2000-present
Megan Gogerty’s (MFA 2000) musical LOVE JERRY has been selected for production in the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) as part of their Next Link Project. That means this September, New Yorkers will be able to see a full-fledged production as LOVE JERRY makes its New York premiere in midtown Manhattan. Also in the fall, Megan will be debuting her first full-length solo show in ten years. It's called MEGAN GOGERTY LOVES YOU VERY MUCH at Riverside Theatre in Iowa City. She will also be part of WordBRIDGE Play Development Lab at Clemson University to work on her comedy PANDAS. This year WordBRIDGE teamed up with New York's Boomerang Theatre to bring in one WordBRIDGE alum to develop a script. Enter Megan! Finally, Megan is recording final songs for her awesome tribute album to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's called, appropriately, I MISS BUFFY, and she’ll be flooding the market with it this summer. It features such hits as, "Lipstick Wiccans" and "Kinda Wish D'Hoffryn Was My Boyfriend." Who knew?
Levy Lee Simon, MFA 2001, Lee Simon’s play “Sam Train” will be presented at the New Algonquin Theatre in New York City February 13-March 8, 2008. It is directed by Mary Beth Easley with music by Mark Bruckner. SAME TRAIN is comprised of seven poignant, soul-stirring stories of the African American experience of the 20th Century.
Andrew Barrett, MFA 2001, his musical, The Confessions of Julian Po, which was first presented when Andrew was a student in the Playwrights Workshop, was produced in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. It received rave notices and was nominated for a Musical theatre Matters Award for best book of a musical.
Kirsten Greenidge, 2001, just had a little girl named Katia
this summer. She was selected to be a member of New
Dramatists last year and she just finished a
commission for the Kennedy Center.
Mike Cassady, 2002, Michael Cassady, Neil Campbell, Paul Rust and Chris Stang are at it again. Their newest sketch play, “Fireball Delux: DadQuest” plays at the UCB Theatre in Hollywood in December. “Dubuque, Iowa. 1982. When the sons of four midwestern dads are kidnapped by an evil wizard, the dads must journey across the perilous, mystical land of Belzaria to rescue them. A magical adventure from Fireball Deluxe.
Victoria (Tory) Stewart, 2002, recently won the Francesca
Primus Award for Hardball and her play 800 Words will
be produced by Live Girls Productions (no relation to
her play LIVE GIRLS) in Seattle WA in October 2007.
Kristin Horton, MFA 2003, has accepted a full time visiting faculty position at New York University for 07-08. She will teach courses in directing, advanced acting (Shakespeare), and serve as the Artistic Director of the Gallatin Arts Festival. She is also an Artistic Fellow with The Lark Play Development Center and will continue to develop new work around the country.
Matthew Walter, MFA 2004, After working at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Oregon for over a year he returned to Chicago. His first set design there is called "The Brother", produced by Theatre Building Chicago, opening August 2007.
Peter Gil-Sheridan, 2004, has moved to Minneapolis on a
Jerome Fellowship. His play Topsy Turvy Mouse will be
produced at Borderlands Theater in Arizona in 2008.
Kristina Frank, 2006 and Anton Jones, 2006, created and performed "The FUNeral" at the Minneapolis Fringe Festival in the summer of 2007.
Sean Lewis (MFA 07) has a new play, THE APERTURE, which premiers at the York Theatre in New York City in April, 2008. The play is
about a child soldier who comes to Maryland from
Uganda who is discovered by a female photographer who
takes photos of the boy in the woods outside DC and
passes them off as pictures from the child's homeland. Later in April the play will receive a concert reading
at Woolly Mammoth in Washington DC as part of the Kennedy Center
Awards Ceremony (the play won the inaugural Rosa Parks
Award)
Rachael King is now living in Canada where she has her Canadian Equity card and is stage managing regularly. Her current job is working as the Stage Manager of Dads! The Musical at the Schoolhouse Theatre in St. Jacobs (Drayton Entertainment). Her biggest challenge to date with this production has been wrapping her head around pushing the sound, light, and phone ringer buttons all while trying to watch the show and be able to give useful performance and choreography notes to the actors. Rachael spent from February through October finishing her apprenticeship with a 2nd season at the Shaw Festival where, among other things, she “went on” as the understudy for the ASMs of the big musical, Mack and Mabel (side note – this show was directed by Molly Smith, artistic director at Arena Stage), and stage managing a speakers series which included Salman Rushdie, Mary Walsh and Ken Wiwa. In January she’ll be stage managing again, this time for a TYA company that usually tours-- but this production will be at a theatre in Toronto for 5 weeks.
Tanna Frederick, whose recent performance in the film "Hollywood Dreams" received outstanding reviews, is now starring in the world premier of a play by Henry Jaglom. "Always -- But Not Forever" plays in Santa Monica, California, through December, 2007. Tanna also stars in Jaglom's upcoming film, "Irene in Time".
Sarah Hammond’s play, Green Girl was one of eight plays selected from over 1,000 submissions to be produced by the Summer Play Festival at the New York Public Theatre. The plays from during the month of July, 2008. In Green Girl a magic gift entwines the fates of two sets of sisters living over a hundred years apart. Each girl must endure the trials of growing up, but only one can master the gift inherited from her ancestors. It is a provocative, mystical drama where sisterhood is tested and time stands still.
Joshua Casteel, MFA student, is having real success with his writing. His play, "Returns", is going to be published in its entirety in the Alaska Quarterly Review this summer; an excerpt from his memoir-in-progress is going to be published soon in the Virginia Quarterly Review; and his first book, "Letters From Abu Ghraib", is being released in June.
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1990-1999
Ellen Malaver’s ( MFA 1994) play “NotWaving” will be presented at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this August.
Ryan Bolletino, BA, 1998 is appearing on stage in one of the hottest productions in Chicago, in "The Sparrow." It is the first original production to be included in the Broadway in Chicago series. It is playing at the Apollo Theatre. Ryna got his degree from UI in 1998 and in 2000 he became a member of The Hypocrites theater company in Chicago. He has appeared regularly in their award-winning season productions. "The Sparrow" tells the story of Emily Book, who is the sole survivor of an accident that took the lives of her classmates 10 years earlier. When she returns to her small town high school, she -- and the townspeople -- struggle to emerge from their feelings of grief and guilt. Interspersed in between its scenes is haunting video of the character, returning to her rural roots.
Christine Young recently gave birth to her second child, a beautiful girl named Violet. Christine has also accepted a tenure track position at San Francisco State University in the Department of Performing Arts and Social Justice. She will begin work there next fall.
Sean Judge is Literary Manager and one of the resident actors in Houston's Nova Arts Project. The company's most recent production, "TempOdyssey" received rave reviews from Houston's critics; Sean plays a major role. He is looking for new scripts and welcomes submissions by Iowa writers.
Cheryl Kaplan, MFA 1998, is directing "The Busy World Is Hushed" By Keith Bunin. At the Main Street Theater in Houston. The play is a drama about conflicts of family and faith. Cheryl is Director of Theater Outreach and Education for the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Houston.
David Maslow is now the Producing Artistic Director of OpenStage Theatre in Pittsburg. During his first season he managed to increase ticket sales by 20% & raise revenues by 50%. He is leading the theatre into a new season that includes Suzan-Lori Park's The America Play, Paula Vogel's The Minneola Twins and John Guare's Lydie Breeze, in the 2 play reworking of it he did for Lincoln Center – their theatre's first attempt at working in rep. he selected plays that seriously examine what it means to be an American – to be living in today's world, but free of the didactic issues of today's overt politics. Under his leadership, OpenStage is moving more & more to being the salon – that place where the play serves as the leaping off point for discussion.
Amy Wheeler is now Executive Director of Hedgebrook, a retreat and residency for women writers. Located on Whidbey island, 45 minutes north of Seattle, Hedgebrook offers writers like Gloria Steinem and Eve Hensler a place to focus on their work. As Executive Director, Amy also co-produces the Women Playwrights Festival with Seattle Rep. She is still writing plays and had four in a row produced in 2004-05.
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