The 24 Hour Plays

NATIONALS

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GO GO GADGET 24 Hour Plays: Nationals!

Things are really taking off, here at 24 Hour Plays: Nationals! I took a 1.5 hour nap at 3am that it took 3 hours to wake up from, but with the saving grace that is freshly brewed coffee and freshly bagged bagels, everyone seems to be off to the races!

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Voice warm-up's and dwn and up and down

courtesy of Sion Fullana SionFullana.com @sionfullana

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Photo credits: Sion Fullana @sionfullana 

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OOH OOH ITS ONLY DAY TWO

Day 2 August 9th carried a mood of confidence and play in the air as the participants gathered for a quick breakfast followed by a meeting with their producers.

Sarah Biz lead a luscious vocal warm up. Armed with velvet voices and crisp consonants, the participants were ready for the physical work to begin. 

Mark Armstrong hosted dialogue and scenario workshop in which groups of performers a director and producer were able to interpreted short scenes by adding a subtext and scenario. There was an emphasis paid to making use of site specificity as well as placement of the audience in the space.

The group was treated to a feedback circle where pluses (positive feedback) and delta’s (where one can improve) were revealed. It was then time to showcase Sherri Barber's Romeo and Juliet composition tasks which were compelling and hilarious to watch, the performers have begun to actively engage in their special skills and talents.

An interesting talk on pragmatics was held by renowned production Manager and mentor to the producers Philip Naude followed by a meaty discussion with today’s special guest panel.(See previous post) Topics on artistic integrity, auditions and international collaborations were welcomed and discussed as well as the importance of good business skills and the pursuit of  happiness.The panelists invited the participants over to a small bar in the New School neighborhood to conduct very serious business meetings over a few beers.

Sounds of laughter and conversation reached their peak,  soon after, participants began to trickle off to their homes to rest in preparation for the looming big day

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See what our panelists are saying after the fact!

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Our Panelists for Today

Craig "Mums" Grant --- Actor

Born in New York City, he first gained attention as a poet and performer when he was featured in the documentarySlamNation, which followed him and the other poets of 1996 Nuyorican Poetry Slam Team (Saul Williams, Beau Sia and Jessica Care Moore) as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam.

In the book Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz wrote of muMs's time in the poetry slam, noting his writing "was street poetry at its purest. Thoughtful, precise but not without humor, his work spoke honestly about the life he and his friends and family lived and the city that he loved.[1]"

muMs has gone to act in films and television shows such as Boston Legal, Bamboozled and Everyday People [2]" as well as making an appearance on Chappelle's Show as "Lysol" in the "Mad Real World" skit. He has performed his poetry on seasons 2, 3 and 4 of HBO's Def Poetry.

Lucy Thurber --- Playwright/Screenwriter

Lucy Thurber is the author of ten plays: Where We’re Born,Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of The World, Monstrosity, Dillingham City, The Locus and The Insurgents.The Insurgents was commissioned by Contemporary American Theater Festival and produced at their 2011 Festival. Bottom of The World opened the 2010/11 season at The Atlantic Theater. A reworking of Killers and Other Family played Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2009, directed by Caitriona McLaughlin. Lucy wrote the text for QUIXOTE, conceived and directed by Lear deBessonet, a site-specific performance with the Psalters made for and with The Broad Street Community; also with Lear deBessonet and produced by 13P, Monstrosity. The Atlantic Theater Company opened its 2007/08 season with Scarcity. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has produced three of her plays, Where We’re Born, Killers and Other Family and Stay. Monstrosity was workshopped at Encore Theatre Company (San Francisco). She was the recipient of the 2000-01 Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship. She was a guest artist at Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre twice, where she helped to adapt both Desire Under The Elms and Moby Dick. She has had readings and workshops at Steam Boat Springs, Manhattan Theatre Club, The New Group, Primary Stages, MCC Theater, Encore Theatre Company, PlayPenn, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The O’Neill with WET, New River Dramatists and Soho Rep. She was one of three playwrights in residence at The Orchard Project, summer 2007. Scarcity was published in the December 2007 issue of American Theatre magazine. She is published by Dramatists Play Service. Thurber is a member of New Dramatists, 13P, MCC Playwrights’ Coalition. She has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, and she is currently writing a new play under a commission from Yale Rep. She is the recipient of the 1st Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting 2008 and a proud recipient of a Lilly Award. Lucy currently teaches at NYU and Sarah Lawrence College.

Lou Moreno -- Artistic Director, Intar

Since arriving in New York in 1989, Lou Moreno has called INTAR home. He has participated in over 40 productions, workshops and readings at INTAR. Lou has worked with many of the great names of INTAR, including Max Ferra, Eduardo Machado, Maria Irene Fornés, Michael John Garcés, Nilo Cruz, and Jose Rivera. In 2005, Louis was awarded a Princess Grace Fellowship for Directing and served for a year as the Associate Artistic Director of INTAR.

After leaving INTAR, Moreno became the Associate Artistic Director of the Obie Award-winning Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. At Rattlestick, he was the line producer for emerging playwrights such as Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Lucy Thurber, Noah Haidel, Lars Noren, David Grimm and Adam Rapp. He also developed the Dirty Works Lab, an initiative for the development of new plays.

In September of 2008, Lou became Co-Artistic Director of Twilight Theatre Company, a group dedicated to new plays and new voices. He produced Prelude to the First Day by Ted LoRusso in collaboration with Sturgis Warner and most recently the critically acclaimed Palestine, written and performed by Najla Saïd.

Morenos Most Recent Directing Credit is Drawn and Quartered by Maggie Bofill. Originally Developed in INTARs NewWorks Lab This Production was the inagural production under his leadership.

Other directing credits include Trying by Erin Browne (The Bushwick Starr); Minotaur a Romance and Beautiful both by David Anzuelo (LAByrinth Theater Company at the Public Theater); MCC Youth Festival (Manhattan Class Company); Kingdom (NYMF); End of the Line (MCC Youth Company); Rock/Paper/Scissors (New York Hip-Hop Theater Festival at the Public Theater); The Bigger Man (Partial Comfort Productions); and Blues for a Gray Sun by Nilaja Sun (INTAR).

Lou is currently in development on Rikers Hot, a Princess Grace Foundation Special Project Grant. He also serves as an Associate Producer with The 24-Hour Company. For the past ten years he has taught playwriting for Manhattan Theatre Club at the RNDC Youth Facility on Rikers Island.

Ari Edelson --- Director/Producer, Orchard Project

Ari Edelson is a director and producer who has worked both in the US and internationally, with recent credits including: Mauritius (Dorset Theater Festival), Little Black Dress (Boston Playwrights and The Exchange, NYC), The Scariest (Theatres at 45 Bleecker), Vengeance (Cherry Lane), Expats (The New Group, NY), Jump! and Realism (The Exchange, NY), The Attic (Play Company, NY, Obie Award), The Atheist (Theatre 503, London), Blood Wedding, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Theatre Project Tokyo), True West and Tape(Tokyo Globe), Rape of Lucretia (English National Opera, London and Luxembourg). He has also worked with companies such as La Jolla Playhouse, Long Wharf, the Old Vic, Circle in the Square, the Royal National Theatre, Theatre Royal Haymarket, The Vineyard, The New Group and the Westport Country Playhouse. Ari is currently the Artistic Director of the Off-Broadway theatre company The Exchange, which produces new work in New York and runs the internationally renowned Orchard Project development center. Ari is also the conceiver and co-producer of Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company, a new musical with book by Michael Chabon and co-produced by Margo Lion (Hairspray) and Amanda Lipitz (Legally Blonde). He has been a guest director on attachment at New Dramatists, The National Theatre Studio, a Directing Fellow of the Drama League of New York, and has taught at Northwestern University, Fordham University and in Japan. Ari graduated from Yale University and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Thomas Kail --- Director

THOMAS KAIL (Director) was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for his direction of In the Heights. Off B'way: In the Heights (Callaway Award, Drama Desk nom., Outer Critics nom.) New York City Center: The Wiz. Lincoln Center Theater: Broke-ology (Mitzi Newhouse - Fall 2009). Williamstown:Broke-ology (World Premiere). Co-creator and director of the hip-hop improv group Freestyle Love Supreme. Artistic director and co-founder of Back House Productions. Recipient of the 2008 Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center. Graduate of Wesleyan University, CT.

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Photo credits: Sion Fullana  @sionfullana  sionfullana.com. 

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Kickoff! Nice to meet ya !

photo credits: Sion Fullana  @sionfullana  sionfullana.com. 

Wednesday the 7th of August saw the bright, beaming faces of the participants entering the New School for Drama, meeting one another for the first time. Bonding and improvisation workshops were conducted with the intention of getting to know each other and getting a feel for the urgency of the program. An enlightening panel discussion from industry professionals saw some tears and revealed some truths about the New York City theatre scene. It was here that the participants learned that they are the next generation of this city’s successful artists, and should therefore strive to make connections with their fellow participants. After lunch, writers were able to select actors for whom to write short scenes,  the scenes were handed to directors who had only a mere 30 minutes of rehearsal to interpret the scripts. A mini showcase was held at New School for Drama’s black box theatre to gauge each participant’s specific skill set.  it was truly amazing to witness such potent quality of writing in a short frame of time. The end of the day saw a worn group retire home for the evening, resting and recharging for day 2 which awaits.

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Diane Neal -- Actress/Stand-Up Comedian

Diane Neal is an actress and stand-up comedian, best known for her role as Casey Novak on Law and Order: SVU. Other TV and film credits include: NCIS, White Collar, 30 Rock, Suits, and many others. Diane has a long-standing relationship with The 24 Hour Plays and has been involved in multiple productions.

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Pippin Parker -- Naked Angels/The New School for Drama

Pippin Parker began teaching at NSD in 2004 and was appointed Professor of Professional Practice in 2007. That year, he was nominated for a Distinguished University Teaching Award.

In the professional world, Pippin directed and served as dramaturge of the award-winning production of George Packer’s Betrayed at Culture Project (winner of the 2008 Lortel Award for Best Play), which was also presented at Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in conjunction with Refugees, International. This past season, he directed the New York premiere of Knickerbocker by Jonathan Marc Sherman at the Public Theater. A founding member and former artistic director of Naked Angels Theater Company in New York City, Pippin helped conceive the company’s long-running reading series Tuesdays at 9 and its signature Issues Projects, in which the company collaborated with a range of advocacy organizations including Amnesty International and Project A.L.S.

Pippin is the author of plays including Anesthesia, Assisted Living, and numerous one-acts that have been produced in New York and Los Angeles and published by Playscripts, Inc. His radio play, A Gift, was broadcast on NPR’s The Next Big Thing. He was a staff writer for the animated series The Tick for Fox television and developed several projects for HBO. His episode for the children’s television show Pocoyo won the Cristal Award at the 2006 Annecy Animation Festival.

In the course of his career, Pippin has worked with a wide and distinguished group of theater artists, including Peter Sellars, Kenneth Lonergan, Lili Taylor, Jon Robin Baitz, Joe Mantello, Marisa Tomei and Brian MacDevitt.

Pippin serves on the board of directors of Naked Angels Theater Company and the Council of the Writers Guild of America, East.

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Abby Marcus -- Vampire Cowboys

Abby Marcus is the Managing Director/Producer of Vampire Cowboys in Brooklyn. Vampire Cowboys describes themselves as “geek theatre”. They produce original theatre in a “comic book aesthetic”, aiming to bridge the gap between mainstream mass media and the performing arts. 

Make sure you check them out at New York Comic Con in October!

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Jason Zinoman -- New York Times

Jason Zinoman is a Brooklyn-based theatre reporter and critic with The New York Times. He has also worked at Time Out New York, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Economist, and Slate. His book Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, was published in 2011. 

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Aslie Atkinson -- Actress

Ashlie Atkinson is an award-winning theatre, film, and television actress. A 2003 graduate of the Neightborhood Playhouse, in 2005 she received the Theatre World Award for Breakthrough Performance for originating the role of Helen in Neil Labute's "Fat Pig"(opposite Jeremy Piven) - which also garnered her Outer Critics' Circle and Lucille Lortel nominations. She has graced screens both big and small in Denis Leary's critically-acclaimed Rescue Me, 3lbs, Spike Lee's Inside Man, Another Gay Movie, Sex and The City Movie, Margot at The Wedding, Law & Order, Law &Order: Criminal Intent, Puccini for Beginners, and Filthy Gorgeous. MTV fans may recognize Ashlie as her hip-hop alter ego, "Chunky Pam", a plus-size rap diva - and YouTube viral phenomenon. After appearing opposite Debra Jo Rupp in SecondStage's "Butcher of Baraboo", she returned to Broadway in 2007 to play Vivian Proclo in Terrence McNally's The Ritz (starring Rosie Perez). Ashlie is a proud member of both the Bridge Theatre Commpany and Gotham Girls Roller Derby (where she skates under the name Margaret Thrasher, Prime Minister of Your Demise). Ashlie toured the world in Sam Mendes' The Bridge Project and continues to work in film opposite actors such as Jessica Alba, Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Ricky Gervais and Julia Roberts.

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...and we're off!

Photo Credit: Cody Perkins

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The 24 Hour Company is working with longtime collaborator, The New School for Drama, to bring The 24 Hour Plays: The Nationals to New York City from August 7-10.

6 writers, 6 directors, 6 producers, and 24 actors have been chosen to participate in two days of intensive workshops, after which the assembled team will produce their own 24 Hour Plays at Atlantic's Linda Gross Theater. 

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