen Sewell is an Australian writer and teacher who heads the Writing Department at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, in Sydney Australia. A prize-winning playwright and screenwriter, he is a well known and public advocate of progressive issues, ranging from the environment to indigenous and workers rights. As a writer, he believes in a future that is creative, free and respectful, not only of human rights but of our fellow creatures on this beautiful, fragile planet.

The Rookery by Elaine Avila

Featuring Julie Snyder & Katie DeBari Directed by Jessica Kaschube Elaine Avila (US/Canada) is a playwright, co-founder of the Climate Change Theatre Action, and Fulbright Scholar to the Azores, Portugal for 2019. Her plays tell untold stories of women, workers, the Portuguese, and climate change. Favorite Best New PLay Awards: Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Victoria Critics Circle, Panama City’s Festival de los Cocos. She is distinguished as a descendentes notaveis (Notable Descendant) for her theater work by the Government of the Azores, Portugal.

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Breathing Space by Yvette Nolan Featuring Gail Bartell & Tommy Keesling Directed by Cynthia Beckert Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director, and dramaturg.

She has written dozens of plays, long and short, some of which are Annie Maeʼs Movement, Alaska, The Unplugging, Prophecy, and the libretto Shanawdithit. She loves the short form play. Her book Medicine Shows about Indigenous theatre in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015, and Performing Indigeneity, which she co-edited with Ric Knowles, in 2016. She is an Artistic Associate of Signal Theatre.

There are a lot of stories you can tell about humanity

by David Finnigan Featuring: Katie DeBari, Rachel Finley, Tommy Keesling, Susi Rivera, Justin Schneyer Directed by Cynthia Beckert David Finnigan is a writer and performer raised on Ngunawal land in Australia

Special Thanks to Rep. Anna Eskamani for being present and being an advocate for the arts and climate change.

For more info go to climatechangetheatreaction.com

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