Sundance Institute Announces Seven Artists Selected for 04 Playwrights Retreat at Ucro Foundation, Feb. -

Sundance Institute Announces Seven Artists Selected for 2014 Playwrights Retreat at Ucross Foundation, Feb. 3-21 Eisa Davis, Frank London and Dave Malloy among the 2014 Fellows

Posted Nov 5, 2013

New York, NY Sundance Institute today announced the seven artists selected for its 2014 Playwrights Retreat at Ucross Foundation. The 15th annual writing colony at the 20,000-acre working cattle ranch outside of Sheridan, WY takes place February 3-21. Under the supervision of Artistic Director Philip Himberg and Producing Director Christopher Hibma, the Playwrights Retreat is made possible through the generosity of Ucross Foundation.

Himberg said, Our Playwrights Retreat at Ucross Foundation celebrates a milestone 15th anniversary this year, and we are pleased to continue this unique collaboration between Sundance Institute and the renowned Ucross Foundation. The Retreat provides a rare opportunity for theatre artists to begin new projects and refine drafts while creating an intimate community of theatre makers. Sundance Institute dramaturg Mame Hunt is on hand to guide and respond to the writing.

Notable artists and projects supported in previous years through the Playwrights Retreat program include A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder by Steven Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman (Hartford Stage Company and La Jolla Playhouse, Broadway), Song for the Disappeared by Tanya Saracho (Goodman Theater, Chicago), ToasT by Lemon Anderson (Under The Radar), and Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Woolly Mammoth, Washington D.C. and Signature Theatre, NYC).

The seven artists selected are:

Eisa Davis

Plays include Bulrusher (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Angela's Mixtape, Ramp (Ruby Prize), The History of Light, Warriors Don't Cry, the musical Flowers Are Sleeping, and the collaborations Hip Hop Anansi and Active Ingredients. Recent performing credits in theatre include The Cradle Will Rock (Encores), David Auburn's new play Lost Lake (O'Neill), Luck of the Irish (LCT3), The Call, This (Playwrights Horizons, CTG), the rock musical Passing Strange; the films Free Angela, Welcome to the Rileys (opposite James Gandolfini), In The Family, The Architect, Robot Stories, The Volunteer and Jack Ryan (both upcoming); and the television series The Wire, Damages, Smash, and Hart of Dixie. In addition, her songs were featured regularly on the Showtime series Soul Food. Eisa has received two Obie Awards, the Helen Merrill Award, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Cave Canem, the Van Lier and Mellon Foundations. She was an artist-in-residence at Symphony Space, a resident playwright at New Dramatists, and was the 2012 winner of the Alpert Award in Theatre. She is the 2013/14 Arthur Levitt Fellow at Williams College. Something Else and Tinctures are albums of her original music.

Frank London

Frank London is a member of The Klezmatics, winning a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music for their recording, Wonder Wheel (lyrics by Woody Guthrie). He composed 1001 Voices: A Symphony for Queens, Talmud Texts for poet Jake Marmer and the Ayn Sof Arkestra, the multimedia Jewish opera A Night in the Old Marketplace, Brass and Percussion Quartets for Carnegie Hall, Wachauer Begegnungen for folksinger Norbert Hauer, improvising soloists, and 90-piece wind ensemble Trachtenkappelle Rossatz in Austria, and the opera Green Violin. He has played with Angelique Kidjo, Youssou N'dour, Omara Portuando, Itzhak Perlman, David Byrne, Karen O & the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Iggy Pop, and is featured on over 300 recordings.

Dave Malloy

He has written music for seven full-length musicals, most recently Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on War & Peace, for which he was also librettist, orchestrator and Pierre. Comet premiered at Ars Nova in the fall of 2012, winning a Richard Rodgers Award and a Special Citation OBIE, before transferring to Kazino, a Russian supper club built specially for the show. He is also one of the co-creators/performers of Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert's Winterreise (Ontological-Hysteric Theater, New York Theater Workshop, American Repertory Theater; 2011 Special Citation OBIE Award), and the composer for the Brooklyn-based ensemble Banana Bag & Bodice. Other musicals include Beowulf A Thousand Years of Baggage; Beardo; Sandwich; and Clown Bible. Other notable shows include (The 99-cent) Miss Saigon, a shoe-string adaptation complete with a toy helicopter on a zip line, and pieces with Hoi Polloi, Witness Relocation, Clubbed Thumb, and Shotgun Players. He won a 2009 Jonathan Larson Grant and the 2009-11 NEA/TCG Career Development Program Grant for Theatre Designers. He has been a Guest Professor in devised music theater at Princeton and Vassar Universities. Upcoming: Black Wizard / Blue Wizard at the Incubator Arts Project, with co-creator/performer Eliza Bent. He lives in Brooklyn.

christopher oscar pe a

He is originally from California and now resides in Manhattan. Selected plays include maelstrom, icarus burns, alone above a raging sea, l(y)re, the suicide tapes and awe/struck. His play with composer Melissa Lusk i wonder if it's possible to have a love affair that lasts forever? or things I found on craigslist will close the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Theater's LAUNCH year season in 2014. He is the creator and co-star of 80/20, a new series for the web, which was recently named an Official Selection at the 2013 New Media Film Festival in LA, and won the 2013 Outstanding Achievement in writing from LAWEBFEST. His newest play TINY PEOPLE (or, it gets better) was featured in the 2013 Crossing Borders Festival at Two Rivers Theater. Awards/fellowships: Latino Playwrights Award (Kennedy Center), New York Theatre Workshop Emerging Artist Fellow, Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow, Sewanee

LINK:	http://www.sundance.org/press-center/release/seven-artists-selected-fo...
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