The Playwrights Relay Project
“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” – Maya Angelou
Pacific Play Company has challenged five outstanding playwrights to collaborate and write a show from scratch. The finished project will be a series of plays that will outline a character’s life as defined by the different apartments/homes the character lives in (each play written by a different writer) from the character’s first apartment/home, to the character’s last apartment/home. Each writer will write a continuation of the character based on the previous play written by another writer. By the end of the process we will have slices of a lifetime of the character, and possibly their friends and family–laced together by all the different places the character has lived. The story of one character's life written from the perspective of five different playwrights!
LEAD WRITERS PLAY ASSIGNMENTS:
Week 2: November 25 Play One Due (Character's is teens-20’s) - Kelleen Conway Blanchard
Week 3: December 1 Play Two Due (Character is 30’s-40’s) - Sherry Narens
Week 4: December 8 Play Three Due (Character is 40’s-50’s) - Marcus Gorman
Week 5: December 15 Play Four Due (Character is 50’s-60’s) - Scott Stolnack
Week 6: December 22 Play Five Due (Character is 60’s-100) - Kathryn Keller
In addition to these lead writers playwrights Morgan Ludlow & Leonie Mikele will also be contributing to the different time frames.
Pacific Play Company has challenged five outstanding playwrights to collaborate and write a show from scratch. The finished project will be a series of plays that will outline a character’s life as defined by the different apartments/homes the character lives in (each play written by a different writer) from the character’s first apartment/home, to the character’s last apartment/home. Each writer will write a continuation of the character based on the previous play written by another writer. By the end of the process we will have slices of a lifetime of the character, and possibly their friends and family–laced together by all the different places the character has lived. The story of one character's life written from the perspective of five different playwrights!
LEAD WRITERS PLAY ASSIGNMENTS:
Week 2: November 25 Play One Due (Character's is teens-20’s) - Kelleen Conway Blanchard
Week 3: December 1 Play Two Due (Character is 30’s-40’s) - Sherry Narens
Week 4: December 8 Play Three Due (Character is 40’s-50’s) - Marcus Gorman
Week 5: December 15 Play Four Due (Character is 50’s-60’s) - Scott Stolnack
Week 6: December 22 Play Five Due (Character is 60’s-100) - Kathryn Keller
In addition to these lead writers playwrights Morgan Ludlow & Leonie Mikele will also be contributing to the different time frames.
PLAYWRIGHTS
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KELLEEN CONWAY BLANCHARDKelleen Conway Blanchard's work has been seen/produced at Annex Theatre, Pony World Theater, Bumbershoot with the Project Room, Weird and Awesome, Macha Monkey, Balagan Theatre, Seattle Playwright's Collective, 12 Minutes Max , 14/48, Spin the Bottle and as part of FringeACT. Outside of Seattle, her plays have been part of Eight Tens at Eight in Santa Cruz, the 2nd Annual Festival of New Short Plays in Belfast, Maine and Perishable Theatre’s Women’s Playwriting Festival. Look for her upcoming collaboration with Keira McDonald in Blonde with the Wind and for Kittens in a Cage, the web series, produced by Stoic Entertainment (based on her Gregory Award nominated play!) http://www.kittensinacage.com/
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MARCUS GORMANMarcus is a Seattle-based writer and performer originally from Berkeley, CA. His original plays include Natural, Peggy: The Plumber Who Saved the Galaxy (co-written with Jacob Farley), andDeers (2018 People’s Choice Gregory Awards for Outstanding Ensemble and Outstanding New Play), all produced at Annex Theatre. In the world of devised theatre, he has worked as an actor and writer with interarts gang The Libertinis (Gone Wild!, Atomic Falls USA, The Fantastic Misadventures of Twisty Shakes) and physical theatre troupe DangerSwitch! (Mad Scientist Cabaret, Big Bad). His one-acts have been produced by the 14/48 Projects, the Funhouse Family, As If Theatre Company, Unnatural Redhead Productions, the Seattle Play Series, Seattle Theatre Readers, and the Del Rey Players. He is the author of the novels Triceratops and Sky Masterson: Private Detective and is the founder/editor of Ten Years Ago, a website where contributors review films on their tenth anniversary. He currently works at the Seattle International Film Festival as a film programmer and publications editor. For more information, visit marcusgorman.com and tenyearsago.wordpress.com.
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SARAH PAGE HEADYSarah Page Heady is a professional writer who grew up in New York City. She has written in diverse genres and published numerous children’s books. She is also actively involved in bringing to the stage new adaptations of classic plays. Sarah’s first full-length play, “Revelations”, is a contemporary treatment of the biblical prophecy of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. “Revelations” was workshopped at Freehold Theater’s 2019 New Play Lab and directed by Erin Murray. Sarah holds a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, where she studied feminist theology and social justice. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild and the New Zealand Screenwriters Guild, and an active participant in Pacific Play Company's Next Wave Playwrights Project.
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KATHRYN KELLERKathryn Jean Keller is a Seattle playwright and theater artist. She serves on the Board of Directors for The 14/48 Projects. She co-founded Seattle’s Café Delirium; a 90s collective of anti-racist queers creating new and site-specific theater in response to our personal experiences with AIDS. Café Delirium is best known for “Panic Sanitation,” presented during the 1990 Seattle Goodwill Games. Keller holds a BFA in Theater from University of Texas, Dallas; and an interdisciplinary PhD from University of Washington in the Social History of Science and Technology. Keller is currently working on a modern interpretation of Demeter’s lament entitled “Saturn’s Daughters.” This work is informed by the host of grieving mothers in the news - heartbroken parents whose children are disparately trapped by unbalanced court rooms or spirited away at our nation’s hostile borders. “Saturn’s Daughters,” was workshopped at Freehold Theater’s 2019 New Play Lab, directed by David Hsieh. “Daughters” is being developed further under the auspices of the Next Wave Playwrights Project.
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SCOTT STOLNACKScott Stolnack has published in a wide range of forms, including science fiction, travel and adventure writing, scientific reports and peer-reviewed research, poetry, and literary fiction. His short plays have been produced in the US and UK, and are seen regularly as part of West Seattle’sDrunken Owl Theater reading series. His full-length play One Thing was the Seattle Playwrights Salon’s May 2019 selection, as well as a selection for Akropolis Performance Lab’s New Year New Play Salon and finalist for the 2019 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. He has worked for the last decade as a senior scientist helping coordinate efforts to recover endangered salmon in the Seattle area.
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SHERRY NARENSSherry Narens has worked in theatre all her adult life as an actor, playwright and director. Beginning with the eleven years she worked with Chicago Dramatists (during which time her play, Parktalk, was produced there) she has focused largely on new plays and new play development. Her play Theresa Bassoon was an Award Recipient from The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays as well as winner of the Best Full Length Play Award at the Actors Theatre of Santa Cruz. She participated in a developmental residency at University of Pittsburgh which culminated in a student staging of Karmic Soap Opera (her play about one couple in 10 lifetimes). Her short play Village of the Sirens was developed for The Art Project and performed as a benefit for Theatre Puget Sound in 2005. She has worked with Seattle Playwrights Collective’s Page to Stage Showcase. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild and now an active regular member of Pacific Play Company's Next Wave Playwrights Project.
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