First Core Alumni Fund Projects Take the Stage

New initiative provides mini-grants to former Playwrights' Center Core Writers

The first round of projects supported by the Playwrights' Center's Core Alumni Fund will receive readings this month in Minneapolis and New York. This is the first year of the new initiative, which provides small grants to past participants in the Playwrights' Center's Core Writer program to continue projects that had their start at the Center. This year's recipients of Core Alumni Fund support are Vincent Delaney, Catherine Filloux, and Stephanie Fleischmann. 

Core Writers are selected for a three-year term, during which the playwright has access to a number of resources, including play development workshops with professional actors, directors, dramaturgs, and designers. Core Writers may also apply to take part in PlayLabs and the Ruth Easton New Play Series. In addition to its more tangible benefits, the program fosters a creative community for playwrights that reaches beyond their three-year tenure.

Producing Artistic Director Jeremy B. Cohen views the Fund as an important new front in the Playwrights' Center's mission to champion playwrights and new plays. "It is vital that we are a supportive presence in playwrights' lives long after their official term at the Center is over," he says. "The Core Alumni Fund is a new way to honor that commitment, to continue being an artistic home for an ‘extended family' of playwrights."

Vincent Delaney, a 2006-2009 Core Writer based in Washington, received a Core Alumni Fund grant for further development of his play Perpetua, an early draft of which was featured in PlayLabs 2004. The workshop will culminate in a reading at the Playwrights' Center on February 25. "I think this is a lovely opportunity to come back to a script that started its life at the Center and take it further," says Delaney. "The program is so important to writers who are still very much a part of the community, but live in other cities."

Amanda Whisner and John Daggett in the 2008-09 Ruth Easton New Play Series reading of Dog and Wolf.

Meanwhile, 2007-2010 Core Writer Catherine Filloux will use Core Alumni Fund support to conduct a reading of her play Dog and Wolf at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis. The play, in which a political refugee seeking asylum in the United States suddenly goes missing, was featured in the 2008-09 Ruth Easton New Play Series and has since been produced at 59E59 in New York. 

"The presentation at Pillsbury House Theatre is part of a project I initiated in New York City to bring a theater experience to areas where theatergoing isn't necessarily part of the everyday culture," says Filloux, "and to focus on the neighborhood's feelings and concerns surrounding issues raised in the play." The reading will take place during free health clinic hours at Pillsbury House Dance Studio in Minneapolis on February 23.

Jodi Kellogg, Tracey Maloney, and Christina Baldwin in the PlayLabs 2008 reading of The Secret Lives of Coats.

Finally, The Secret Lives of Coats, a play with music by 2006-2009 Core Writer Stephanie Fleischmann and composer Christina Campanella, will have a public reading in New York with Core Writer Fund support.  "A play with music is a complicated beast," says Fleischmann. "The Secret Lives of Coats … came into being at the Playwrights' Center under the inimitable guidance of [Resident Director and Lab Producer] Hayley Finn. Three Ruth Easton Lab workshops and one PlayLabs later, we have a draft." 

The reading will take place Monday, February 28 at Chelsea Studios, and will incorporate a trio of instrumentalists. The goal, says Fleischmann, is "to get a feel for the subtlety, the twists and turns of Christina's whimsical, wistful, funny-as-all-get-out play on multiple musical genres. And also, fingers crossed, to get a theater, or a producer, interested in mounting the work."

"But a reading of a musical costs money," she adds. "The continued life of The Secret Lives of Coats couldn't have happened without the Core Alumni Fund."

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Event information

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – APPROX. 6:15 PM – FREE

A reading of Dog and Wolf by Catherine Filloux
At Pillsbury House Dance Studio
3501 Chicago Ave. S 
Minneapolis, MN 55407

Reading will take place during free Integrated Health Clinic hours, in which Northwestern Health Services University offers acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, medicine, and psychological care, from 5:30 to 8:30 PM. Reading will begin at approximately 6:15 PM.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 1 PM – FREE 

A reading of Perpetua by Vincent Delaney
At the Playwrights' Center
2301 East Franklin Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55406

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – 6 PM (EST) – FREE

A reading of The Secret Lives of Coats by Stephanie Fleischmann with music by Christina Campanella
At Chelsea Studios
151 West 26th St., 5th Floor
New York, NY  10001

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Bios

VINCENT DELANEY's plays have been produced and developed at the Guthrie, Actors Theatre of Louisville, TACT, Seattle Rep, ACT, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Florida Stage, the CTC, Magic, Woolly Mammoth, Pittsburgh Public, the Lark, New Harmony, and Orlando Shakespeare Festival, among others. Awards include a McKnight Fellowship, a Jerome Commission, the Heideman Award, a Bush Fellowship, and the Virtual Theatre Project New Play Award. He is a Core Alumnus of the Playwrights Center. The Sequence, commissioned by the Guthrie, has been produced around the country and in the UK. The War Party was developed through NNPN, and had simultaneous world premieres at Seattle Public and InterAct. Kuwait premiered at the Humana Festival, and has since been produced around the country. His newest, T or C, was just optioned for an Off Broadway production.

CATHERINE FILLOUX is an award-winning playwright who has been writing about human rights and social justice for the past twenty years.  Her plays have been produced in New York and around the world. Filloux wrote the book and lyrics for Where Elephants Weep (Composer Him Sophy), a musical, which received its world premiere in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She is the librettist for The Floating Box: A Story in Chinatown (Composer Jason Kao Hwang), selected as a Critics Choice in Opera News. Awards include: Voice Award for Artistic Works (Voices of Women), PeaceWriting Award (Omni Center for Peace), Roger L. Stevens Award (Kennedy Center), Eric Kocher Playwrights Award (O'Neill), Callaway Award (New Dramatists). Filloux's plays are published by Playscripts, Inc., and her anthology Silence of God and Other Plays is published by Seagull Books' In Performance. http://www.catherinefilloux.com

STEPHANIE FLEISCHMANN's plays and libretti serve as blueprints for intricate three-dimensional sonic and visual worlds. Her work has been developed/produced internationally and across the U.S. Coats is her second collaboration with Campanella: first came Red Fly/Blue Bottle, created with Latitude 14. Other works include: What the Moon Saw, Eloise & Ray, Tally Ho, Omonia-3, The Street of Useful Things, The World Speed Carnival, The Hotel Carter, Viper, and more. Grants/fellowships/residencies: NYSCA, NEA, 2 NYFAs, Frederick Loewe Award, Whitfield Cook Prize, Tennessee Williams Fellowship, MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Mabou Mines/Suite, HARP, DPI, and New Dramatists, and more! Published by Play, A Journal of Plays, Playscripts.com, Smith & Krauss. M.F.A.: Brooklyn College, thanks to Mac Wellman!

CHRISTINA CAMPANELLA is a multidisciplinary artist whose work combines songwriting, sound design, recording, and live performance. In addition to The Secret Lives of Coats, recent scores include: Red Fly/Blue Bottle and Tinder (with S. Fleischmann & Latitude 14), Tender (Nicki Bloom), The Shady Maids of Haiti (John Jahnke). Grants/Residencies: NYSCA, NY State Music Fund, Meet the Composer, American Music Center, HERE Arts Center/HARP, KO Festival, MabouMines/Suite. Extensive touring, performing her own works and others: EMPAC (Troy), STEIM (NL), Noorderzon (NL),  EXIT (FR),  Theatre Garonne (FR),  Fin de Siecle (FR), Fusebox Festival (Austin), Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), and art/rock clubs throughout the U.S. and Europe. Co-founder, Latitude 14.