Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Reverie Productions Announces Next Generation Playwright Winners & 2008-09 Season


Richard Martin Hirsch & Rosemary Frisino Toohey won top honors for Reverie Productions’ fifth annual Next Generation Playwriting Contest. Hirsch received the grand prize of $500 and inclusion in Reverie’s 11th anniversary season for his full-length play Regarding those Responsible, a drama about an art therapist treating a young woman with amnesia, who may be a key witness in the investigation of a London terrorist bombing. Toohey won $200 for her play Cornered, a one-act drama about a husband dealing with his wife’s progressing Multiple Sclerosis.

Special notice also went to the runner-up in the full-length category: NYC-based writer Damon DiMarco for Shock and Awe, a drama about a platoon in Iraq, based on is based on interviews from his book Heart of War: Soldiers’ Voices from the Front Lines of Iraq.

Reverie’s fifth annual contest received 237 submissions, from nearly 200 writers from 35 states and 4 Canadian provinces. A team of 32 volunteer readers selected eight finalists, which received public readings in May in the Bruce Mitchell room at A.R.T./New York’s Spaces at 520.

The finalists were:

ONE ACT FINALISTS:
Stan Kaplan for Homeland Security
Rosemary Frisino Toohey for Cornered

FULL LENGTH FINALISTS:
Richard Martin Hirsch for Regarding Those Responsible
Damon DiMarch for Shock and Awe
Gwen Mansfield for Experiment Station Road
L.J. Voss for Tiny Madmen

Reverie’s finalist reading of contest-winner Regarding those Responsible at A.R.T./New York’s Spaces on May 15 was directed by Tania Inessa Kirkman, with a cast featuring Keira Keeley, Ken Matthews, Lethia Nall, Louise Rozett & Debargo Sanyal.

Reverie Production’s 2008-2009 season will include premiere productions of Regarding Those Responsible, 2007 contest winner Beyond the 17th Parallel by T.D. Mitchell (dir. by Robert Egan), and Beowulf, translated and adapted by Reverie Artistic Director Colin D. Young.

For further information visit: www.Reverieproductions.org

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