Mentions/Awards/Kudos for the GreenHouse:
Kevin Kline Award Accolades for HotCity New Plays:
2006 “Famous Monsters” (Nominee - Best New Play)
2007 “The Probe” (Nominee - Best New Play, Winner - Best Ensemble)
2008 “Demons... and Other Blunt Objects” (Winner - Best New Play)
2009 “Men With Clubs” (Nominee - Best New Play)
2010 “Cockeyed” (Nominee - Best New Play)
See the article on dramaturg Liz Engelman in the Post-Dispatch
The New Play Festival is...
This national festival takes place the last week in June and is composed of two parts: A week-long workshop and a staged public reading of three selected plays.
Three plays "in progress" are chosen from over 250 submitted by playwrights all over the world. Each script is given a workshop that includes professional directors on staff at HotCity, a professional dramaturg (a literary drama scholar) and professional local actors. This workshop provides a springboard for re-writes, culminating in readings at the festival by professional actors and adjudicated by HotCity artistic staff. At the festival event, scripts are performed as staged readings, followed by talkback sessions where you, the patrons, are given the opportunity to offer your thoughts and ask questions of the playwrights.
How do I, and why should I attend?
It's free. Just show up, no reservations needed.
There is one new script reading every night by local professional actors. These are often read by the same actors who work with the MUNY, Repertory Theatre, Stages St. Louis, and HotCity!
After each reading, be a part of the important and often riveting post-show discussion with the playwright and dramaturg. These are usually 20 minutes long and offer the playwright important feedback on audience perception and opinions. This is your chance to let us know what you think and make a difference about what you might see in the future as one of the finalists will be chosen to premiere on the Kranzberg Mainstage in the following year. Be the first to see it in its first incarnation!
Lastly, join us in a post-discussion reception with the playwrights, actors, and staff on the roof of the Centene Center. It's tasty, beautiful, and again, free!
The Finalists for the 5th Annual GreenHouse New Play Festival:
"REALS"
by Gwydion Suilebhan
About the Show:
Jack has worked hard to develop his “real-life superhero” persona. He works out every day, hones his skills as a former member of the Coast Guard, and devotes endless hours to perfecting his costume. Now, as Nightlife – the man who brings life to the night – he’s ready to start
fighting crime. Or at least… he thinks he is. With his partner and confidant, Belt – Laney, actually, a sarcastic and very reluctant hero with advanced martial arts training – he’s assembling a team to walk the streets at night and start attacking crime head-on. He has zeal, big muscles, and a superhero code to live up to… but not much more. When Jack and Laney start interviewing potential team members, however, the flimsy façade of their crazy ambitions begins to crumble. Deceit, lies, and secrets slowly unravel their trust, until a shocking act of real violence perpetrated by Sensei – the first hero they consider adding to the team – reveals the truths they’ve all three tried very hard to hide beneath their suddenly very silly masks, capes, and nicknames.
About the Author:
Gwydion Suilebhan is the author of Reals, The Constellation, Cracked, The Faithkiller, Abstract Nude, Let X, The Great Dismal, The Butcher, and The Treehouse. His plays have been produced, workshopped, and
read at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Source Theater Festival, Active Cultures, Rorschach Theatre, Taffety Punk Theatre, Midtown International Theatre Festival, Intentional Theatre Group, Kennedy Center, National Theater, Capital Fringe Festival, Maieutic Theatre Works, Towne Street Theatre, Point of Contention Theatre, and Theater of the First Amendment. Gwydion has received two Individual Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and has been accepted into the Mead Theatre Lab program three times. In 2009 he was a finalist for Outstanding Emerging Artist at the DC Mayor’s Arts Awards. His work has been commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Source Theatre Festival, Taffety Punk Theatre Company, and the Intentional Theatre Group.
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"DAY TRADER"
by E. Rudnick
About the Show:
Ron Barlow is a defeated Hollywood comedy writer. When his marriage becomes overwhelming, Ron concocts a plot so twisted that it may ultimately become his undoing. Enlisting the help of a beautiful young actress, Ron’s desperate strategy centers on his fifteen year-old daughter, Juliana. Lurking in the shadows of this scheme is Ron’s best friend, Phil, a fellow writer with plans of his own. Greed and betrayal dovetail into a virus that consumes the soul under the unforgiving California sun.
About the Author:
Eric Rudnick is a Los Angeles-based playwright, Emmy-nominated television producer, and screenwriter. His plays have been produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as in New York and Los Angeles. His 3-play cycle “The Edge of Allegiance” was an LA Weekly “GO” pick that the paper called “hilariously out there” and “truly inspired.” Eric served as a director and producer on the Style Networks’ “Peter Perfect,” which was nominated for an Emmy in 2009. He has written, produced or directed over a dozen television shows. His original sit-com pilot, “Circus/Maximus,” was optioned by FOX television. As a screenwriter, Eric has been a finalist at the Slamdance Film Festival. Raised in New York, Eric studied writing and acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse, David Mamet’s Atlantic Theatre Company and Playwrights Horizons.
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"THE WINNERS"
by David L. Williams
About the Show:
Cassie and Kurt, a couple in their late thirties, are celebrating; they recently won $337 million in the lottery and they're going to fulfill a fantasy for both of them and hire an escort. They found the website of Tiffany, a twenty-three year old Asian-American call girl, and have invited her over to spend the whole night with them. Tiffany, seeing the money that can be made from this situation, is definitely game, and even though Cassie and Kurt are awkward at first, they start to be much more open to all the possibilities that Tiffany offers. What starts as a fantasy turns into something darker, though, when one person decides that what can really be bought with all this money isn't just sex but freedom, a freedom that can't ever be taken back..
About the Author:
David L. Williams is a graduate of the theatre department of Cornell University, where he was a four-time award winner in the Heerman’s-McCalmon Playwriting contest. Since then, he has written more than twenty-five plays and musicals, including the book for the hit children’s musical, “The Bully.” He is a member of the Dramatist Guild and has won the Riverside Stage Company’s Founder’s Award and the EBE Ensemble’s “You Fill In The Blank” festival. Additionally he has been chosen as a finalist in Inkwell Theatre’s Inkubator Festival and a two-time finalist in HotCity Theatre’s GreenHouse New Play Festival. His career highlights include having four of his plays and musicals selected for the New York International Fringe Festival and having his work produced in New York, Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
Critics' Reviews
ROBERT: I love new plays. They still have that new play smell surrounding them. Makes you giddy. I got to hear three of them this past weekend during HotCity Theatre's GreenHouse New Play Festival. Three plays, all shiny with temporary tags, got dramatic readings by some of the best known actors in St. Louis. Emily, I know you saw Saturday's performance so I thought we'd chat briefly.
EMILY: I have seen the final production of a Greenhouse play, but the "New Play Festival" was new for me. I do admit it was not my favorite staged reading. One of my favorite parts of a staged reading is the chance for actors and audience alike to taste what seeds the author has planted in the text - not only in dialogue, but in inter-character dynamics. The format for these readings (actors faced the audience for all their line delivery) was a bit restrictive and made it harder to get a sense of characters' interpersonal relationships, but it worked well enough for HotCity's purposes.
ROBERT: This is the first time I've been to the festival in its five year history, so I was surprised that all three of the winning plays were penned by out of town writers. I don't know what that says about the quality or the quantity of plays being written in St. Louis. Plus, all the writers were men, which gave the weekend a very male perspective.
EMILY: I agree. All three plays are by career writers - one is an established DC based playwright, one an LA screenwriter, and one a writer whose plays have been produced nationally. And, these pieces were selected of nearly 300 submissions from writers internationally. Looks to me that if locals want in on HotCity's future new play festivals, they're going to have to step up their game.
ROBERT: The play read on Friday night was a superhero play called Reals and was written by Gwydion Suilebhan. Emily, in the spirit of full disclosure, you should know I'm friends with the world's best writer of superhero plays, but I'm doing my best to be impartial. The plot revolves around a pretty average guy trying to be a superhero. Mr. Suilebhan fills his play with plenty of witty dialogue. The end has a twist to it that loses some of it edge because I didn't believe Suilebhan would let his main character do malicious harm.
EMILY: Saturday's show, Day Trader by Eric Rudnick, was all things Hollywood. Day Trader is the story of Ron, a washed up screenwriter, mean wife, bratty daughter, egomaniac neighbor, twenty-something actress lover...blah blah blah. The real intrigue of this piece comes in Act II, where repressed memories begin to emerge from Ron's teenage daughter...or do they? Most notable about this piece is that the play seems to be vehicle for snarky one-liners and Rudnick's own reflections on life as a Hollywood writer. There's no question that Rudnick knows dialogue (his bio notes that, no surprise, he studied with Mamet), but leaves something to be desired in character or plot development. But then, maybe that's only appropriate for a play embedded in LA petty social drama, where human character leaves something to be desired.
ROBERT: Sunday's play, The Winners, by David Williams was my favorite. A married couple wins the lottery and decides the first thing they want to buy is a female escort. While not a perfect script, Williams did a good job of creating complex characters who work themselves into an almost Brechtian dilemma. The play does suffer from SDO however ... sudden dilemma onset. Williams starts off with the couple exploring their sexuality but ends with them talking the escort into adopting their baby for 20 million dollars.
EMILY: The new plays and talk-backs made for a nice change in pace for the local theater scene. Boasting not only a massive turnout of submissions and talented production staff for the pieces, this year the festival featured workshops with Liz Engelman, arguably the country's foremost dramaturg. It seems to me, Robert, that HotCity is definitely carving out a niche for playwrites to rub elbows with some greats. And hopefully next year, some local playwriting talent will elbow its own way in.