Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre
Lowry Marshall, Artistic Director
For Immediate Release February 20, 2007
CONTACT: Brian Gaston, Director of Marketing and Publicity:

401.863.2730 - Brian_Gaston@brown.edu
For more details and photos: www.brown.edu/btprep/

2007 Summer Season

July 11^th through August 4^th in Leeds Theatre

 boom
by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

July 11, 12, 13, 14 and August 3 at 8:00 PM
August 4 at 1:00 PM
Directed by Ken Prestininzi 

Neighborhood 3: Requisition Of Doom
by Jen Haley

July 18, 19, 20, 21 and August 2 at 8:00 PM
August 4 at 4:00 PM
Directed by Geordie Broadwater 

Torah! Torah! Torah! The Musical
by Steven Levenson and Andrew Hertz

July 25, 26, 27, 28 and August 1, 4 - All at 8:00 PM
Directed by Lowry Marshall

From July 11^th - August 4^th, in the Leeds Theatre, three hot new plays by three of America’s hottest young playwrights will be performed for the first time -- each for about the price of a movie. FESTIVAL WEEK, August 1^st-4^th, will feature special performances by our Apprentice and TheatreBridge companies, PLUS all three professional plays in repertory!

The Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre is an extraordinary ensemble of young theatre professionals, augmented by seasoned alumni performers and supported by the young artists-in-training who make up the Apprentice and TheatreBridge Companies. Brown alumni playwrights and other established American dramatists gather at Brown each summer to share their experience and expertise with students and to showcase their new works.

boom

by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

July 11, 12, 13, 14 and August 3 at 8:00 PM
August 4 at 1:00 PM
Director Ken Prestininzi

Can impending doom be the ultimate aphrodisiac? Jules and Jo go toe to toe as their world collapses around them. Sex. Lies. Videotape. Fish that are trying to tell us something. You definitely won’t want to miss this one.

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is a San Francisco-based playwright whose plays include Meaningless, Colorado, Multiplex, The Amorphous Blob, and Hunter Gatherers. His work has been seen Off-Broadway at SPF, the Bailiwick Theatre (Chicago), South Coast Rep, Seattle Fringe Festival, and in the Bay Area at Killing My Lobster, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Bruno’s Island New Plays Festival, Playground, SF State, and the Actors Theatre of Sonoma.  Peter has been a writer, performer and director for the sketch comedy group Killing My Lobster since 1998.  His work has been published by Lodestar Quarterly and 14 Hills.  Peter was a Tournesol Emerging Playwright resident and is currently a Creative Capital resident at the Z-Space Studio.  Honors include a TBA/New Works Funds grant, a Playground Emerging Playwright Award, the Highsmith Prize, and a first place in the Scene Competition at the Mother Lode Drama Festival in 1992.  

Peter has a degree in Theater and Biology from Brown and an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.  Currently, he’s working on commissions from Encore Theatre Company and The Magic Theatre/Sloan Initiative.  He promotes himself online at www.peternachtrieb.com.

Ken Prestininzi is a professional director, dramaturg, playwright, and theater producer and has created new work in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, England, Scotland and elsewhere. He began teaching the art of ensemble theatre under Joseph Chaikin’s direction. This summer his new play As American As is on the boards at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival at the Magic Theatre. His previous play AmeriKafka was widely acclaimed last July during its run in Chicago. Ken has produced literary and theatre arts programs in Prague and Mexico and in 2005 was a co-producer of the Performance Studies international conference at Brown University.

NEIGHBORHOOD 3: Requisition of Doom

by Jennifer Haley

July 18, 19, 20, 21 and August 2 at 8:00 PM
August 4 at 4:00 PM
Director Geordie Broadwater

Game Theory: Take a virtual real estate tour of America’s suburban heartland.  Take a very, very wrong turn.  Find yourself in a terrifying cul-de-sac where escape comes only a bitter cost.  Don’t be surprised when it's over much sooner than you thought possible.  It’s only a game.  But it will leave you breathless.

Jennifer Haley has seen her plays developed in theatres across the country. Her original stomping ground is Austin, Texas, where she worked with Refraction Arts at The Blue Theatre to produce The Butcher’s Daughter, a modern fairy tale musical, and Edmundo (A Musical Dalliance), a solo performance cabaret that toured the Vancouver and Seattle Fringe Festivals and was produced by Equinox Theatre Company in Bozeman, Montana.  Her play, Dreampuffs of War, received readings at The Empty Space Theater in Seattle and Abingdon Theatre Company in New York, and was produced by Stark Raving Theatre in Portland, Oregon.

Jennifer earned an MFA in playwriting at Brown University, where she was awarded a Lucille Lortel Fellowship, the Weston Award for Drama, and the Joelson Prize for Creative Writing.  Excerpts from her thesis play, Gingerbreadhouse, were featured last year in Threshold, an evening of new work at The Public Theatre in New York. Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom was featured at New York University's hotINK Festival before its first production at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep.

After writing her first screenplay at Brown, Jennifer wrote and co-produced an independent sitcom pilot, Day Job.   She lives in Los Angeles, where she's developing an original drama called The Red Shift.

Development History:

Reading, Perishable Theatre, Providence RI, April 2006
Reading, New Urban Arts, Providence RI, August 2006
Reading, hotINK International Festival of Plays, New York City, Tisch School of the Arts, January 2007

Director Geordie Broadwater has previously directed world premieres of The Insomnia Play by Jess Brickman, Food Porn by Andy Bragen, Pilgrims by Jamie Carmichael and Big John and Little Ben by Sam Marks. At the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium he directed productions of The Dumb Waiter, Macbeth, Death and the Maiden, Othello, and The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket. Geordie is Artistic Director of the Babel Theatre Project, a New York company dedicated to the development and production of new plays. He holds a BA in English from Harvard University and an MFA in Directing from the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium..

TORAH! TORAH! TORAH! A New Musical

by Steven Levenson and Andrew Hertz

July 25, 26, 27, 28 and August 1, 4.  All at 8:00 PM
Director: Lowry Marshall

Once a normal, over-sexed seventh grader full of hope for the future and an unflagging devotion to Broadway musicals of the past, Sammy Teitelbaum is now twenty-three, single, unemployed, and living with his parents in White Plains.  He blames it all on a Bar Mitzvah gone tragically wrong, and from his way-cool spiritual advisor Rabbi Z to his Machiavellian party-planner Lori Goodstein, there’s plenty of blame to go around. 

Steven Levenson and Andy Hertz explore the dark underbelly of Jewish adolescence—even though they’ve been told repeatedly not to put their hands down there—and discover that “comedy is only tragedy plus time.”  You’ll laugh ‘til you cry.

Writer/performer Steven Levenson returns to the Playwrights Rep for a second season after memorable performances last year in Power of Sail and Speech & Debate.  A resident of New York City, Steven has continued his association withplaywright Stephen Karam, appearing in developmental readings of Speech & Debate at prominent New York theatres like Second Stage and the Roundabout.  At Brown, Steven studied playwriting with Paula Vogel and Brighde Mullins and wrote the original play on which this multi-character musical is based in Lowry Marshall’s solo performance course.

Composer Andrew Hertz has an MFA from NYU/Tisch’s unique Musical Theatre graduate program.  At Brown, he split his time between music and theatre.  Andy was music director for the 2003 Brown Summer Theatre production of Oh, Coward!  Andy lives and works as a composer, performer, and accompanist in New York City.

Artistic Director Lowry Marshall has taught acting/directing courses and directed plays at Brown since 1986. She's active as a freelance director, actor, voice-over artist, and coach. In addition to an MFA from the Professional Actor Training Program of the Asolo Conservatory, she holds degrees in directing and English literature.

Lowry served as artistic director of summer companies in Michigan and North Carolina. She's served as director and/or dramaturg for more than a hundred plays and solo shows, including the ANTA national tour of El Grande De Coca-Cola and the world premier at the La Jolla Playhouse of the 2.5 Minute Ride, for which soloist Lisa Kron won an Obie Award. Filler Up, the solo show Lowry co-wrote with Toronto performance artist Deb Filler, has toured all over the world and was nominated for a Helen Hayes award.

Lowry is a playwright, lyricist, and script consultant. She's been a guest artist at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the London Academy of Theatre, and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Her play Waiting for the Termite Man was awarded the Ruby Lloyd Apsey Playwriting Prize, and she wrote book and lyrics for The Musical Winter's Tale. For Brown, Marshall translated and adapted Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro, with a musical score by Jack Eric Williams. "Solo Performance," a course Lowry developed at Brown over the last decade, serves as a capstone experience for Brown writer/performers.

Performance Schedules