the 10 new playwrights to watch
New playwrights on the scene to watch!
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Elizabeth Noel Donovan, a California native, started her career in front of the camera as a print, runway and fitness model. Her background as an athlete and fitness trainer made her a natural for television hosting and commercials. While working as an actress in television, film and the stage, her interest was sparked to write her own projects. Her passion for theatre inspired her to author two one act plays "Thanks for Coming" and "Thanks for Waiting" which were produced in 2012 in Hollywood, California. Elizabeth's love for travel, the ocean and photography have influenced many of her writing projects. Laughter, the arts and music were all prevalent in Elizabeth's childhood. Her strong work ethic was instilled in her by her parents who always supported her creative efforts and encouraged her to embrace her curious nature and enthusiasm for life.A California native, this new playwright has a gift for witty dialogue. Her two One Acts "Thanks for Coming" and "Thanks for Waiting" will open at The Complex Hollywood in January 2012.- Sarah Ruhl was born on 24 January 1974 in Wilmette, Illinois, USA. She is a writer, known for The Glorias (2020), The New World and Like Father, Like Son.Her adventurously theatrical plays are both entertaining and intellectually provocative.
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David Lindsay-Abaire was born on 30 November 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He is a writer, known for Rabbit Hole (2010), Poltergeist (2015) and Rise of the Guardians (2012).Won the pulitzer prize for "Drama Hole." A sensitive, straight forward portrait of a grieving family.- Writer
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Acclaimed and highly discussed filmmaker Neil LaBute has made himself a force to be reckoned with and a name to watch. With his true-to-life cynical and self-absorbed characters and all-too-true social themes, he has firmly established himself as an unforgiving judge of the ugliest side of human nature.
LaBute was originally a playwright. He attended Brigham Young University and took theater as his major. Many say that Pulitzer-Prize winner David Mamet was a strong influence on him. He chose to attack subjects that many people don't really want to talk about and showed the way that people really talk among themselves. His first stage piece, an off-off-Broadway play which was entitled "Filthy Talk for Troubled Times", debuted in 1989 and it featured two men just sitting around a bar and making small talk and ridiculing women, minorities, homosexuals and their ways, in a manner not unlike the conversations in his In the Company of Men (1997). The foul-mouthed play was, not unsurprisingly, a hit with the critics.
After LaBute graduated from the University of Kansas and New York University, he got a scholarship to London's Royal Court Theatre in the US in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. Then he got into cinema. He made his films like his plays: showing characters just sitting and talking and revealing how evil, scared, ignorant, arrogant, emotionally wounded, delusional, disillusioned and cynical they are.
LaBute made his first major mark with the low-budget (and frighteningly realistic) cautionary fable In the Company of Men (1997), about two sexist male office co-workers fed up with what they believe is the way women have taken over American society and how it is no longer a man's world. They set out to find a vulnerable woman - one looking for male attention - and wine her, dine her, then cruelly dump her, just to gain some "dignity" for their gender. Shot for $25,000 in less than two weeks, the film won the Sundance Filmmaker's trophy, awards for LaBute's screenplay and the star Aaron Eckhart's performance as a heartless and misogynist creep with ambition and cockiness to spare.
His next movie and sophomore cinema effort, Your Friends and Neighbors (1998), was considerably less well-received (a casualty of what is often referred to as "the sophomore jinx"). The film was about a group of six very different, but misanthropic people (three men and three women) connected by their relationships; when unhappy in them, they begin to shamelessly lie and cheat on one another with their lovers, and even with their friends. The movie got some strong reviews, but other reviewers felt LaBute was pretty much repeating himself. The prevailing attitude seeming to be that this time he had made an entire movie with all of its characters being nothing but villains, so why should anyone care about or want these six unlikable people to ever find happiness?
Nurse Betty (2000) was LaBute's next directorial effort, from a script he didn't write himself. It was was a radical departure from LaBute's other work, about a sweet-natured waitress obsessed with a particular soap opera and especially the show's star, George McCord (Greg Kinnear). The film received the Cannes Film Festival's Best Screenplay trophy for its authors. Renée Zellweger was honored with a Golden Globe Award. LaBute had finally made a good-nature, mainstream film, and a damn good one, but he didn't spend ALL his time basking - he had put out several other things that year, such as a TV movie based on his "Bash" plays and another original work entitled Tumble (2000), none of which got wide recognition.
In 2002 LaBute got himself noticed again with another less-caustic movie - a costume period piece called Possession (2002), based on the best-selling novel, which many believed to be about his love for early English culture. It starred LaBute stalwart Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow, who specializes in having the most authentic sounding British accent around. It wasn't a huge box-office success, but it did have many fervent admirers.
In 2003 LaBute brought to the screen another adaptation of his own work, a play he wrote and directed and had performed in England. He brought his original cast (Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol and Frederick Weller) back to appear in this one. It was entitled The Shape of Things (2003), about how a seductive art student, named Evelyn, takes Paul, a nerdy, insecure, out-of-shape guy, and begins molding him to look more and more desirable, much to the confusion of his friends. He enjoys being desirable, but is unaware of where all this remodeling will lead as Evelyn gets more and more possessive and controlling.
With pieces like "In the Company of Men" and Your Friends and Neighbors (1998), LaBute has proven that he has his hand on the pulse and minds of everyday and ordinary people (not heroes or villains), just average people who sound and behave horribly for no reason, and you cringe all the more because you know and identify with those characters. With "Nurse Betty" and "Possession", however, LaBute has shown that he has more than just one really incredibly note. He's no one-hit wonder. Here is a man whose entire body of work should be watched and studied by all.Creating dramas so unflinching they border on misanthropic. including "The Shape of Things." "Fat Pig" and "Reasons to be Pretty"- Director
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Moisés Kaufman was born in 1964 in Caracas, Venezuela. He is known for The Laramie Project (2002), The L Word (2004) and America on Stage (2013).Primarily known as a director, he had a huge impact as lead writer of "The Laramie Project." Also known for "33 Variations" and "Columbinus" about the Columbine high school shootings.- This New Yorker has been racking up productions and awards through the decades and was a pulitzer nominee in 2008 for "Dying City."
- Born in Trussville, Alabama, playwright Rebecca Gilman attended Middlebury College and is a graduate of Birmingham-Southerm College in Birmingham, Alabama. Her plays include The Glory of Living, Boy Gets Girl, and Spinning Into Butter. She is a three-time Joseph Jefferson Award-winner. The Glory of Living was also named a Time Magazine Top 10 play for 2001, and it won Gilman the George Devine Award and the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.With a keen interest in the complexities of race relations,this Southern playwright's breakthrough was "Spinning Into Butter."
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Had a big success with the play "Becky Shaw," an upper class comedy and has paid her bills writing for television's "Law and Order" and "Cold Case."- Nilaja Sun is an actor, playwright and teaching artist most known for her Obie award winning solo piece "No Child..." which had its initial off Broadway run at the Barrow Street Theatre from July 2006-June 2007 and was recently revived there in an extended run. For her creation and performance of No Child... and its subsequent national tour, Nilaja garnered 21 awards including: an Obie Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards including the John Gassner Playwriting Award for Outstanding New American Play, a Theatre World Award, the Helen Hayes Award, two NAACP Theatre Awards, and was named the Best One-Person Show at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. "No Child..." is published and has been licensed out to over 45 theatres nationally since 2008. In 2010, Nilaja was awarded the soloNOVA Award for Artist of the Year by terraNOVA Collective. She has also been seen on 30 Rock, Law & Order: SVU, Unforgettable, Louie, The International, Rubicon and in 2012, she will be seen in the independent films Nature Calls and Hairbrained. A native of the Lower East Side, she is a Princess Grace Award winner and has worked proudly as a teaching artist in New York City since 1998.She rocketed to prominence as the writer and performer of a one woman show, "No Child," a hard hitting comedy about her experiences as a high school teacher.
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Tracy Letts is the son of actor Dennis Letts and best-selling author Billie Letts, of "Where The Heart Is" and "The Honk And Holler Opening Soon" fame. Tracy is also the author of the stage play "Killer Joe", which ran off-Broadway in 1998 for nine months and starred Scott Glenn, Amanda Plummer, Michael Shannon, Sarah Paulson and Marc Nelson.She won the pulitzer prize for "August: Orange County" a dark intimate epic of the American family.