Patricia Reynoso
Oakland, California
Nadeeli and the Coyote by Patricia Reynoso
Directed by Robert Meek
Friday, April 22, 2016 @ 7pm
Synopsis:
Nadleehi and the Coyote, a story steeped in Navajo legend, tells the struggle of a Navajo mother who tries to protect her homosexual son from scandal in their predominantly Christian town by keeping his sexuality a secret. Not only does her son Yiska want to tell the world he's gay he wants to tell the world how in Navajo culture a gay boy, a Nadleehi or a two-spirit person, is revered and holds a sacred place in the community. When Nina fails to keep him safe she turns to Navajo legend for guidance where the supernatural meets the ordinary.
Biography:
Patricia Reynoso is happy to be a part of The Landing Theatre's 2016 New American Voice's. She studied playwriting and received her MFA from San Francisco State University in 2015. She is the winner of the 2015 Highsmith Playwriting Award and the 2014 Yeah, I Said Feminist playwriting award. Her Ten-minute play The Hidden Room was part of the Whoop 'n' Wail Festival in London and The Two Muses Theatre Women's Playwriting Festival in February 2015. The Hidden Room was also performed in the Detroit Fringe Festival in July 2015. In 2013 she developed Nadleehi and the Coyote for SFSU's Greenhouse Festival and later received a reading with The Hive in New York City. She is the author of a one-act play, The Night Bus, which premiered in SFSU's 2014 Fringe Festival. Her full-length play Broken was part of SFSU's 2014 Fringe Goes Long Festival and Athena Theatre's reading series in New York City. Her latest play, Pretty, was part of the 2015 SFSU Greenhouse Festival. She has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 2013 and is dedicated to writing stories about the marginalized.
Steven Strafford
Chicago, Illinois
Small Jokes About Monsters by Steven Strafford
Directed by Dylan Marks
Saturday, April 23, 2016 @ 1pm
Synopsis:
Three brothers spend an evening at a rented beach house, trying to sort through the recent death of their father. Upon learning of their father's final wishes and with the unexpected arrival of their mother, the brothers come to terms with some ugly truths that lie underneath the humor they all share.
Biography:
Steven Strafford is the author/performer of Methtacular! which has earned rave reviews and played to sold-out houses across the country, including a Jeff Award-recommended run in Chicago. More information about further productions at www.methtacular.com. As an actor, he was most recently seen at Sacramento Music Circus as Margaret Mead and several other characters in "Hair." Other credits include "Spamalot" (Original Vegas Cast) as Prince Herbert and other characters. Steven has worked regionally at Portland Stage Company, Sacramento Music Circus and Bakerloo Theatre Project and has performed in Europe in "Grease!" and in Asia in "Cinderella" (w/ Lea Salonga). Steven was the co-host of Web Show New York (of which he was also head writer) and his storytelling has been featured on The Moth podcast in NYC.
Catherine Rush
Seattle, Washington
Tall Poppies by Catherine Rush
Directed by Stephen Miranda
Saturday, April 23, 2016 @ 7pm
Synopsis:
It's 1975 and 52 year-old American, Stewart Carver, is living in his empty luxury lodge with his mistress in the southern wilderness of New Zealand. He's bewildered at the way the tide has turned against him. When he first arrived everyone was his friend and the luxury hotel he built and ran was considered revolutionary. But now, he's fighting his wife, his lawyers, the bank and the Prime Minister. Stewart's determined to win back and reopen his business, but everything and everyone is getting in his way. It seems the only friends he has are the rutting stag outside his cabin and the bottle of booze in his hand.
Biography:
Catherine Rush’s play The Loudest Man on Earth won an Edgerton New American Play Award and the San Francisco Chronicle named the subsequent production by TheatreWorks of Silicon Valley, one of the “top ten plays of 2013.” Productions of other plays include, Losing the Shore, commissioned and produced by BCKSEET Productions in Philadelphia, This Island Alone, co-written with Adrian Blue, developed and produced at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, and A Nice Place to Live, co-written with Adrian Blue, commissioned and produced by Wheelock Family Theatre of Boston. This past fall, her play Main Line was awarded a reading on London’s West End. She won the Arts and Letters award for Drama at Georgia College and State University for her one-act The Sum of Me. This is her second play to be selected by The Landing Theatre’s New American Voices Festival - an honor of which she is extremely proud. www.CatherineRush.com.
Cecelia Raker
Brighton, Massachusetts
La Llorona by Cecelia Raker
Directed by Paige Kiliany
Sunday, April 24, 2016 @ 4pm
Synopsis:
When Maria, Rachel, and Molly, three girls from very different worlds, got thrown together on a school project about the local urban legend, they didn't quite bargain for some horrific ghost lady to start tampering with their lives. La Llorona, with her irreverent, haunting advice and strange versions of the story, seems intent on steering them away from her fate--or is she just luring them to a watery demise?
Biography:
Cecelia Raker is a Boston-based playwright, director, and dramaturg. She is a 2016 Company One PlayLab Fellow, developing a new play for a staged reading there in July 2016. She's also a core member of the Project:Project devising collective, whose piece SHIVER premiered at the Boston Playwrights' Theater in June 2015. Her piece DRY BONES RISING premiered at Venus Theatre in Laurel MD in May 2015, and she is a 2015 finalist grantee from the Massachusetts Cultural Council's Artist Fellowship in Dramatic Writing. Her work has been developed and produced with One Bird Productions, the Boston Theater Marathon, the Great Plains Theater Conference Playlab, the ART’s Loeb Experimental Theater, Harvard Playwrights’ Festival, The One-Minute Play Festival, Bostonia Bohemia, Company One, and a variety of other venues. Cecelia has recently directed plays for Bostonia Bohemia and Sleeping Weazel. She also teaches 6-12th grade math and science at a private school and holds an AB in Theater Arts from Harvard College.