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Wisconsin WrightsTell a friend about the Wisconsin Wrights New Play Project.
Wisconsin Wrights was created in fall 2006 through a partnership between the UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies in Theatre, the UW-Madison University Theatre, and the Madison Repertory Theatre. Support for our inaugural year was also provided by Edenfred/Terry Family Foundation and the UW-Madison Anonymous Fund. Three finalists received a one week workshop and residency through Edenfred and University Theatre and received public readings in June 2007. The Madison Repertory Theatre selected one of the three works, “Recovering the Real Me” by Kurt McGinnis Brown, for further development through the 2007 Madison New Play Festival which took place October 20-21 and October 27-28, 2007. For more details on the Madison New Play Festival click here.
For Wisconsin Wrights 2008, three finalists will receive a one week workshop coordinated by University Theatre with a director, dramaturg and full cast and will be featured with public readings June 5, 6 & 7, 2008. These workshops provide an extraordinary opportunity for the expansion and exercise of the playwriting craft, exploration of characters, and constructive critique by caring, invested artists. One finalist will be selected by the Madison Repertory Theatre to take part in their Fall 2008 Madison New Play Festival and one finalist will be selected by the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre for a staged reading in March 2009.
Click on the links below to learn more about:
Playwrights and Synopses
Ludmilla Bollow is an award winning actress and prize winning playwright. Hundreds of her plays have been produced in over 50 cities in the U.S., also foreign countries, from Africa to China. One Acts & Monologues for Women (3rd edition) and The Church of the Holy Ghost are published by Broadway Plays (NY), the latter optioned for a Trimark movie. The Beach Club was printed in The Literary Half Yearly of India. Play scenes of hers are in 12 leading play anthologies. She has taught playwriting and other writing, been commissioned to write plays and awarded the Wisconsin Council Playwriting Award three times. Her first novel, Dr. Zastro’s Sanitarium – For the Ailments of Women, (Behler Pub.), originally a play, received commendable reviews, including Publishers Weekly. |
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Gwendolyn Rice holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Theater from the University of Iowa, and a Master’s degree in Literature, History and Criticism of the Theater from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Rice has won awards for short fiction as well as playwriting, and has had plays produced in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa. She is also the author of the book, The Coronado Theatre: Rockford’s Crown Jewel. Rice currently works as a communications specialist for Flad Architects. A Thousand Words will be featured with a public reading on Friday, June 6, 2008. |
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Marcia Jablonski was born on the Near Northwest side of Chicago, the sixth of seven children. Her family lived in an apartment on the top floor of a building owned by her grandparents; a total of 23 members of her extended family resided in the same building. It was crowded. She spent the first twelve years of her educational career at small, Catholic schools and another four at the University of Illinois, which was neither small nor Catholic. Marcia has been involved with theater—behind, on or in front of the stage — her entire life. The Front Steps is her first play. She has lived in Mineral Point since 2002. |
Art Borreca is Head of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, the University of Iowa's M.F.A. Playwriting Program. He also co-founded and runs Iowa's M.F.A. Dramaturgy Program, and produces the annual Iowa New Play Festival. He has worked as dramaturg with such theatre artists as Athol Fugard, Wole Soyinka, Theodora Skipitares, Naomi Wallace, and David Gothard at the Yale Rep, LaMama ETC, Oxford Stage, and Theatre Project Tokyo; and in Iowa 's Partnership-in-the-Arts Program.
Richard Corley is in his fourth season as Artistic Director at Madison Repertory Theatre. For Madison Rep, he directed the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, the Midwest premiere of Jeffrey Hatcher's Mercy of a Storm, Rembrandt's Gift, The Drawer Boy, Copenhagen, Tuesdays with Morrie, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Dirty Blonde, Our Town, The Price, and his own translation of The Game of Love and Chance. Richard has been associate Producing Director of The Acting Company, and an artistic associate of the Berkshire Theatre Festival. His New York premiere of Tom Dulack's play Incommunicado received a Drama Desk nomination. He is the recipient of the TCG/NEA Director Fellowship, and recently served on the panel for the TCG/NEA Career Development Program.
Elizabeth Fadell is the former Managing Director of the Madison Repertory Theatre where she co-produced the Madison New Play Festival, working with playwrights including Tina Howe, Theresa Rebeck, OyamO, Gretchen Cryer, and Willie Holtzman. She also served for five years on the Madison Repertory Theatre Board of Directors. Elizabeth is currently the Managing Member of The Enterprise Group, a management consulting firm specializing in organizational improvement. She has been consulting for over 15 years internationally with public sector organizations and private sector companies focused on organizational transformation. Recent activities include assisting on a national project promoting innovation in symphony orchestras, and design and delivery of the Women's Developmental Leadership Practice.
Miranda McClenaghan is a Faculty Associate and serves as the Director of Theatre Education and the School of the Arts at Rhinelander with UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies. Before moving to Wisconsin in 2003, she was a theatre director, adjunct professor, actor and arts administrator. Her background includes two graduate degrees in theatre: a Masters of Art in directing and a Masters of Fine Art in acting. Professionally, her credits include directing and teaching at the Tony Award winning South Coast Repertory Theatre in the adult conservatory program, working at CBS Studios on and off screen for the daytime drama, Young and the Restless, and directing for theatres from New York to California.
Tony Simotes is Director of University Theatre and an Associate Professor at UW-Madison. A Master Teacher of Fight & Movement, Tony is also a Founding Member and Associate Artistic Director of Shakespeare and Company. Directing credits include A Midsummer Nights Dream for Shakespeare and Company, Merry Wives of Windsor for the Orlando Shakespeare Festival and Little Shop of Horrors for The Centennial Theatre in Conn. to name a few. His work as a director and fight choreographer has been featured from coast to coast from the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles to the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theater, as well as abroad, includingThe Stage X Festival in Brisbane Australia and The Canadian Stage Company in Toronto. Locally he has worked on both artistic fronts for Madison Rep and American Players Theatre. He has appeared Off-Broadway, regionally, and in many film and television projects. He is also a proud member of Actor's Equity Association, Screen Actor's Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Jacque Troy is Literary Manager and Education Director for Milwaukee Chamber Theatre. Prior to her work at MCT, she spent nine years as the Education Director at Milwaukee Repertory Theater. In addition to nearly twenty years as a theatre educator in a variety of settings, Jacque has enjoyed a vital acting career. Her work as an actor with Cornerstone Theatre, In-Tandem Theatre and Renaissance Theaterworks earned her a place in the annual “Top Ten” list compiled by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Jacque received a double-major B.A. in Theater (with an Acting emphasis) and Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and an M.A. in Education from Mount Mary College.
Readers included:
Sean Bode is a screenwriter, film producer, and actor. He graduated from the University of Iowa with an emphasis in anthropology, and is the current presidentof the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum. He has written and produced short films, and has performed in numerous stage productions. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his wife Patricia and his kids, Tristan and Marissa by cycling, playing soccer,sledding and taking trips.Bob Curry has worked as a professional actor for 25 years. He writes fiction, plays and screenplays, including the script for The Last Great Ride, starring Ernest Borgnine and Eileen Brennan, and teaches writing and acting for UW Division of Continuing Studies and Madison Area Technical College. He edits fiction, non-fiction and drama and is currently writing a novel and several television treatments. He has MFA degrees in Fiction and Acting.
Christine DeSmet is a writer of screenplays, novels, short stories, and finaled in last year's Wisconsin Wright's contest with "CLIMAX!" She teaches screenwriting at UW-Madison and mentors writers around the globe. Christine is a past winner at the Slamdance Film Festival and optioned that script to New Line Cinema. Her humorous mystery stories are published by Whiskey Creek Press. She's a member of Writers Guild of America, East, and past president of Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum.
Sean Michael Dooley is an actor and educator in the Twin Cities area, where he has worked primarily with the Guthrie Theatre since the 1999-2000 season, acting in 13 productions including /Ah, Wilderness!, Othello /(National Tour),/ 1776, Twelfth Night, / /A Midsummer Night's Dream/ (Midwest Tour), and assistant directing Alfred Uhry's play /Edgardo Mine/. Sean has taught at The University of Minnesota, Hope College, Century College, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin River Falls. He is also performing in Mixed Blood Theatre's production of /The Poetry of Pizza /this winter.
Sandy Ernst is in her thirteenth season with Milwaukee Repertory Theatre where she serves as Associate Artistic Director and Cabaret Director for the Rep’s Stackner Theatre. Before moving to Milwaukee, Sandy spent eighteen seasons with American Player Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, where she directed twenty productions and stage managed over fifty. Milwaukee directing credits include shows for Next Act and Renaissance theatres as well as the Rep.
Playwright and actor Liz Bussey Fentress, a Northern Wisconsin native, makes her home in Louisville, KY. Her auto-biographical play about working for Wisconsin’s Franzen Bros. Circus, LIZ’S CIRCUS STORY, which Liz wrote and performed, won the 2005 National Educational Television Association award for Best Dramatic Narrative; the web site for the production is http://www.ket.org/circusstory/ Liz coordinates playwriting workshops for both the Kentucky Repertory Theatre at Horse Cave and the University of Wisconsin’s School of the Arts at Rhinelander.
Laurie Flanigan is a Minneapolis-based actress and playwright. Her most recent work, Hormel Girls, premiered last November at the History Theatre in St. Paul, followed by a reading in January of Twenty Days to Find a Wife as part of their Raw Stages Festival. A graduate of the University of Illinois, Laurie is a long-time company member at American Folklore Theatre, where she has developed and appeared in numerous original productions. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and The Playwrights' Center.Jeffrey Herbst is the Artistic Director for American Folklore Theatre in Door County, WI. AFT is dedicated to developing and producing original works and is particularly interested in exploring the rich heritage of Wisconsin. He has been involved as a collaborator, director, writer, actor, and/or consultant with the creation of over thirty original shows. He has also directed and performed at both Madison Rep and Milwaukee Rep.
Kristin Hunt studied scene design before embarking on her scholarly career, and continues to make the practicalities and poetics of design a central part of her work as a teacher and thinker. She studies and teaches ancient Greek drama, contemporary avant-garde revisions of "classic" plays, and queer performance. Her recent design work includes the premiere of Scott Gendel's opera, Iphigenia at Aulis. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Michelle Lopez-Rios is an Assistant Professor of Voice and Speech at UW-Milwaukee where she recently directed Ring Round the Moon. She has acted, coached, and directed around the country. Together with Alvaro Saar Rios she has taught workshops and created original works like Nuestra Voz, Nuestra Historia: Our Voice, Our Story. She is a member of the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre Board, and an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework.
John Lordan is an independent actor/writer/director/producer in allvenues/media, in all three major markets of New York, Chicago and LosAngeles. At Madison Rep, he appeared as Robert in ³Proof.² His playwritinghas been honored with over 25 national awards with productions and readingsfrom coast to coast. His play, ³Lovely,² will be published in 2008. He is amember of the venerable actors club, THE PLAYERS, in NYC and an exclusiveclient of Stewart Talent Chicago/New York.
Roseann Sheridan is the Producing Artistic Director for the Children’s Theater of Madison. For 17 years, Roseann was the Producer and Associate Artistic Director at American Players Theatre. In 2003, she began freelancing as a director and teaching acting at the UW-Madison. She produced the Madison Repertory Theatre’s New Play Festival for two years, and directed several new works in those festivals. Directing credits include Texas Shakespeare Festival, Next Act Theater, UW-Madison, -Oshkosh, -Whitewater... Please visit www.rosheridan.com.
Wisconsin Wrights Advisory Committee:
Ann M. Archbold is Head of the MFA Lighting Design Program at UW-Madison. Before coming to Madison, she was Director of the MFA Lighting Design Program at Florida State University. Professionally, she has designed lighting for over 400 events for theatre, industrials, opera, dance, live concerts and television throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Ann is a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829 (IATSE), the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), a member of the Board of Directors of USITT and USITT-Midwest. Ann holds a B.G.S. (Bachelor of General Studies) from the University of Michigan and her M.F.A. in Design and Technical Production from San Diego State University.
Richard Corley is in his fourth season as Artistic Director at Madison Repertory Theatre. For Madison Rep, he directed the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, the Midwest premiere of Jeffrey Hatcher's Mercy of a Storm, Rembrandt's Gift, The Drawer Boy, Copenhagen, Tuesdays with Morrie, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Dirty Blonde, Our Town, The Price, and his own translation of The Game of Love and Chance. Richard has been associate Producing Director of The Acting Company, and an artistic associate of the Berkshire Theatre Festival. His New York premiere of Tom Dulack's play Incommunicado received a Drama Desk nomination. He is the recipient of the TCG/NEA Director Fellowship, and recently served on the panel for the TCG/NEA Career Development Program.
Elizabeth Fadell is the former Managing Director of the Madison Repertory Theatre where she co-produced the Madison New Play Festival, working with playwrights including Tina Howe, Theresa Rebeck, OyamO, Gretchen Cryer, and Willie Holtzman. She also served for five years on the Madison Repertory Theatre Board of Directors. Elizabeth is currently the Managing Member of The Enterprise Group, a management consulting firm specializing in organizational improvement. She has been consulting for over 15 years internationally with public sector organizations and private sector companies focused on organizational transformation. Recent activities include assisting on a national project promoting innovation in symphony orchestras, and design and delivery of the Women's Developmental Leadership Practice.
Trevin Gay currently serves as the Company Manager for the Madison Repertory Theatre. He holds a master's degree from the London International School of Performing Arts/Naropa University. Originally from Gardner, KS, he has lived in Madison for 3years. Trevin assistant produced the 2006 Madison New Play Festival and has performed both internationally in England, Germany, France and Wales and in several locations stateside. He has also been seen in several productions at the Bartell Theatre in Madison.
Sarah Marty has a Master's Degree in Business from the Bolz Center for Arts Administration, an MS in Curriculum & Instruction, and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from UW–Madison. Sarah is the Program Coordinator for the UW-Madison Continuing Studies in Theatre and School of the Arts Programs. She is the Managing Director for Four Seasons Theatre Company, is entering her fourth year as the Marketing Director for the Madison Early Music Festival, and has been a member of the Production Staff for the UW Varsity Band Concert since 2000. Other credits include work as an actor, assistant director, stage manager, accompanist, and production manager for CTM Madison Family Theatre Company.
Miranda McClenaghan is a Faculty Associate and serves as the Director of Theatre Education and the School of the Arts at Rhinelander with UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies. Before moving to Wisconsin in 2003, she was a theatre director, adjunct professor, actor and arts administrator. Her background includes two graduate degrees in theatre: a Masters of Art in directing and a Masters of Fine Art in acting. Professionally, her credits include directing and teaching at the Tony Award winning South Coast Repertory Theatre in the adult conservatory program, working at CBS Studios on and off screen for the daytime drama, Young and the Restless, and directing for theatres from New York to California.
Tony Simotes is Director of University Theatre and an Associate Professor at UW-Madison. A Master Teacher of Fight & Movement, Tony is also a Founding Member and Associate Artistic Director of Shakespeare and Company. Directing credits include A Midsummer Nights Dream for Shakespeare and Company, Merry Wives of Windsor for the Orlando Shakespeare Festival and Little Shop of Horrors for The Centennial Theatre in Conn. to name a few. His work as a director and fight choreographer has been featured from coast to coast from the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles to the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theater, as well as abroad, includingThe Stage X Festival in Brisbane Australia and The Canadian Stage Company in Toronto. Locally he has worked on both artistic fronts for Madison Rep and American Players Theatre. He has appeared Off-Broadway, regionally, and in many film and television projects. He is also a proud member of Actor's Equity Association, Screen Actor's Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Michele Traband serves as General Manager for UW-Madison's University Theatre. Previous positions include Program Manager for the National Theatre Conservatory (Denver, CO) and Program Director for boththe UW-Milwaukee Professional Theatre Training Program and the University of Hartford's Hartt School Theatre Division. She arrived in Madison in 2006 from the University of Kansas, where she served as Director of Audience and Ticketing Services at the Lied Center. Michele holds an MFA in Arts Administration from Brooklyn College. She is a founding member of Renaissance Theatre Company in Milwaukee, WI and has been a board member for several not-for-profit organizations around the country.
The 2008 Wisconsin Wrights Guidelines and Submission Information
The Wisconsin Wrights New Play Project is open to current Wisconsin residents only.
Each playwright is limited to one script submission per project year. Honorees from the previous year will not be eligible for 2007-2008 but may apply again for 2008-2009.
Plays must be new works. Adaptations (or any other use of material protected by copyright) must include proof of rights to use source material. Translations will not be accepted.
Below is information for the 2007-2008 new play project:
An entry fee of $20 must accompany each submission. Checks should be made payable to the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Please note: In order to receive a Wisconsin Wrights workshop and reading the playwright must be available to participate in project activities including rehearsals, production meetings, and public readings.
The Edenfred reading is May 25-June 1 with University Theatre workshops that week. The UT readings are June 5, 6, and 7, 2008.
If you would like notification that your script has been received, please enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard with your application. Finalists will be notified by phone and mail after April 7, 2008.
Initial Screening: Each application will be screened for eligibility (a completed application packet, play in the correct format, signed release form, and entry fee).
First Round: Each script is read and evaluated by at least two first round readers. Based on evaluations semi-finalists will advance to the second round.
Final Round: The semi-finalists will be read and evaluated by the final panel of judges. Finalists will be identified with three plays selected for workshops and readings through Wisconsin Wrights. The Madison Repertory Theatre will select a work for inclusion in their Fall 2008 Madison Play Festival and the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre will select a work to be given a staged reading in March 2009.
Feedback: First round readers and second round panel judges will be given the opportunity to provide written feedback on the works that they evaluate. If you would like to receive a copy of the feedback (if any) provided, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope with your entry materials.
Contact Sarah Marty, Program Coordinator for Continuing Studies in Theatre at UW-Madison, at (608) 263-2790 or smarty@dcs.wisc.edu.
The Department of Liberal Studies & the Arts is a part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Continuing Studies. The units within Continuing Studies provide continuing education programs for lifelong learners, from precollege to seniors, as well as counseling services for adult learners. You will find the UW-Madison Continuing Studies home page at http://www.dcs.wisc.edu, or browse the Web site using the navigational links below.
| UW-Madison Continuing Studies | Classes | Services | Register | About Us |
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File last updated: January 2008
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