Sag Harbor, NY - March 27, 2015 - Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is pleased to announce the 2nd ANNUAL NEW WORKS FESTIVAL, April 24-26. THE READINGS ARE FREE, WITH DONATIONS REQUESTED. Tickets FOR THE PANEL DISCUSSION ON SATURDAY EVENING are available online at www.baystreet.org or by calling the Bay Street Theater Box Office at 631-725-9500, open Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 5 pm.
The three-day festival will include readings of plays in development by some of New York’s most exciting emerging playwrights and a new version of a musical that originally premiered in 1997. The purpose of the festival is to give the playwrights a chance to hear their works in development in front of an audience and to give the audience at Bay Street and East End Community a chance to experience cutting edge voices in the theater. Each play will be read by professional actors in its entirety. This year, the Festival will be focused around the theme of “rediscovery.” Two of the three works to be presented have had initial productions, but they are still in the process of development as the writers continue to revise and rediscover their work. Each reading will be followed by a talkback with time for the playwrights and the audience to ask questions of each other and share their reactions to the play. The plays in the festival will be A Delicate Ship by Anna Ziegler, The Green Heart, A Musical with book by Charles Busch and music and lyrics by Rusty Magee, and Plane Play by Julia Brownell.
There will also be an Artist Interact – a Panel Discussion moderated by Tony Award winning producer Ken Davenport and featuring the creators of The Green Heart about the process of developing new musicals and rediscovering and reshaping musicals over the course of years and multiple productions. The panel, to be held at 7 pm on Saturday, April 25, will be followed by a cocktail reception at Bay Street where the audience can meet the writers and other artists involved with the readings.
The Bay Street New Works Festival is curated by Scott Schwartz, Artistic Director at Bay Street Theater, and Will Pomerantz, Associate Artistic Director at Bay Street Theater. The three readings will be complimentary with a donation requested. Call the Box Office at 631-725-9500 to reserve a spot. The panel discussion and cocktail reception will be a $10 ticket. For advance tickets for the panel & party, call the Box Office at 631-725-9500 Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 5 pm.
Schedule:
APRIL 24 - 7 pm Reading 1 – A DELICATE SHIP by Anna Ziegler
APRIL 25 - 3 pm Reading 2 – THE GREEN HEART by Charles Busch and Rusty Magee
7 pm Panel Discussion followed by cocktail reception
APRIL 26 2 pm Reading 3 – PLANE PLAY by Julia Brownell
Artistic Director Scott Schwartz says, “I am pleased to begin another great season at Bay Street with our second annual New Works Festival. Last year, as part of the panel discussion led by award winning writer John Weidman, there was a need expressed by writers for support for plays and musicals that have had initial productions but are still in the process of development and rewriting. This year, Bay Street is responding to this fascinating conversation by giving authors the opportunity to continue to work on projects that have had previous showings but which are still in the process of revision. As a home for the creation of new work in East End, Bay Street is delighted to offer our audience the opportunity to experience the distinctive voices and visions of exciting playwrights in various stages of development of their work.”
A DELICATE SHIP by Anna Ziegler had its world premiere in March-April 2014 at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Sarah and Sam are lovers happily discovering each other. Sarah and Nate have been best friends since childhood and maybe something more. But when Nate shows up unannounced on Sarah’s doorstep, she’s left questioning what and who she wants in this humorous and heartbreaking look at love, memory and the decisions that alter the course of our lives.
ANNA ZIEGLER’S plays have been produced at Seattle Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Magic Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Georges, Theater J, DR2 (W.E.T.), Cherry Lane Theatre (Playwrights Realm), Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre, Summer Play Festival (SPF), The Fountain Theatre, English Theatre of Berlin, Theatre503 (UK), Synchronicity Theatre, Rorschach Theatre, and Vermont Stage Company, among others. She has received commissions from The Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Virginia Stage Company and New Georges. Her awards include the STAGE Award, Weissberger Award (finalist), Edgerton New Play Prize, and the Douglas T. Ward Playwriting Prize. She has participated in residencies and workshops at the Sundance Theatre Lab, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Arena Stage, PlayLabs (Playwrights Center), Chautauqua Theater Company, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, TheatreWorks New Works Festival, Old Globe New Voices Festival, Lark Playwrights Workshop, McCarter Playwrights Retreat, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The Araca Group, Old Vic New Voices, TimeLine Theatre, First Light Festival (EST), terraNOVA Groundbreakers Playwrights Group, Orchard Project, Space at Ryder Farm, Ars Nova, Berkshire Playwrights Lab, Primary Stages, Geva Theatre Center, Icicle Creek Theatre Festival and The New Group. Publications include New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007 and DPS editions of BFF, Life Science and Photograph 51.
THE GREEN HEART is a dark comic musical with a book by Charles Busch (The Divine Sister; The Tale of The Allergist's Wife) and music and lyrics by Rusty Magee (Scapin, Ubu Rock), based on a short story by Jack Ritchie. Originally presented in the late 1990’s, this presentation features a revised libretto by Charles Busch and previously unheard music and lyrics by the late Rusty Magee. The reading will be directed by Carl Andress with musical direction by Paul Masse. The musical revolves around William Graham, a selfish, egotistical millionaire, who discovers to his dismay that he has run through his entire inheritance! He is flat broke. So, along with his glamorous, Teutonic mistress, Uta, he gets a brainstorm that he will marry an older, wealthy woman who will unwittingly support them both. Bill subsequently latches onto Henrietta, a hopelessly eccentric Professor of Botany and the heiress to a large fortune. Bill marries Henrietta and moves into her mansion. But as he extricates her from the exploitive clutches of her corrupt lawyer, Adam McPherson, and her sinister housekeeper, Mrs.Tragger, Bill finds to his amazement, that he is falling in love with his wife. Uta, McPherson and Tragger then scheme and double-cross each other to gain control of Henrietta’s fortune in an ingenious plot that is married to a delightful and funny score!
CHARLES BUSCH is the author and star of such plays as The Divine Sister, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, and The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, which ran for nearly two years on Broadway and received a Tony nomination for Best Play. He starred in three shows at Bay Street Theater including Auntie Mame and his own plays Shanghai Moon and The Lady In Question. He wrote and starred in the film versions of his plays, Psycho Beach Party and Die Mommie Die, the latter of which won him the Best Performance Award at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2003, Mr. Busch received a special Drama Desk Award for career achievement as both performer and playwright. Charles is also the subject of the acclaimed documentary film The Lady in Question is Charles Busch. He is a two-time MAC award winner and has performed his cabaret act in many cities including San Francisco, Provincetown, New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia and in New York at the Ballroom, Birdland and 54 Below.
RUSTY MAGEE won the New York Outer Critics' Circle for his music and lyrics for Moliere's Scapin, and this adaptation has since been produced at CSC, Yale Rep, and A.C.T. in San Francisco. With Lewis Black, Rusty co-wrote the musical “The Czar Of Rock and Roll”; which premiered at Houston's Alley Theater and his children’s Christmas opera, Flurry Tale, with libretto by Billy Aronson,was presented at Lincoln Center by American Opera Projects. He wrote music and lyrics for American Repertory Theatre’s acclaimed production of "Ubu Rock", "The Servant Of Two Masters" and "The Imaginary Invalid." With Andrew Sherman he wrote the scores to Moonworks' acclaimed Shakespeare adaptations "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Twelfth Night. or What You Will". Rusty arranged and performed the music for the Tony Award-winning production of “The House Of Blue Leaves” at Lincoln Center and on Broadway. As an actor, Rusty appeared in the film "Hannah and Her Sisters" and appeared on stage in “The Irish...And How They Got That Way”, for which he also did the musical arrangements, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and on PBS.
PLANE PLAY will have its first public reading as part of The Bay Street New Works Festival. When his wife skips town with her yoga instructor, Josh suddenly finds himself navigating life as a single dad of a newborn and his 17-year old stepson. Luckily, Josh's mom Jane has chosen this moment to fly into town... except she arrives with more than just her carry-on, hauling a lifetime of alcoholic, narcissistic baggage that has severely damaged their relationship. Determined to make up for the past, Jane bombards her aimless, grieving son and his kids with the full force of her riotous sense of humor and relentless cheer in this hilarious and moving new play about a family at their very worst, trying their very best.
JULIA BROWNELL’s play All-American premiered Off-Broadway at the Duke in November, 2011, produced by Lincoln Center/LCT3. Her play Smart Cookie was the winner of the 2008 Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award and had its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. Her plays have been read/workshopped by the Public Theater, the Minneapolis Playwright’s Center, and the Actors Theatre of Louisville. As a television writer, Julia has written on NBC’s Parenthood, Smash, and About a Boy, as well as the critically-acclaimed HBO series Hung. She wrote the book for the concert version of Smash’s “musical-within-a-musical” Hit List, and her sex comedy feature film F***ING ENGAGED was optioned by FilmNation.
KEN DAVENPORT is a Broadway producer whose credits include The Visit, It’s Only a Play, Kinky Boots (Broadway - Tony Award and Tour), Mothers and Sons (Tony nomination), The Bridges of Madison County, Macbeth starring Alan Cumming, Godspell, Chinglish, Oleanna starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, Speed-the-Plow, Will Ferrell's You're Welcome America (Tony nomination), Blithe Spirit starring Angela Lansbury (Broadway, West End and Tour), and 13, as well as That Bachelorette Show, Altar Boyz, My First Time, The Awesome 80s Prom, and Miss Abigail’s Guide to Dating, Mating, & Marriage Off-Broadway. He also produced the award winning These Magnificent Miles: On the Long Road with Red Wanting Blue, a documentary on one of the top unsigned rock bands in the country. Ken was featured on a national commercial for Apple's iPhone, named one of Crain's “40 Under Forty” and is one of the co-founders of TEDxBroadway. Combined, Ken's productions have grossed more than $100 million worldwide and are being produced internationally in over 25 countries including Germany, Mexico, France, and Korea. He created and developed the Broadway board game Be A Broadway Star, as seen on “The Today Show.” He also runs a number of theatrical websites including YourBroadwayGenius.com and DidHeLikeIt.com, for which he also developed a smartphone app. His blog, TheProducersPerspective.com, has been featured in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The Gothamist and more. He has written articles for Forbes, Mashable, Imedia and others. Current projects include his adaptation of the novel and film Somewhere in Time, which premiered at Portland Center Stage; Gettin’ The Band Back Together which premiered at George Street Playhouse, as well as bringing the first ever revival of A Few Good Men to Broadway. For more information, visit www.DavenportTheatrical.com.
Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is a year-round, not-for-profit professional theater and community cultural center which endeavors to innovate, educate, and entertain a diverse community through the practice of the performing arts. We serve as a social and cultural gathering place, an educational resource, and a home for a community of artists.