Six Women Play Festival

May 20, 2013

2013 Festival Winners

Amy Cuomo

Villa Rica, GA
Play: Skywriting

Amy Cuomo is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of West Georgia where she teaches courses in theatre, film and women’s studies. Her short play, “Happy,” was recently performed as part of the Fusion Theatre’s The Seven: Nothing is as it Seems.
Barbara Lindsay

Shoreline, WA
Play: Claudie’s Brother

Barbara Lindsay is delighted to have her play selected again for this Festival! After a long career as an actress in Los Angeles, Barbara discovered her passion for playwriting. Her first play won an award in New York and was produced in London, which so encouraged her, she left LA and moved to Seattle, WA where she lives and writes full time.
Elena Zucker

Brooklyn, NY
Play: 6-Lane

Elena Zucker is a playwright and director. Her play O Walter, My Walter received the 2011 Goldberg Prize in Playwriting. Selected other plays include A Golem and a Half, A Dybbuk in Crown Heights and Imaginary Prisons. Elena has an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU and a BA from Middlebury College. She also attended the Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Elena teaches at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.
Emily Brauer Rogers

Duarte, CA
Play: Edge

Emily Roger’s credits include two full-length plays that were produced at Hunger Artists Theatre Company. Her screenplay, “Romeo, Juliet and Rosaline” was recently optioned by Amazon Studios. She has been published in a Smith and Kraus anthology, “161 Monologues from Literature.” Emily has had short plays read and produced in San Diego, New York, Orange County and Indiana.
Hilary King

Atlanta, GA
Play: Carpool Mandala

Hilary King is a member of Working Title Playwrights in Atlanta, GA. Her play “The Jennifer Bourne Identity” is being produced in NYC as part of the 2013 Estrogeinus Festival. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as The Cortland Review, Gertrude, PANK and The Anthology of Southern Poetry: Georgia Edition. She car pools frequently.
Karen Howes

Santa Monica, CA
Play: The 5564 to Toronto

Karen Howes is a professional member of the Dramatist Guild, ALAP, and PEN. Her play “Roadkill” won the Maxim Mazumdar Competition for best full length in 2011. She won Jersey Voices in 2009, wrote several commissioned plays, was featured in The Academy Theatre’s Three Plays in May, The Santa Claraita New Works Festival and Playground-LA. She is also a fiction writer and is finishing her MFA.

May 20, 2013

Some light, charming shows in ‘Six Women New Play Festival’

Eighty-six short plays entered. Six winners. Six local directors. Fourteen local actors.

The seventh edition of the “Six Women New Play Festival” (formerly the Six Women’s Playwriting Festival”) at the Millibo Art Theatre always provides ample opportunity to get involved in the theater.

“Planes, Trains and Automobiles: The Comings and Goings of Life” was chosen by the reading committee for the festival’s theme this year. Submitted entries contained a surprising number of scripts about death, says play submission coordinator Linda Nicholos.

Winning scripts include a “Thelma and Louise-style” story, a boy who plans to run away from home and his abusive father, and a homeless man who potentially saves a woman and the baby she wants to dump in a trash can.

Playwrights around the country submitted their scripts to the festival’s reading committee. This year, 11 readers went through each script, sometimes multiple times, and pared the number down to a dozen before handing them off to the six directors, including Eve Tilley, Warren Epstein, Max Ferguson, Joye Cook-Levy, Sallie Walker and Amanda Hall. Professional actors show up at this point in the process, and do a cold, staged reading of the scripts.

“Some read well on paper, and then don’t come out well when they’re read out loud,” says Tilley, director of “Skywriting,” by Amy Cuomo. “We choose six, then we fight over which ones we want to direct.”

In “Skywriting,” a young man wants to propose to his girlfriend in a most creative way — skywriting.

“It’s a piece of cotton candy,” she says. “It’s very funny and charming, like an old screwball comedy with the repartee between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.”

Tilley has directed at least one of the six plays every year.

“With a 10-minute play, I get to direct, I don’t have to learn lines and it’s always a challenge to bring new work to life,” she says. “It’s always fun, it’s a short rehearsal period and I get to meet people in the community I wouldn’t meet otherwise, since I don’t direct for mainstage plays.”

Nicholas has been part of the festival since the beginning, and says she had no prior theater experience. She hadn’t even read a play, she says. And now? It’s the part she enjoys most.

“I love to open a new play and start reading it,” says Nicholos. “I think, is this the one?”

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May 20, 2013

By Matthew Schniper
Csindy.com

Being of the generation I am, I can’t hear the phrase “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” without thinking fondly back to the late-’80s John Hughes flick starring John Candy and Steve Martin. But the seventh annual Six Women Playwriting Festival at Millibo Art Theatre (1367 Pecan St., sixwomenplayfestival.com) is definitely not that, even though that phrase, with the add-on “The Comings and Goings of Life,” happens to be this year’s theme. Catch its array of 10-minute acts, from playwrights hailing from Georgia, Washington, New York and California from April 11 through 28. Thursday’s 7 p.m. shows are $15. Friday and Saturday’s 8 p.m. shows and Sunday’s 2 p.m. shows are all $20. And catch our review of the plays in next week’s Indy.

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March 24, 2013

The Six Women Playwriting Festival 2013

Festival dates: April 11-14, 18-21 and 25-28

Festival location:
1367 Pecan Street,
Colorado Springs, CO 80904

Thursday evening [7:00]

Ticket price $15

Friday and Saturday evenings [8:00] and Sunday matinee [2:00]

Ticket price $20

For reservations 719-465-6321 or www.themat.org

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