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Supported by a grant from The Ruth Easton Fund of the Edelstein Family Foundation, The Ruth Easton Lab gives the nation's most exciting writers the time and tools to develop new work for the stage. The Center's Core Writers travel to Minneapolis from across the country to move their plays closer to production with the support of the finest dramaturgical minds in the nation, under the leadership of Resident Director Michael Bigelow Dixon and Producing Artistic Director Polly Carl.

PlayLabs Special Announcement

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Dog and Wolf

by Catherine Filloux

10/06/2008

On the uncertain threshold between hope and fear, Joseph, an American asylum lawyer, fights to protect his client, Jasmina, a human rights worker and refugee from Bosnia. When she destroys his case and disappears, he is drawn across an emotional border into uncharted territory where he discovers that one's own destiny can't be put in front of family. And, it is Jasmina who shows Joseph the real road to asylum.

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Raskol

by Kira Obolensky

11/03/2008

Inspired by Dostoyevsky's book Crime and Punishment, Raskol tells the story of a young student who commits a horrific crime under the influence of a dangerous idea—that there are extraordinary people who can commit crime without any fear of punishment. Raskol— in a post-crime delirium— meets Sonya, a religious whore, and Perfidy, a police investigator who befriends the student even as he suspects him of the crime. Set in a timeless world that is connected both to our contemporary times and to the 19th-century St. Petersburg of the novel, the play features songs set to an improvisational jazz "soundtrack" by the Fantastic Merlins.

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A MAP OF DOUBT AND RESCUE

by Susan Miller

12/08/2008

Core Writer Susan Miller works up a fresh take on her acclaimed play. Winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Pinter Prize for Drama, A Map of Doubt and Rescue charts the struggles and mistakes of characters who don’t expect to touch each other’s lives until they are thrown into them. From a small town newspaper room to an emergency hurricane shelter to a screening room in Hollywood, Miller reveals that we are all connected—even if we don’t know how.

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Down in Mississippi

by Carlyle Brown

01/19/2009

Three College students, an African American man, a white woman and a white man go down to the dangerous world of Mississippi in 1964 to register Mississippi Negroes to vote. Along the way they discover that they have to change themselves in order to change the world. A Gospel play with music, Down in Mississippi explores the heart of the Civil Rights Movement.

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Agnes under the Big Top

by Aditi Brennan Kapil

02/02/2009

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

In this Busker’s tale, Agnes, an immigrant home-care worker, discovers that she has terminal cancer and sets in motion events steering her rheumatoid, bedridden employer on a collision course with a former ringmaster driving a subway train.


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03/02/2009

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti is the story of three men who thought they were Jesus Christ and the doctor who tried to change their minds. Adapted from the seminal psychological study of the same title by Dr. Milton Rokeach.

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Hawking

by Lonnie Carter

04/06/2009

Hawking is the fictionalized account of the last day on earth of Stephen Hawking (he may be going to Mars), aka Prometheus Bound, as he is visited by artists, philosophers, politicians and birds, some based on real folks, some mythological folks, some both, at the Royal Observatory in London. Each is disabled - blind, lame, mute, limbless, et cetera; each extraordinary. Each trying to prevent Hawking from revealing his answer to the universe, if in fact, he really has it.

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T or C

by Vincent Delaney

05/04/2009

Can we ever really know our children? And what do we become, when darkness claims them? A year after their son commits a vicious school shooting, Sheridan and Jane come together in the New Mexico desert to reinvent themselves. But that falls apart when they meet Soledad, a casino girl with a gift for poker.

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