After a truly amazing week at the Kennedy Center, I am ready and psyched to be diving into my next play. So the timing is great to be participating for the first time in the Roundabout Space Jam! It’s me, and 7 other very quiet writers, sitting at desks in a rehearsal hall for five days staring at our notebooks and computer screens willing this new thing to happen. I hear lots of typing around me, and I have done some typing of my own already, so something is afoot! This new plays is a beast, so I am feeling inspired by all the wonderful people I met this past week to dive in and get something done. It’s going to be raw and messy and mostly terrible, but I am really hoping to have a first draft finished by the end of the week. Fingers crossed.

My butt goes here for the next five days.

I will be joining this group of wonderful artists at the Kennedy Center for a week in July, and I am so looking forward to it. I will be working with my super hero director and dramaturg on Sheltered. Haven’t been in DC since I did the fringe in 2008 and I am so excited to go back!

Great news! Sheltered was chosen as one of the winners at the Columbia@Roundabout new play reading series.  The program is unique in the country, awarding three playwrights from the current M.F.A. program and recent alumni with a cash prize as well as two readings in Roundabout’s Black Box Theatre.

I am really looking forward to hearing this play with an amazing group of artists and getting to know the team at the Roundabout, which has long been one of my favorite theaters in the city.

Here’s more about Sheltered, which also won this year’s Alliance/Kendeda, and was a finalist for the O’Neill.

Find out more about the program here.

The next reading is on Monday, June 19 @ 8:30pm. Let me know if you would like to come.

Tickets are now available for  my thesis play, LAST NIGHT IN INWOOD at the Columbia Stages website.

ABOUT THE SHOW: A major disaster in Manhattan has everyone on the island looking for high ground. For Danny’s family and friends, that higher ground happens to be her one-bedroom apartment in Inwood. As the world outside  goes to pieces, Danny tries to keep the peace among the assorted characters gathered in her space. They might make it through this crisis, if they can manage to survive each other.

Tickets for the show are FREE but seating is limited, so please reserve as early as you can.

SHOWTIMES:

Thursday, May 11 – 8pm
Friday, May 12 – 2:30pm
Saturday, May 13 – 7:30pm

Thanks so much to my dear friend Chris Hayes for his generous shout out to me in the New York Times!  Being included with that list of writers was a humbling and inspiring moment.

Everyone should buy Chris’ new book A Colony in a Nation which is coming out next week. And if you’re not watching his show on MSNBC…seriously? What are you doing?

Next year I will be heading down to Atlanta in the winter to work of the world premiere of my play Sheltered. I am incredibly grateful that Sheltered has won the 2018 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, and honored to have my American premiere in the great state of Georgia! Who’d have imagined?

Find out more about Alliance’s super terrific 2017/18 season (Crossing Delancey!!) at American Theatre magazine or on their website.

More about the Kendeda award in the coming weeks!

If you live in the heavenly corner of the country known as Southern California, congrats! Also, it means you can come and hear my play SHELTERED being read on March 20 at South Coast Repertory as part of their NewSCRipts reading series. It will be directed by Neel Keller, and I am really looking forward to working on this play and maybe catching some sunshine!

Find out more at the South Coast Rep site.

We are raising funds for my upcoming thesis production of LAST NIGHT IN INWOOD. Not only will you get a shout out in the program and on Facebook, but different levels of donation come with some AMAZING handmade and homemade rewards! Please check out the gofundme campaign here!