Download to view the Conference details in our digital brochure

SCHEDULE
CLASSES
Saturday, July 9
9am-2pm
Saturday, July 9
3-7pm
Sunday, July 10
10am-6pm
Saturday, July 16
1-7pm
Sunday, July 17
12-8pm
PLAYWRIGHTS ALCHEMY
Finding Inspiration and Making New Work with
2015 Conference Playwright David Jacobi
CREATING CONFLICT AND STRUCTURING
THE COMPELLING ARGUMENT
SATURDAY, JULY 9
9AM
3PM
SUNDAY, JULY 10
with National Theatre Conservatory
Playwright-Director Richard Caliban
10AM
WRITING THE SHORT PLAY
5PM
8PM
with Sundance Institute Playwriting Fellow Pia Wilson
INSPIRED BY CURRENT EVENTS
A Playwriting Workshop about creating work ripped from
the headlines with Playwrights Center Core Writer Ken Urban
AN INTRODUCTION TO CREATING
WORK IN THE ROOM
The Debate Society Method with Director/Developer Oliver Butler
CLASS: Playwrights Alchemy
CLASS: Creating Conflict and Structuring
the Compelling Argument
CLASS: Writing the Short Play
TUESDAY, JULY 12
Heavenly Cosmic by Meghan Kennedy
The Found Dog Ribbon Dance by Dominic Finocchiaro
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13
5PM
8PM
Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
Flat Sam by Antoinette Nwandu
2016
CONFERENCE
THURSDAY, JULY 14
5PM
8PM
Poor Edward by Jonathan Payne
Another Kind of Silence by Lauren Feldman
SATURDAY, JULY 16
For details and registration about this wide-range of
classes for theater lovers and theater artists, please visit
www.PlayPenn.org.
All Classes are held at University of the Arts at
Broad and Walnut Streets in Center City, Philadelphia
1PM
CLASS: Inspired by Current Events
SUNDAY, JULY 17
JULY 5 - 24
12PMCLASS: Creating Work in the Room
MONDAY, JULY 18
7:30PM Additional Reading with The Foundry
Suicide Jockey by Lena Barnard
Thursday, July 21
6pm
POP POLITICS
With the Democratic National Convention on our doorstep in an
election year, join us to examine the good, bad and ugly of politics,
pop culture and the written word. From blogs to cartoons to social
satire on-stage, we are adrift a seemingly endless political gabfest. What makes great political writing? How do you create a
space for a meaningful exchange of ideas in the 24-hour assault
of political punditry? How does theatrical writing fit into, or not fit
into, the great social discussion? Panelists will include writers in a
range of genres - including Philadelphia favorite Jen Childs of 1812
Productions’ annual political review This is the Week That Is along
with Inquirer writer Amy Rosenberg. We’ll explore these questions
and more at the PlayPenn Conference Symposium moderated by
playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger.
The Symposium is free and open to the public. Reservations
encouraged via www.PlayPenn.org.
TUESDAY, JULY 19
7:30PM Additional Reading
Sensitive Guys by MJ Kaufman
THURSDAY, JULY 21
6PM
8PM
SYMPOSIUM: Pop Politics
Heavenly Cosmic by Meghan Kennedy
FRIDAY, JULY 22
8PM
The Found Dog Ribbon Dance by Dominic Finocchiaro
SATURDAY, JULY 23
4PM
8PM
Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
Flat Sam by Antoinette Nwandu
SUNDAY, JULY 24
2PM
5PM
Poor Edward by Jonathan Payne
Another Kind of Silence by Lauren Feldman
Readings are FREE and open to the public.
Make your reservations online beginning July 1 at
www.PlayPenn.org or call (215) 568-8079 x 107
Donor Priority Access reservations begin June 18 for those
supporting PlayPenn with a gift of $125 or more.
All Conference Readings
and our Symposium
are held at The Drake,
1512 Spruce Street,
Philadelphia. Enter on
S. Hicks Street.
Seating is limited and
advance reservations are
encouraged. A waiting list
will be available.
All events and dates are
subject to change.
220 w. evergreen ave., d-2
philadelphia, pa 19118
www.PlayPenn.org
SYMPOSIUM
THE DRAKE
1512 SPRUCE STREET, PHILADELPHIA
ENTER ON S. HICKS STREET
WWW.PLAYPENN.ORG
Gabriel Jason Dean
returns to PlayPenn, where he developed Terminus in
2013. Selected plays include In Bloom (Kennedy Center
Paula Vogel Prize, Runner-Up Princess Grace Award); The
Transition of Doodle Pequeño (AATE Distinguished Play
Award, NETC Aurand Harris Award); Qualities of Starlight
(Essential Theatre New Play Award, B. Iden Payne Award).
Notable awards include a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton
University and a Dramatist’s Guild Fellowship. Gabriel is
currently a Visiting Writer in Residence at Muhlenberg
College, a Core Writer at The Playwrights’ Center in
Minneapolis and a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre
Workshop. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
THIS SUMMER, WE WILL DEVELOP
OUR 100TH PLAY.
100 new plays borne of our playwrights, enriched by weeks of
intensive work with professional directors, dedicated dramaturgs,
and local actors, and further enhanced by the informed response of
you, our audience.
Over 60% of our plays go on to professional productions across
the region, the country, and even the world. We do not take lightly
the impact our work has had in Philadelphia, and are proud to have
now found a home at The Drake, a theatre space we share with four
other companies dedicated to new work.
We invite you to join us from July 5-24 at our 2016 Annual
Conference for six diverse and exciting plays, plus other
opportunities for learning and discussion. There are additional play
readings, classes for theatre artists and writers at all levels, and as
we could not ignore the Democratic National Convention happening
in our backyard, we will engage in an important dialogue about the
intersection of theatre and politics.
As always, our readings are free and open to the public. To provide
this broad accessibility to our audience, we rely on tax-deductible
donations from our friends and supporters. If you support PlayPenn
this year at $125 or more, we will welcome you into our Donor
Priority Access program, offering you early reservation and seating
opportunities at Conference readings. This has been a great benefit
for our events that historically fill up, commanding long waiting lists.
I encourage you to read about the plays, classes, and symposium
that comprise our 2016 Annual Conference. Then, please
consider a donation to support PlayPenn as we nurture
the writers and plays that will become the heralds of our
time. We look forward to sitting alongside you in the
theatre this summer.
PAUL MESHEJIAN, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Director: Edward Sobel
Dramaturg: Kittson O’Neill
Executive Producers: Jeanne Ruddy
and Victor Keen
Associate Producers: Nancy Boykin and Dan Kern
HEARTLAND
Wednesday, July 13 at 5pm &
Saturday, July 23 at 4pm
Nazrul, an Afghan refugee, travels to Nebraska to
find Dr. Harold Banks, the father of his friend Greta
and a renowned professor. These two unlikely
roommates go on an emotional journey of love
and loss that demands they examine their own
culpability. What results is moving meditation on
the power of forgiveness.
Dominic Finocchiaro
Antoinette Nwandu
is a Brooklyn-based playwright, performer, and
freelance dramaturg. His writing has been produced
and developed around the country, including with
Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Civilians, the Lark
PlayDevelopment Center, the National New Play
Network, Portland Center Stage, the Flea Theater,
the Kennedy Center, the UCross Foundation, the
Amoralists, and at the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway
Short Play Festival. Dominic is a native of San Francisco
and recently completed the MFA Playwriting program
at Columbia University.
is a New York-based playwright via Los Angeles. She
is a second-year member of the Ars Nova Play Group,
the 2015-16 Naked Angels Issues PlayLab Resident
Playwright, and a Dramatists Guild Fellowship alum.
Her plays have been produced and developed by
Page73, Ars Nova, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This
Time, The Movement Theater Company, WordBRIDGE
and Dreamscape Theatre. Honors include the Lorraine
Hansberry Playwriting Award, the Negro Ensemble
Company’s Douglas Turner Ward Prize and a Literary
Fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference.
Upcoming: Pass Over at Steppenwolf in 2017.
THE
FOUND
DOG
RIBBON
DANCE
Tuesday, July 12 at 8pm &
Friday, July 22 at 8pm
Director: Oliver Butler
Dramaturg: Elaina Di Monaco
Executive Producer: Josephine Klein
Associate Producer: The Chatham Foundation
Norma, a professional cuddler in Portland,
Oregon, has devoted her life to healing
others and ignoring her own needs. When
she discovers a lost dog and attempts
to return it to its rightful owner, Norma’s
ordered life takes a turn. A story of
loneliness, intimacy, and the healing power
of the music of Whitney Houston.
Lauren Feldman
Meghan Kennedy
is a freelance playwright, dramaturg, professor of
playwriting (Bryn Mawr College), and a creator-performer
of theatrical contemporary circus. She loves theater
that is brave, honest, loving, and slightly impossible. She
has been nominated for the Barrie and Bernice Stavis
Playwright Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Susan Smith
Blackburn Prize, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, New
York Innovative Theatre Award, and the Doric Wilson
Independent Playwright Award. A graduate of the Yale
School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus
Arts, she is also a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a mentor
with The Foundry, and a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow.
Meghan’s Napoli, Brooklyn will have its world premiere at
the Roundabout Theatre in 2017 and is the recipient of the
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Grant. Meghan’s play Too
Much, Too Much, Too Many (PlayPenn ‘12) premiered at the
Roundabout Underground in 2014 and was published by
Dramatists’ Play Service. She is currently under commission
from The Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown
Theater Festival, and The New York State Council of the
Arts/New Georges Theater. Her play Light is the winner of
the David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize.
She is an alum of Page 73 and Ars Nova Play Group, and is
currently a writer for the upcoming TV show, Falling Water
(USA). She lives in Brooklyn.
Director: Megan Sandberg-Zakian
Dramaturg: Jeremy Stoller
Executive Producers: Leonard and Mary Lee Haas
Associate Producers: Anonymous,
Wendy and Lawrence White
Two already-partnered women cross paths in Athens
and find themselves falling for one another. Through a
lush, winding landscape, we track two couples as they
wrestle with long-term partnership, the elusiveness of
desire, and the mysteries of a changing self. Another
Kind of Silence is a bilingual play, told simultaneously
in English and American Sign Language, with a cast of
four characters and a Greek Chorus.
ANOTHER
KIND OF
SILENCE
Thursday, July 14 at 8pm &
Sunday, July 24 at 5pm
Wednesday, July 13 at 8pm &
Saturday, July 23 at 8pm
Director: Danya Taymor
Dramaturg: Jacqueline Goldfinger
Executive Producer: Patrick Wayman
Associate Producers: Carol Baker and Mark Stein,
Gayle and David Smith
Who is Theresa Baker and why does she
have a life-sized poster of a soldier in her
house? A play about fractured families,
death, grieving, and learning to love when
it counts the most, Flat Sam asks us to
consider what happens when we come
home to war and war comes home to us.
Jonathan Payne
recently received a 2015 Princess Grace Playwriting
Fellowship. His work has been produced and developed at
the Tristan Bates Theatre (UK), Ars Nova, Fringe Festival
NYC, The Bushwick Star, and the Fire This Time Festival.
He is a proud fellow at New Dramatists, Playwrights
Realm and The Dramatist’s Guild, as well as a 2014-15 Ars
Nova Play Group member. Awards include the Holland
New Voices Award (2014), Rosa Parks Award (2011), John
Cauble Short Play Award (2002). He received a BA from
the GSA Conservatoire (UK) and an MFA in Playwriting
from Tisch School of the Arts.
Director: Daniel Goldstein
Dramaturg: Emilia LaPenta
Executive Producer: Anne M. Congdon
Associate Producers: Willy Holtzman,
Jan Rothschild
Winnie’s closest relationship is with her brother.
Or is it with her lover? Or her stuffed parrot? As
we jump through time in Winnie’s life, Heavenly
Cosmic explores how the intimacies we keep,
with people and otherwise, help us hold onto
ourselves. And when faced with our own
mortality, how some relationships anchor us
while others carry us away.
FLAT
SAM
Director: Tyne Rafaeli
Dramaturg: Michele Volansky
Executive Producers: Richard and Laura Vague
Associate Producers: Steven Engelmyer and
Lisa Wershaw, Joe Zebrowitz, MD
HEAVENLY
COSMIC
Tuesday, July 12 at 5pm &
Thursday, July 21 at 8pm
Opal and Eddie are together. Well, she’d
call it survival, and he’d call it penance. As
night descends, two people grapple for a
good enough story to make a new life for
each other in this hypnotic, haunted tale of
intimacy and survival.
POOR
EDWARD
Thursday, July 14 at 5pm &
Sunday, July 24 at 2pm
SCHEDULE
CLASSES
Saturday, July 9
9am-2pm
Saturday, July 9
3-7pm
Sunday, July 10
10am-6pm
Saturday, July 16
1-7pm
Sunday, July 17
12-8pm
PLAYWRIGHTS ALCHEMY
Finding Inspiration and Making New Work with
2015 Conference Playwright David Jacobi
CREATING CONFLICT AND STRUCTURING
THE COMPELLING ARGUMENT
SATURDAY, JULY 9
9AM
3PM SUNDAY, JULY 10
with National Theatre Conservatory
Playwright-Director Richard Caliban
10AM WRITING THE SHORT PLAY
5PM 8PM with Sundance Institute Playwriting Fellow Pia Wilson
INSPIRED BY CURRENT EVENTS
A Playwriting Workshop about creating work ripped from
the headlines with Playwrights Center Core Writer Ken Urban
AN INTRODUCTION TO CREATING
WORK IN THE ROOM
The Debate Society Method with Director/Developer Oliver Butler
CLASS: Playwrights Alchemy
CLASS: Creating Conflict and Structuring
the Compelling Argument
CLASS: Writing the Short Play
TUESDAY, JULY 12
Heavenly Cosmic by Meghan Kennedy
The Found Dog Ribbon Dance by Dominic Finocchiaro
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13
5PM 8PM Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
Flat Sam by Antoinette Nwandu
2016
CONFERENCE
THURSDAY, JULY 14
5PM 8PM Poor Edward by Jonathan Payne
Another Kind of Silence by Lauren Feldman
SATURDAY, JULY 16
For details and registration about this wide-range of
classes for theater lovers and theater artists, please visit
www.PlayPenn.org.
All Classes are held at University of the Arts at
Broad and Walnut Streets in Center City, Philadelphia
1PM CLASS: Inspired by Current Events
SUNDAY, JULY 17
JULY 5 - 24
12PMCLASS: Creating Work in the Room
MONDAY, JULY 18
7:30PM Additional Reading with The Foundry
Suicide Jockey by Lena Barnard
Thursday, July 21
6pm
POP POLITICS
With the Democratic National Convention on our doorstep in an
election year, join us to examine the good, bad and ugly of politics,
pop culture and the written word. From blogs to cartoons to social
satire on-stage, we are adrift a seemingly endless political gabfest. What makes great political writing? How do you create a
space for a meaningful exchange of ideas in the 24-hour assault
of political punditry? How does theatrical writing fit into, or not fit
into, the great social discussion? Panelists will include writers in a
range of genres - including Philadelphia favorite Jen Childs of 1812
Productions’ annual political review This is the Week That Is along
with Inquirer writer Amy Rosenberg. We’ll explore these questions
and more at the PlayPenn Conference Symposium moderated by
playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger.
The Symposium is free and open to the public. Reservations
encouraged via www.PlayPenn.org.
TUESDAY, JULY 19
7:30PM Additional Reading
Sensitive Guys by MJ Kaufman
THURSDAY, JULY 21
6PM 8PM SYMPOSIUM: Pop Politics
Heavenly Cosmic by Meghan Kennedy
FRIDAY, JULY 22
8PM The Found Dog Ribbon Dance by Dominic Finocchiaro
SATURDAY, JULY 23
4PM 8PM
Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
Flat Sam by Antoinette Nwandu
SUNDAY, JULY 24
2PM 5PM Poor Edward by Jonathan Payne
Another Kind of Silence by Lauren Feldman
Readings are FREE and open to the public.
Make your reservations online beginning July 1 at
www.PlayPenn.org or call (215) 568-8079 x 107
Donor Priority Access reservations begin June 18 for those
supporting PlayPenn with a gift of $125 or more.
All Conference Readings
and our Symposium
are held at The Drake,
1512 Spruce Street,
Philadelphia. Enter on
S. Hicks Street.
Seating is limited and
advance reservations are
encouraged. A waiting list
will be available.
All events and dates are
subject to change.
220 w. evergreen ave., d-2
philadelphia, pa 19118
www.PlayPenn.org
SYMPOSIUM
THE DRAKE
1512 SPRUCE STREET, PHILADELPHIA
ENTER ON S. HICKS STREET
WWW.PLAYPENN.ORG
SCHEDULE
CLASSES
Saturday, July 9
9am-2pm
Saturday, July 9
3-7pm
Sunday, July 10
10am-6pm
Saturday, July 16
1-7pm
Sunday, July 17
12-8pm
PLAYWRIGHTS ALCHEMY
Finding Inspiration and Making New Work with
2015 Conference Playwright David Jacobi
CREATING CONFLICT AND STRUCTURING
THE COMPELLING ARGUMENT
SATURDAY, JULY 9
9AM
3PM SUNDAY, JULY 10
with National Theatre Conservatory
Playwright-Director Richard Caliban
10AM WRITING THE SHORT PLAY
5PM 8PM with Sundance Institute Playwriting Fellow Pia Wilson
INSPIRED BY CURRENT EVENTS
A Playwriting Workshop about creating work ripped from
the headlines with Playwrights Center Core Writer Ken Urban
AN INTRODUCTION TO CREATING
WORK IN THE ROOM
The Debate Society Method with Director/Developer Oliver Butler
CLASS: Playwrights Alchemy
CLASS: Creating Conflict and Structuring
the Compelling Argument
CLASS: Writing the Short Play
TUESDAY, JULY 12
Heavenly Cosmic by Meghan Kennedy
The Found Dog Ribbon Dance by Dominic Finocchiaro
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13
5PM 8PM Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
Flat Sam by Antoinette Nwandu
2016
CONFERENCE
THURSDAY, JULY 14
5PM 8PM Poor Edward by Jonathan Payne
Another Kind of Silence by Lauren Feldman
SATURDAY, JULY 16
For details and registration about this wide-range of
classes for theater lovers and theater artists, please visit
www.PlayPenn.org.
All Classes are held at University of the Arts at
Broad and Walnut Streets in Center City, Philadelphia
1PM CLASS: Inspired by Current Events
SUNDAY, JULY 17
JULY 5 - 24
12PMCLASS: Creating Work in the Room
MONDAY, JULY 18
7:30PM Additional Reading with The Foundry
Suicide Jockey by Lena Barnard
Thursday, July 21
6pm
POP POLITICS
With the Democratic National Convention on our doorstep in an
election year, join us to examine the good, bad and ugly of politics,
pop culture and the written word. From blogs to cartoons to social
satire on-stage, we are adrift a seemingly endless political gabfest. What makes great political writing? How do you create a
space for a meaningful exchange of ideas in the 24-hour assault
of political punditry? How does theatrical writing fit into, or not fit
into, the great social discussion? Panelists will include writers in a
range of genres - including Philadelphia favorite Jen Childs of 1812
Productions’ annual political review This is the Week That Is along
with Inquirer writer Amy Rosenberg. We’ll explore these questions
and more at the PlayPenn Conference Symposium moderated by
playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger.
The Symposium is free and open to the public. Reservations
encouraged via www.PlayPenn.org.
TUESDAY, JULY 19
7:30PM Additional Reading
Sensitive Guys by MJ Kaufman
THURSDAY, JULY 21
6PM 8PM SYMPOSIUM: Pop Politics
Heavenly Cosmic by Meghan Kennedy
FRIDAY, JULY 22
8PM The Found Dog Ribbon Dance by Dominic Finocchiaro
SATURDAY, JULY 23
4PM 8PM
Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
Flat Sam by Antoinette Nwandu
SUNDAY, JULY 24
2PM 5PM Poor Edward by Jonathan Payne
Another Kind of Silence by Lauren Feldman
Readings are FREE and open to the public.
Make your reservations online beginning July 1 at
www.PlayPenn.org or call (215) 568-8079 x 107
Donor Priority Access reservations begin June 18 for those
supporting PlayPenn with a gift of $125 or more.
All Conference Readings
and our Symposium
are held at The Drake,
1512 Spruce Street,
Philadelphia. Enter on
S. Hicks Street.
Seating is limited and
advance reservations are
encouraged. A waiting list
will be available.
All events and dates are
subject to change.
220 w. evergreen ave., d-2
philadelphia, pa 19118
www.PlayPenn.org
SYMPOSIUM
THE DRAKE
1512 SPRUCE STREET, PHILADELPHIA
ENTER ON S. HICKS STREET
WWW.PLAYPENN.ORG
Gabriel Jason Dean
returns to PlayPenn, where he developed Terminus in
2013. Selected plays include In Bloom (Kennedy Center
Paula Vogel Prize, Runner-Up Princess Grace Award); The
Transition of Doodle Pequeño (AATE Distinguished Play
Award, NETC Aurand Harris Award); Qualities of Starlight
(Essential Theatre New Play Award, B. Iden Payne Award).
Notable awards include a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton
University and a Dramatist’s Guild Fellowship. Gabriel is
currently a Visiting Writer in Residence at Muhlenberg
College, a Core Writer at The Playwrights’ Center in
Minneapolis and a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre
Workshop. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
THIS SUMMER, WE WILL DEVELOP
OUR 100TH PLAY.
100 new plays borne of our playwrights, enriched by weeks of
intensive work with professional directors, dedicated dramaturgs,
and local actors, and further enhanced by the informed response of
you, our audience.
Over 60% of our plays go on to professional productions across
the region, the country, and even the world. We do not take lightly
the impact our work has had in Philadelphia, and are proud to have
now found a home at The Drake, a theatre space we share with four
other companies dedicated to new work.
We invite you to join us from July 5-24 at our 2016 Annual
Conference for six diverse and exciting plays, plus other
opportunities for learning and discussion. There are additional play
readings, classes for theatre artists and writers at all levels, and as
we could not ignore the Democratic National Convention happening
in our backyard, we will engage in an important dialogue about the
intersection of theatre and politics.
As always, our readings are free and open to the public. To provide
this broad accessibility to our audience, we rely on tax-deductible
donations from our friends and supporters. If you support PlayPenn
this year at $125 or more, we will welcome you into our Donor
Priority Access program, offering you early reservation and seating
opportunities at Conference readings. This has been a great benefit
for our events that historically fill up, commanding long waiting lists.
I encourage you to read about the plays, classes, and symposium
that comprise our 2016 Annual Conference. Then, please
consider a donation to support PlayPenn as we nurture
the writers and plays that will become the heralds of our
time. We look forward to sitting alongside you in the
theatre this summer.
PAUL MESHEJIAN, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Director: Edward Sobel
Dramaturg: Kittson O’Neill
Executive Producers: Jeanne Ruddy
and Victor Keen
Associate Producers: Nancy Boykin and Dan Kern
HEARTLAND
Wednesday, July 13 at 5pm &
Saturday, July 23 at 4pm
Nazrul, an Afghan refugee, travels to Nebraska to
find Dr. Harold Banks, the father of his friend Greta
and a renowned professor. These two unlikely
roommates go on an emotional journey of love
and loss that demands they examine their own
culpability. What results is moving meditation on
the power of forgiveness.
Dominic Finocchiaro
Antoinette Nwandu
is a Brooklyn-based playwright, performer, and
freelance dramaturg. His writing has been produced
and developed around the country, including with
Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Civilians, the Lark
PlayDevelopment Center, the National New Play
Network, Portland Center Stage, the Flea Theater,
the Kennedy Center, the UCross Foundation, the
Amoralists, and at the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway
Short Play Festival. Dominic is a native of San Francisco
and recently completed the MFA Playwriting program
at Columbia University.
is a New York-based playwright via Los Angeles. She
is a second-year member of the Ars Nova Play Group,
the 2015-16 Naked Angels Issues PlayLab Resident
Playwright, and a Dramatists Guild Fellowship alum.
Her plays have been produced and developed by
Page73, Ars Nova, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This
Time, The Movement Theater Company, WordBRIDGE
and Dreamscape Theatre. Honors include the Lorraine
Hansberry Playwriting Award, the Negro Ensemble
Company’s Douglas Turner Ward Prize and a Literary
Fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference.
Upcoming: Pass Over at Steppenwolf in 2017.
THE
FOUND
DOG
RIBBON
DANCE
Tuesday, July 12 at 8pm &
Friday, July 22 at 8pm
Director: Oliver Butler
Dramaturg: Elaina Di Monaco
Executive Producer: Josephine Klein
Associate Producer: The Chatham Foundation
Norma, a professional cuddler in Portland,
Oregon, has devoted her life to healing
others and ignoring her own needs. When
she discovers a lost dog and attempts
to return it to its rightful owner, Norma’s
ordered life takes a turn. A story of
loneliness, intimacy, and the healing power
of the music of Whitney Houston.
Lauren Feldman
Meghan Kennedy
is a freelance playwright, dramaturg, professor of
playwriting (Bryn Mawr College), and a creator-performer
of theatrical contemporary circus. She loves theater
that is brave, honest, loving, and slightly impossible. She
has been nominated for the Barrie and Bernice Stavis
Playwright Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Susan Smith
Blackburn Prize, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, New
York Innovative Theatre Award, and the Doric Wilson
Independent Playwright Award. A graduate of the Yale
School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus
Arts, she is also a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a mentor
with The Foundry, and a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow.
Meghan’s Napoli, Brooklyn will have its world premiere at
the Roundabout Theatre in 2017 and is the recipient of the
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Grant. Meghan’s play Too
Much, Too Much, Too Many (PlayPenn ‘12) premiered at the
Roundabout Underground in 2014 and was published by
Dramatists’ Play Service. She is currently under commission
from The Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown
Theater Festival, and The New York State Council of the
Arts/New Georges Theater. Her play Light is the winner of
the David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize.
She is an alum of Page 73 and Ars Nova Play Group, and is
currently a writer for the upcoming TV show, Falling Water
(USA). She lives in Brooklyn.
Director: Megan Sandberg-Zakian
Dramaturg: Jeremy Stoller
Executive Producers: Leonard and Mary Lee Haas
Associate Producers: Anonymous,
Wendy and Lawrence White
Two already-partnered women cross paths in Athens
and find themselves falling for one another. Through a
lush, winding landscape, we track two couples as they
wrestle with long-term partnership, the elusiveness of
desire, and the mysteries of a changing self. Another
Kind of Silence is a bilingual play, told simultaneously
in English and American Sign Language, with a cast of
four characters and a Greek Chorus.
ANOTHER
KIND OF
SILENCE
Thursday, July 14 at 8pm &
Sunday, July 24 at 5pm
Wednesday, July 13 at 8pm &
Saturday, July 23 at 8pm
Director: Danya Taymor
Dramaturg: Jacqueline Goldfinger
Executive Producer: Patrick Wayman
Associate Producers: Carol Baker and Mark Stein,
Gayle and David Smith
Who is Theresa Baker and why does she
have a life-sized poster of a soldier in her
house? A play about fractured families,
death, grieving, and learning to love when
it counts the most, Flat Sam asks us to
consider what happens when we come
home to war and war comes home to us.
Jonathan Payne
recently received a 2015 Princess Grace Playwriting
Fellowship. His work has been produced and developed at
the Tristan Bates Theatre (UK), Ars Nova, Fringe Festival
NYC, The Bushwick Star, and the Fire This Time Festival.
He is a proud fellow at New Dramatists, Playwrights
Realm and The Dramatist’s Guild, as well as a 2014-15 Ars
Nova Play Group member. Awards include the Holland
New Voices Award (2014), Rosa Parks Award (2011), John
Cauble Short Play Award (2002). He received a BA from
the GSA Conservatoire (UK) and an MFA in Playwriting
from Tisch School of the Arts.
Director: Daniel Goldstein
Dramaturg: Emilia LaPenta
Executive Producer: Anne M. Congdon
Associate Producers: Willy Holtzman,
Jan Rothschild
Winnie’s closest relationship is with her brother.
Or is it with her lover? Or her stuffed parrot? As
we jump through time in Winnie’s life, Heavenly
Cosmic explores how the intimacies we keep,
with people and otherwise, help us hold onto
ourselves. And when faced with our own
mortality, how some relationships anchor us
while others carry us away.
FLAT
SAM
Director: Tyne Rafaeli
Dramaturg: Michele Volansky
Executive Producers: Richard and Laura Vague
Associate Producers: Steven Engelmyer and
Lisa Wershaw, Joe Zebrowitz, MD
HEAVENLY
COSMIC
Tuesday, July 12 at 5pm &
Thursday, July 21 at 8pm
Opal and Eddie are together. Well, she’d
call it survival, and he’d call it penance. As
night descends, two people grapple for a
good enough story to make a new life for
each other in this hypnotic, haunted tale of
intimacy and survival.
POOR
EDWARD
Thursday, July 14 at 5pm &
Sunday, July 24 at 2pm
Gabriel Jason Dean
returns to PlayPenn, where he developed Terminus in
2013. Selected plays include In Bloom (Kennedy Center
Paula Vogel Prize, Runner-Up Princess Grace Award); The
Transition of Doodle Pequeño (AATE Distinguished Play
Award, NETC Aurand Harris Award); Qualities of Starlight
(Essential Theatre New Play Award, B. Iden Payne Award).
Notable awards include a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton
University and a Dramatist’s Guild Fellowship. Gabriel is
currently a Visiting Writer in Residence at Muhlenberg
College, a Core Writer at The Playwrights’ Center in
Minneapolis and a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre
Workshop. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
THIS SUMMER, WE WILL DEVELOP
OUR 100TH PLAY.
100 new plays borne of our playwrights, enriched by weeks of
intensive work with professional directors, dedicated dramaturgs,
and local actors, and further enhanced by the informed response of
you, our audience.
Over 60% of our plays go on to professional productions across
the region, the country, and even the world. We do not take lightly
the impact our work has had in Philadelphia, and are proud to have
now found a home at The Drake, a theatre space we share with four
other companies dedicated to new work.
We invite you to join us from July 5-24 at our 2016 Annual
Conference for six diverse and exciting plays, plus other
opportunities for learning and discussion. There are additional play
readings, classes for theatre artists and writers at all levels, and as
we could not ignore the Democratic National Convention happening
in our backyard, we will engage in an important dialogue about the
intersection of theatre and politics.
As always, our readings are free and open to the public. To provide
this broad accessibility to our audience, we rely on tax-deductible
donations from our friends and supporters. If you support PlayPenn
this year at $125 or more, we will welcome you into our Donor
Priority Access program, offering you early reservation and seating
opportunities at Conference readings. This has been a great benefit
for our events that historically fill up, commanding long waiting lists.
I encourage you to read about the plays, classes, and symposium
that comprise our 2016 Annual Conference. Then, please
consider a donation to support PlayPenn as we nurture
the writers and plays that will become the heralds of our
time. We look forward to sitting alongside you in the
theatre this summer.
PAUL MESHEJIAN, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Director: Edward Sobel
Dramaturg: Kittson O’Neill
Executive Producers: Jeanne Ruddy
and Victor Keen
Associate Producers: Nancy Boykin and Dan Kern
HEARTLAND
Wednesday, July 13 at 5pm &
Saturday, July 23 at 4pm
Nazrul, an Afghan refugee, travels to Nebraska to
find Dr. Harold Banks, the father of his friend Greta
and a renowned professor. These two unlikely
roommates go on an emotional journey of love
and loss that demands they examine their own
culpability. What results is moving meditation on
the power of forgiveness.
Dominic Finocchiaro
Antoinette Nwandu
is a Brooklyn-based playwright, performer, and
freelance dramaturg. His writing has been produced
and developed around the country, including with
Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Civilians, the Lark
PlayDevelopment Center, the National New Play
Network, Portland Center Stage, the Flea Theater,
the Kennedy Center, the UCross Foundation, the
Amoralists, and at the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway
Short Play Festival. Dominic is a native of San Francisco
and recently completed the MFA Playwriting program
at Columbia University.
is a New York-based playwright via Los Angeles. She
is a second-year member of the Ars Nova Play Group,
the 2015-16 Naked Angels Issues PlayLab Resident
Playwright, and a Dramatists Guild Fellowship alum.
Her plays have been produced and developed by
Page73, Ars Nova, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This
Time, The Movement Theater Company, WordBRIDGE
and Dreamscape Theatre. Honors include the Lorraine
Hansberry Playwriting Award, the Negro Ensemble
Company’s Douglas Turner Ward Prize and a Literary
Fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference.
Upcoming: Pass Over at Steppenwolf in 2017.
THE
FOUND
DOG
RIBBON
DANCE
Tuesday, July 12 at 8pm &
Friday, July 22 at 8pm
Director: Oliver Butler
Dramaturg: Elaina Di Monaco
Executive Producer: Josephine Klein
Associate Producer: The Chatham Foundation
Norma, a professional cuddler in Portland,
Oregon, has devoted her life to healing
others and ignoring her own needs. When
she discovers a lost dog and attempts
to return it to its rightful owner, Norma’s
ordered life takes a turn. A story of
loneliness, intimacy, and the healing power
of the music of Whitney Houston.
Lauren Feldman
Meghan Kennedy
is a freelance playwright, dramaturg, professor of
playwriting (Bryn Mawr College), and a creator-performer
of theatrical contemporary circus. She loves theater
that is brave, honest, loving, and slightly impossible. She
has been nominated for the Barrie and Bernice Stavis
Playwright Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Susan Smith
Blackburn Prize, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, New
York Innovative Theatre Award, and the Doric Wilson
Independent Playwright Award. A graduate of the Yale
School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus
Arts, she is also a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a mentor
with The Foundry, and a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow.
Meghan’s Napoli, Brooklyn will have its world premiere at
the Roundabout Theatre in 2017 and is the recipient of the
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Grant. Meghan’s play Too
Much, Too Much, Too Many (PlayPenn ‘12) premiered at the
Roundabout Underground in 2014 and was published by
Dramatists’ Play Service. She is currently under commission
from The Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown
Theater Festival, and The New York State Council of the
Arts/New Georges Theater. Her play Light is the winner of
the David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize.
She is an alum of Page 73 and Ars Nova Play Group, and is
currently a writer for the upcoming TV show, Falling Water
(USA). She lives in Brooklyn.
Director: Megan Sandberg-Zakian
Dramaturg: Jeremy Stoller
Executive Producers: Leonard and Mary Lee Haas
Associate Producers: Anonymous,
Wendy and Lawrence White
Two already-partnered women cross paths in Athens
and find themselves falling for one another. Through a
lush, winding landscape, we track two couples as they
wrestle with long-term partnership, the elusiveness of
desire, and the mysteries of a changing self. Another
Kind of Silence is a bilingual play, told simultaneously
in English and American Sign Language, with a cast of
four characters and a Greek Chorus.
ANOTHER
KIND OF
SILENCE
Thursday, July 14 at 8pm &
Sunday, July 24 at 5pm
Wednesday, July 13 at 8pm &
Saturday, July 23 at 8pm
Director: Danya Taymor
Dramaturg: Jacqueline Goldfinger
Executive Producer: Patrick Wayman
Associate Producers: Carol Baker and Mark Stein,
Gayle and David Smith
Who is Theresa Baker and why does she
have a life-sized poster of a soldier in her
house? A play about fractured families,
death, grieving, and learning to love when
it counts the most, Flat Sam asks us to
consider what happens when we come
home to war and war comes home to us.
Jonathan Payne
recently received a 2015 Princess Grace Playwriting
Fellowship. His work has been produced and developed at
the Tristan Bates Theatre (UK), Ars Nova, Fringe Festival
NYC, The Bushwick Star, and the Fire This Time Festival.
He is a proud fellow at New Dramatists, Playwrights
Realm and The Dramatist’s Guild, as well as a 2014-15 Ars
Nova Play Group member. Awards include the Holland
New Voices Award (2014), Rosa Parks Award (2011), John
Cauble Short Play Award (2002). He received a BA from
the GSA Conservatoire (UK) and an MFA in Playwriting
from Tisch School of the Arts.
Director: Daniel Goldstein
Dramaturg: Emilia LaPenta
Executive Producer: Anne M. Congdon
Associate Producers: Willy Holtzman,
Jan Rothschild
Winnie’s closest relationship is with her brother.
Or is it with her lover? Or her stuffed parrot? As
we jump through time in Winnie’s life, Heavenly
Cosmic explores how the intimacies we keep,
with people and otherwise, help us hold onto
ourselves. And when faced with our own
mortality, how some relationships anchor us
while others carry us away.
FLAT
SAM
Director: Tyne Rafaeli
Dramaturg: Michele Volansky
Executive Producers: Richard and Laura Vague
Associate Producers: Steven Engelmyer and
Lisa Wershaw, Joe Zebrowitz, MD
HEAVENLY
COSMIC
Tuesday, July 12 at 5pm &
Thursday, July 21 at 8pm
Opal and Eddie are together. Well, she’d
call it survival, and he’d call it penance. As
night descends, two people grapple for a
good enough story to make a new life for
each other in this hypnotic, haunted tale of
intimacy and survival.
POOR
EDWARD
Thursday, July 14 at 5pm &
Sunday, July 24 at 2pm
Gabriel Jason Dean
returns to PlayPenn, where he developed Terminus in
2013. Selected plays include In Bloom (Kennedy Center
Paula Vogel Prize, Runner-Up Princess Grace Award); The
Transition of Doodle Pequeño (AATE Distinguished Play
Award, NETC Aurand Harris Award); Qualities of Starlight
(Essential Theatre New Play Award, B. Iden Payne Award).
Notable awards include a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton
University and a Dramatist’s Guild Fellowship. Gabriel is
currently a Visiting Writer in Residence at Muhlenberg
College, a Core Writer at The Playwrights’ Center in
Minneapolis and a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre
Workshop. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
THIS SUMMER, WE WILL DEVELOP
OUR 100TH PLAY.
100 new plays borne of our playwrights, enriched by weeks of
intensive work with professional directors, dedicated dramaturgs,
and local actors, and further enhanced by the informed response of
you, our audience.
Over 60% of our plays go on to professional productions across
the region, the country, and even the world. We do not take lightly
the impact our work has had in Philadelphia, and are proud to have
now found a home at The Drake, a theatre space we share with four
other companies dedicated to new work.
We invite you to join us from July 5-24 at our 2016 Annual
Conference for six diverse and exciting plays, plus other
opportunities for learning and discussion. There are additional play
readings, classes for theatre artists and writers at all levels, and as
we could not ignore the Democratic National Convention happening
in our backyard, we will engage in an important dialogue about the
intersection of theatre and politics.
As always, our readings are free and open to the public. To provide
this broad accessibility to our audience, we rely on tax-deductible
donations from our friends and supporters. If you support PlayPenn
this year at $125 or more, we will welcome you into our Donor
Priority Access program, offering you early reservation and seating
opportunities at Conference readings. This has been a great benefit
for our events that historically fill up, commanding long waiting lists.
I encourage you to read about the plays, classes, and symposium
that comprise our 2016 Annual Conference. Then, please
consider a donation to support PlayPenn as we nurture
the writers and plays that will become the heralds of our
time. We look forward to sitting alongside you in the
theatre this summer.
PAUL MESHEJIAN, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Director: Edward Sobel
Dramaturg: Kittson O’Neill
Executive Producers: Jeanne Ruddy
and Victor Keen
Associate Producers: Nancy Boykin and Dan Kern
HEARTLAND
Wednesday, July 13 at 5pm &
Saturday, July 23 at 4pm
Nazrul, an Afghan refugee, travels to Nebraska to
find Dr. Harold Banks, the father of his friend Greta
and a renowned professor. These two unlikely
roommates go on an emotional journey of love
and loss that demands they examine their own
culpability. What results is moving meditation on
the power of forgiveness.
Dominic Finocchiaro
Antoinette Nwandu
is a Brooklyn-based playwright, performer, and
freelance dramaturg. His writing has been produced
and developed around the country, including with
Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Civilians, the Lark
PlayDevelopment Center, the National New Play
Network, Portland Center Stage, the Flea Theater,
the Kennedy Center, the UCross Foundation, the
Amoralists, and at the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway
Short Play Festival. Dominic is a native of San Francisco
and recently completed the MFA Playwriting program
at Columbia University.
is a New York-based playwright via Los Angeles. She
is a second-year member of the Ars Nova Play Group,
the 2015-16 Naked Angels Issues PlayLab Resident
Playwright, and a Dramatists Guild Fellowship alum.
Her plays have been produced and developed by
Page73, Ars Nova, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This
Time, The Movement Theater Company, WordBRIDGE
and Dreamscape Theatre. Honors include the Lorraine
Hansberry Playwriting Award, the Negro Ensemble
Company’s Douglas Turner Ward Prize and a Literary
Fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference.
Upcoming: Pass Over at Steppenwolf in 2017.
THE
FOUND
DOG
RIBBON
DANCE
Tuesday, July 12 at 8pm &
Friday, July 22 at 8pm
Director: Oliver Butler
Dramaturg: Elaina Di Monaco
Executive Producer: Josephine Klein
Associate Producer: The Chatham Foundation
Norma, a professional cuddler in Portland,
Oregon, has devoted her life to healing
others and ignoring her own needs. When
she discovers a lost dog and attempts
to return it to its rightful owner, Norma’s
ordered life takes a turn. A story of
loneliness, intimacy, and the healing power
of the music of Whitney Houston.
Lauren Feldman
Meghan Kennedy
is a freelance playwright, dramaturg, professor of
playwriting (Bryn Mawr College), and a creator-performer
of theatrical contemporary circus. She loves theater
that is brave, honest, loving, and slightly impossible. She
has been nominated for the Barrie and Bernice Stavis
Playwright Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Susan Smith
Blackburn Prize, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, New
York Innovative Theatre Award, and the Doric Wilson
Independent Playwright Award. A graduate of the Yale
School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus
Arts, she is also a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a mentor
with The Foundry, and a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow.
Meghan’s Napoli, Brooklyn will have its world premiere at
the Roundabout Theatre in 2017 and is the recipient of the
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Grant. Meghan’s play Too
Much, Too Much, Too Many (PlayPenn ‘12) premiered at the
Roundabout Underground in 2014 and was published by
Dramatists’ Play Service. She is currently under commission
from The Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown
Theater Festival, and The New York State Council of the
Arts/New Georges Theater. Her play Light is the winner of
the David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize.
She is an alum of Page 73 and Ars Nova Play Group, and is
currently a writer for the upcoming TV show, Falling Water
(USA). She lives in Brooklyn.
Director: Megan Sandberg-Zakian
Dramaturg: Jeremy Stoller
Executive Producers: Leonard and Mary Lee Haas
Associate Producers: Anonymous,
Wendy and Lawrence White
Two already-partnered women cross paths in Athens
and find themselves falling for one another. Through a
lush, winding landscape, we track two couples as they
wrestle with long-term partnership, the elusiveness of
desire, and the mysteries of a changing self. Another
Kind of Silence is a bilingual play, told simultaneously
in English and American Sign Language, with a cast of
four characters and a Greek Chorus.
ANOTHER
KIND OF
SILENCE
Thursday, July 14 at 8pm &
Sunday, July 24 at 5pm
Wednesday, July 13 at 8pm &
Saturday, July 23 at 8pm
Director: Danya Taymor
Dramaturg: Jacqueline Goldfinger
Executive Producer: Patrick Wayman
Associate Producers: Carol Baker and Mark Stein,
Gayle and David Smith
Who is Theresa Baker and why does she
have a life-sized poster of a soldier in her
house? A play about fractured families,
death, grieving, and learning to love when
it counts the most, Flat Sam asks us to
consider what happens when we come
home to war and war comes home to us.
Jonathan Payne
recently received a 2015 Princess Grace Playwriting
Fellowship. His work has been produced and developed at
the Tristan Bates Theatre (UK), Ars Nova, Fringe Festival
NYC, The Bushwick Star, and the Fire This Time Festival.
He is a proud fellow at New Dramatists, Playwrights
Realm and The Dramatist’s Guild, as well as a 2014-15 Ars
Nova Play Group member. Awards include the Holland
New Voices Award (2014), Rosa Parks Award (2011), John
Cauble Short Play Award (2002). He received a BA from
the GSA Conservatoire (UK) and an MFA in Playwriting
from Tisch School of the Arts.
Director: Daniel Goldstein
Dramaturg: Emilia LaPenta
Executive Producer: Anne M. Congdon
Associate Producers: Willy Holtzman,
Jan Rothschild
Winnie’s closest relationship is with her brother.
Or is it with her lover? Or her stuffed parrot? As
we jump through time in Winnie’s life, Heavenly
Cosmic explores how the intimacies we keep,
with people and otherwise, help us hold onto
ourselves. And when faced with our own
mortality, how some relationships anchor us
while others carry us away.
FLAT
SAM
Director: Tyne Rafaeli
Dramaturg: Michele Volansky
Executive Producers: Richard and Laura Vague
Associate Producers: Steven Engelmyer and
Lisa Wershaw, Joe Zebrowitz, MD
HEAVENLY
COSMIC
Tuesday, July 12 at 5pm &
Thursday, July 21 at 8pm
Opal and Eddie are together. Well, she’d
call it survival, and he’d call it penance. As
night descends, two people grapple for a
good enough story to make a new life for
each other in this hypnotic, haunted tale of
intimacy and survival.
POOR
EDWARD
Thursday, July 14 at 5pm &
Sunday, July 24 at 2pm
SCHEDULE
CLASSES
Saturday, July 9
9am-2pm
Saturday, July 9
3-7pm
Sunday, July 10
10am-6pm
Saturday, July 16
1-7pm
Sunday, July 17
12-8pm
PLAYWRIGHTS ALCHEMY
Finding Inspiration and Making New Work with
2015 Conference Playwright David Jacobi
CREATING CONFLICT AND STRUCTURING
THE COMPELLING ARGUMENT
SATURDAY, JULY 9
9AM
3PM SUNDAY, JULY 10
with National Theatre Conservatory
Playwright-Director Richard Caliban
10AM WRITING THE SHORT PLAY
5PM 8PM with Sundance Institute Playwriting Fellow Pia Wilson
INSPIRED BY CURRENT EVENTS
A Playwriting Workshop about creating work ripped from
the headlines with Playwrights Center Core Writer Ken Urban
AN INTRODUCTION TO CREATING
WORK IN THE ROOM
The Debate Society Method with Director/Developer Oliver Butler
CLASS: Playwrights Alchemy
CLASS: Creating Conflict and Structuring
the Compelling Argument
CLASS: Writing the Short Play
TUESDAY, JULY 12
Heavenly Cosmic by Meghan Kennedy
The Found Dog Ribbon Dance by Dominic Finocchiaro
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13
5PM 8PM Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
Flat Sam by Antoinette Nwandu
2016
CONFERENCE
THURSDAY, JULY 14
5PM 8PM Poor Edward by Jonathan Payne
Another Kind of Silence by Lauren Feldman
SATURDAY, JULY 16
For details and registration about this wide-range of
classes for theater lovers and theater artists, please visit
www.PlayPenn.org.
All Classes are held at University of the Arts at
Broad and Walnut Streets in Center City, Philadelphia
1PM CLASS: Inspired by Current Events
SUNDAY, JULY 17
JULY 5 - 24
12PMCLASS: Creating Work in the Room
MONDAY, JULY 18
7:30PM Additional Reading with The Foundry
Suicide Jockey by Lena Barnard
Thursday, July 21
6pm
POP POLITICS
With the Democratic National Convention on our doorstep in an
election year, join us to examine the good, bad and ugly of politics,
pop culture and the written word. From blogs to cartoons to social
satire on-stage, we are adrift a seemingly endless political gabfest. What makes great political writing? How do you create a
space for a meaningful exchange of ideas in the 24-hour assault
of political punditry? How does theatrical writing fit into, or not fit
into, the great social discussion? Panelists will include writers in a
range of genres - including Philadelphia favorite Jen Childs of 1812
Productions’ annual political review This is the Week That Is along
with Inquirer writer Amy Rosenberg. We’ll explore these questions
and more at the PlayPenn Conference Symposium moderated by
playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger.
The Symposium is free and open to the public. Reservations
encouraged via www.PlayPenn.org.
TUESDAY, JULY 19
7:30PM Additional Reading
Sensitive Guys by MJ Kaufman
THURSDAY, JULY 21
6PM 8PM SYMPOSIUM: Pop Politics
Heavenly Cosmic by Meghan Kennedy
FRIDAY, JULY 22
8PM The Found Dog Ribbon Dance by Dominic Finocchiaro
SATURDAY, JULY 23
4PM 8PM
Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
Flat Sam by Antoinette Nwandu
SUNDAY, JULY 24
2PM 5PM Poor Edward by Jonathan Payne
Another Kind of Silence by Lauren Feldman
Readings are FREE and open to the public.
Make your reservations online beginning July 1 at
www.PlayPenn.org or call (215) 568-8079 x 107
Donor Priority Access reservations begin June 18 for those
supporting PlayPenn with a gift of $125 or more.
All Conference Readings
and our Symposium
are held at The Drake,
1512 Spruce Street,
Philadelphia. Enter on
S. Hicks Street.
Seating is limited and
advance reservations are
encouraged. A waiting list
will be available.
All events and dates are
subject to change.
220 w. evergreen ave., d-2
philadelphia, pa 19118
www.PlayPenn.org
SYMPOSIUM
THE DRAKE
1512 SPRUCE STREET, PHILADELPHIA
ENTER ON S. HICKS STREET
WWW.PLAYPENN.ORG