Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 25, 2000

Volume 28, Number 22

Playwriting festival will showcase
new works by drama students

The fruits of a unique mentorship program that pairs students at the School of Drama with experienced playwrights will be featured at a festival in New York City on Friday, March 3.

The Yale Playwrights at New Dramatists Playreading Festival will be held noon-5 p.m. at New Dramatists, the center for American playwrights, 424 West 44th Street, New York.

Playwright and screenwriter Eric Overmyer is master of ceremonies for the event, which will showcase three new plays by students from the drama school's Class of 2000: "Bagging Groceries" by Mark Novom, "Notorious, For Men" by Brian W. Robinson and "Huggermugger" by Betty Shamieh. A reception will follow.

"We're particularly excited about this year's festival because it marks the completion of the program's first full cycle -- from internship through mentorship to festival," says Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, who codirects the collaboration with Mark Bly, chair of Yale's playwriting program and associate artistic director of Yale Repertory Theatre.

"Brian, Mark and Betty know New Dramatists and our community of writers knows them," adds London. "They've worked beside us, supporting the work of our member playwrights, and now it's our turn to support their work. It's our turn to welcome them as colleagues at the threshold of creative, productive lives in the theater."

The Yale/New Dramatists partnership began in 1998 as a way to nurture emerging student playwrights. The program pairs students in their second year of Yale's Master of Fine Arts playwriting program with a mentor, one of the New Dramatists' 40 member playwrights, for a 10-week internship program. This year, for example, Nilo Cruz mentored Novom, Gordon Dahlquist mentored Robinson, and Kia Corthron mentored Shamieh.

The Yale playwrights work closely with their mentors on a number of readings or workshops. The students not only learn the process of professional play development, but establish formative relationships with selected playwrights, directors, actors, dramaturgs and New Dramatists administrators.

In their third year of study at Yale, students return to New Dramatists to work with their playwright mentors -- as well as New Dramatists staff, directors and actors -- to mount a professional reading of their scripts.

"By joining forces with New Dramatists last year, we created an unprecedented opportunity for the Yale playwriting students, who are at a key juncture in their development as writers," says Bly. "The internships, workshops, festival readings, and playwriting mentors -- including David Lindsay-Abaire, Kia Corthron, Nilo Cruz, Gordon Dahlquist, Kate Moira Ryan, Edwin Sanchez, and Chay Yew -- have already had a significant impact on the emerging Yale playwrights."

As a direct result of the first festival in 1999, for example, several Yale playwrights have received staged readings at The Joseph Papp Public Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, South Coast Repertory, and New York Theatre Workshop.

For more information regarding the upcoming Yale Playwrights at New Dramatists Playreading Festival, call (212) 757-6960.

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