picnic plays – spring 2012

picnic plays: readings on sundays in may

With great pleasure, paper chairs announce, THE PICNIC PLAYS: READINGS ON SUNDAYS IN MAY. We invite you give listen to some deft drafts of new work by local playwrights Elizabeth Doss, Sarah Saltwick, and Jason Tremblay. Join us these final spring Sundays to experience each play in a unique location accompanied by refreshing cocktails and snacks to complete an ideally idle Sunday afternoon. The paper chairs will bring the plays and the libations if you bring two open ears and a blanket. Informal chats will follow each read. All readings at 4pm!

mark your calendars:

May 13:
MAST by Elizabeth Doss
THE HISTORIC HOME OF TAMMY SHACKLEE & CLIFF MITCHELL -
712 w 16th St.

Elizabeth Doss (playwright, performer, director) has worked in theatre for over 15 years and has performed with many companies in Austin. With Tongue and Groove Theatre: Pinnochio Comedia, A Comedy of Errors, Seven Wonders of the World, Bomb Shelter, A Mid Summer Night’s Dream, Head, Hands and Toe Show, Eggheads,Moontower’s Glow, Three Cuckolds, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. With the VORTEX: Ring, Rip, Rent, A Tale of Two Cities, Moby Dick, Despair’s Book of Dreams and the Sometimes Radio (tour to HERE ARTS CENTER NCY), and Machinal. With Salvage Vanguard: Cry Pitch Carols, and Americamisfit. With Physical Plant: Not Clown (tour to Soho Rep NYC). With Zach Scott:Present Laughter. With Ariel Dance Theatre: PEXO. With Blue Lapis Light: Requiem. With the Rude Mechanicals: Dionysus in ’69 and B Beaver Animation. With Paper Chairs: Machinal, Baal, and the co-direction of WOODWORK. She’s received B. Iden Payne and Austin Critic’s Table nominations and awards for her work. She also lights, mimes, dances, directs, curates but focuses mostly on writing. In October 2009, the VORTEX Repertory Company and TUTTO Theatre produced her first original musical, Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, which played to sold-out houses, made the Austin Chronicle’s top 9 list of 2009, and was nominated for nine Austin critics’ table awards, including best new play, and eleven B. Iden Payne Awards. She’s a founding member of Paper Chairs who produced her second musical,Hillcountry Underbelly in August 2011 at the VORTEX Theatre which received a host of critical acclaim. She recently returned from a research trip to the Dominican Republic for her new play Mast, which Paper Chairs will produce in the spring of 2013. Mast is the final playin what she calls the “surregionalism trilogy”: a study of uncanny exchanges between people, their region, and their lore. “Writers Room” is the first in a series of “Living literature” happenings she will continue to create as a part of the Fusebox Festival. Elizabeth graduated University Highest Honors from UT with a BA in Spanish. She also teaches yoga and pilates at the Vortex Theatre and the Townlake YMCA. She especially loves teaching yoga therapy through the Livestrong Foundation and developing movement therapy for people with Alzheimer’s.

May 20:
A PERFECT ROBOT by Sarah Saltwick
BIG STACEY PARK –
(Between Annie St and Live Oak St.Park on East Side Drive)

Sarah Saltwick is a playwriting and fiction Michener Fellow at the University of Texas in Austin and a graduate from Hampshire College. She is currently working on an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, to be staged in November 2012. Her work has been a finalist for the Heideman Award and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her work has been presented, developed or produced by the University of Texas at Austin, Scriptworks, WordBRIDGE, Bristol Riverside Theater, Shrewd Productions, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, and Moving Arts. She’s writtenplays inspired by giant Rabbits, Texas, guacamole, Dolly Parton and more. She would like to talk with you about the Hunger Games.

May 27:
BOOM FOR REAL by Jason Tremblay
THE WHITE HORSE -
500 Comal St.

Jason Tremblay is an Austin based playwright. His most recent play The Virgin w/ 10000 Arrows was nominated for four awards from the Austin Theatre Examiner including “Best Production of a Drama” and the Cohen New Play Award from the Austin Critics Table. Recent national productions include: Katrina: The Girl Who Wanted Her Name Back by Adventure Stage Chicago, Chicken and Ice Cream by Palm Beach Drama Works and Aspen Theatre Masters, Hosers by the Boulder Acting Group, The Cleaning Lady by The Flying Leap Players (Minnesota),West Texas Honey Bee Blues by the Offstage Theatre (Virginia), and Tennessee Darke at the New Orleans Fringe Festival. In Austin, his work has been presented by Rm 120 Theatre, The University of Texas, Fronterafest (Best of Fest), Out of Ink, The Moveable Feast, Theatre Silica, and Fusebox. He has completed commissions for Austin Scriptworks, Horsehead Theatre, and the LMDA. His plays have received development support from New Dramatist, The New Bridges Festival, and New Vision/New Voices. He has been awarded the Best New Play for Young Audiences Award from the Kennedy Center, an Access to Artistic Excellence Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the East Valley Children’s Theatre New Play Award, and a James Michener Fellowship in Writing. His plays have been named finalist for the Arthur Stone New PlayAward, a Marilyn Hall Award from the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild, and the Bay Area Playwriting Festival. This season, he developed a chamber musical, TheSound Ascending, with composer David Brown for the Cohen New Works Festival in Austin. His new TYA play You Don’t Know Charlie Parker was developed at the Bonderman Festival in Indianapolis and will be produced next season by the Coterie Theatre in Kansas City. As a screenwriter his work includes In the Shadow (Cine Las Americas, Anchorage International Film Festival) and What’s the Use both with Blue Paper Filmworks. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas and is published by Playscripts.