SUNDANCE PLAYWRIGHTS RETREAT AT UCROSS FOUNDATION WRAPS UP

For the past three weeks, five playwrights and one composer have been in residence UCROSS Foundation’s idyllic working ranch in Wyoming, focusing on and exploring the creative possibilities of their new work during the sixth season of The Sundance Playwrights Retreat at the UCROSS Foundation, a collaborative project of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program and the UCROSS Foundation. The residency comes to a close on February 25.

Each year, artists are selected and invited by Philip Himberg, Sundance Theatre Program Producing Artistic Director. This year, Himberg invited playwrights Douglas Carter Beane, Noah Haidle, Adam Rapp, Betty Shamieh, Edwin Sanchez and composer/lyricist Kirsten Childs to participate in the three-week retreat. Dramaturg Mame Hunt served as a creative advisor for the program.

“The artists in this sixth annual Ucross/Sundance Theatre collaboration reflect Sundance’s commitment to supporting playwrights and theatre composers at different stages in their careers,” remarked Himberg. “Our ongoing relationship with the esteemed Ucross Foundation is a vital partnership for the Sundance Institute. While our July Theatre Lab in Utah and December Lab at White Oak in Florida focus on rehearsal time with actors, the Ucross residency offers writers a quiet environment in which to begin or refine new work. This fits in perfectly with Sundance’s vision for play development, which looks to support artists at various steps in their writing process.”

Projects that began their life at the Sundance Playwrights Retreat at the Ucross Foundation continue to open to resounding success at theatres across the country. Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife won both the Pulitzer and Tony Awards in 2004, and Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’ musical, The Light in the Piazza opens at the Lincoln Center Theatre in April.

Douglas Carter Beane writing credits include the plays As Bees In Honey Drown, Advice From a Caterpillar, The Country Club, Music from a Sparkling Planet, and the forthcoming The Little Dog Laughed, and the film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. The film adaptation of Advice From a Caterpillar received the award for Best Feature at the Aspen Comedy Festival. As Artistic Director of New York’s acclaimed Drama Dept., Beane has produced award-winning revivals of Kingdom of Earth, June Moon, As Thousands Cheer, and The Torch-Bearers as well as new works by Paul Rudnick, David Sedaris and Charles Busch. He has received the John Gassner Playwriting Award, the Lucille Lortel Playwrights Sidewalk Award and is a member of the Dramatist’s Guild.

Composer Lyricist Kirsten Childs has written songs for jazz singer Dianne Reeves, co-starred with Chita Rivera in the musical Chicago, co-starred with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in the film See no Evil, Hear No Evil and performed on Broadway in Dancin’ Jerry’s Girls, and Sweet Charity. She is an alumna of NYU’s Musical Theater Writing Program. Her play The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin won the Edward Kleban Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant and a Richard Rodgers Development Award for the year of 1999, as well as the recipient of an Audelco Award, a Richard Rodgers Production Award, a Lucille Lortel award nomination, three Drama Desk nominations, and an Obie Award for the year of 2000.

Noah Haidle was born and raised in Grand Rapids, MI. He graduated from East Grand Rapids High School, Princeton University, and The Juilliard School. He has been in love exactly three times. Once, during high school in Michigan, once during college in New Jersey, and once during graduate school in New York City. He now lives in New York and is still in love with the girl from graduate school. He would include the names of his plays and where they've been produced/work shopped but for some reason he finds that embarrassing.

Adam Rapp has been the recipient of many awards including the Herbert & Patricia Brodkin Scholarship, two Lincoln Center le Compte de Nuoy Awards, a fellowship to the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, the 1999 Princess Grace Award for Playwriting, a 2000 Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. His Plays include Nocturne, Ghosts in the Cottonwoods, Animals and Plants, Blackbird, and Stone Clod Dead Serious. Candlewick Press just released Mr. Rapp’s 6th novel, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog, and the forthcoming The Year of Endless Sorrows will be published by FSG in the fall of 2005. A graduate of Clarke College in Dubuque, IA, Mr. Rapp also completed a two-year playwriting fellowship at Juilliard. He is the resident Playwright for Edge Theater Company.

Edwin Sanchez’s newest play, This Can’t be Love, received its first reading at Primary Stages last October. His most recent production, Diosa, which was produced in the spring by Hartford Stage after a successful workshop by New York Stage and Film. Other productions include Trafficking in Broken Hearts at the Bank Street Theater in New York, Unmerciful Good Fortune at the Intar Theater in New York, for which he received the Princess Grace Playwriting Award in 1994, Barefoot Boy with Shoes On at Primary Stages in New York, Icarus produced by Fourth Unity, Actors Theater of Louisville as part of their Humana Festival, San Jose Rep and regionally throughout the U.S.; and Trafficking in Broken Hearts, Atlantic Theater in New York, and productions in Brazil and Switzerland. He was also among the playwrights involved with Brave New World, an organization commemorating the events surrounding September 11th.

Betty Shamieh's play Roar premiered off-Broadway under the direction of Tony-nominated Marion McClinton, was chosen as the New York Times Critic's pick for four weeks and will make its Midwest premiere at Madison Rep. Her play The Black Eyed will premiere at the Magic Theatre in 2005. She performed in her play Chicolate In Heat off-off-Broadway and around the country. She is currently working on a commission for Trinity Rep.