Hello friends of Joust,
We hope you had a wonderful summer! Over at the Joust we are gearing up for our second half of the Writer's Round Table this November. We are so excited to welcome Julia Sears as the director of Jacob Marx Rice's Rosenstrasse: A Narrative Protest and Nana Dakin as the director of Gina Stevensen's The Colony. You can view our press release: HERE
Meet our Writer’s Round Table Directors
Julia Sears
Director of Rosenstrasse: A Narrative Protest
Julia Sears straddles the world of art and activism to create communication across disparate sectors with similar goals for social justice. Selected Directing: Hamlet (The Horse in Motion) Bullet Catchers (Clutch Productions), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Opera House Arts), Unequilibrium (HERE Arts), The Life Model (On The Boards), Artaud Artaud (Signature Theatre), Kit & Dabney (Live Source @ La MaMa), Three Sisters (Barn Arts Collective),The Human Incubator (The World Egg), Liliya, Wives Tale (Exquisite Corpse Company), Bitch: A Play About Antigone (Capital Fringe Festival). She is a member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers and a resident artist with Exquisite Corpse Company. She has trained with the Shakespeare Theatre Company (DC), Folger Shakespeare Library (DC), American Shakespeare Center (VA), Synetic Theatre (VA), The Shakespeare Forum (NY) and is graduate of the University of Washington. www.juliasears.org
Nana Dakin
Director of The Colony
Nana Dakin is a Thai-American director of new plays, classics and devised performance based in New York City. She is excited by theatre that digs into our cultural assumptions, especially those that uphold systems of inequality. Recent projects include an all-female production of Shakespeare’s "Richard III", the devised multimedia performance "Wonder/Wander: An Interactive Tarot Card Reading" and the development of new plays by Anchuli Felicia King, Gina Stevensen and Nora Sørena Casey. Nana is a core member of B-Floor Theatre, Thailand’s vanguard physical theatre company, and a 2018/2019 New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Directing Fellow. BA: Sarah Lawrence College, MFA Theatre Directing: Columbia University. www.nanadakin.com
SOME PICTURES OF THE FLOATING WORLD
Written by Matt Minnicino, Directed by Ilana Khanin
Featuring: Abby Awe, Amanda Centeno, Marlowe Holden, Artem Kreimer, and James Swanson
Photography by MDH Photography
ALLOND(R)A
Written by Gina Femia, Directed by Taylor Reynolds
Featuring: Ren Dara Santiago, Danny Hidalgo, Diane Chen, Jehan O. Young, David Littleton, Tarik Davis, & Chris Rivera
Photography: Jack of Trades Media
Meet the Cast of ALLOND(R)A
ALLOND(R)A tells the story of Allonda and her friends as they wrestle their way through the summer - sometimes it's on the playgrounds in the projects of Coney Island, sometimes it's with their feelings and often it's at home. A coming of age story about friendship and heartache, ALLOND(R)A asks how much is too much to fight for?
Meet the Cast of Some Pictures of the Floating World
Shiloh is happy. She and her friends in the Word of Joy do nothing but live, love, tell truths, and dream of the day when they will be called up to the Floating World. But when a stranger arrives, full of words from a world they’ve tried to forget, Shiloh and the others must consider for the first time if they’re as happy as they seem. A play about cults, stories, joy, sadness, truth, lies, and why we believe the things we believe.
Meet the Playwrights of the Writer's Round Table
Gina Femia // ALLOND(R)A
Gina Femia is a playwright who has written 27 full-length play, which include ALLOND(R)A (winner, Leah Ryan Prize), REBELS TIL DEATH (Reading, Playwrights Horizons), The Mermaids' Parade (semifinalist, The Relentless Award), Annie and the Fat Man (Honorable Mention, the Kilroys), The Violet Sisters (Great Plains Theatre Conference), We Are A Masterpiece (Retro Productions) and For The Love Of (Theatre of NOTE, Pride Films & Plays). She is an Alum of EST/Youngblood (Romance Depot), Pipeline Theatre's PlayLab and New Georges' Audrey Residency (Accidental Burlesque).
Jacob Marx Rice // Rosenstrasse
Jacob Marx Rice’s work has been produced and developed at The Flea Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, The New Ohio, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. His play series The Suicidal Comedies - consisting of Chemistry, Coping, and Cracks - has been produced around the country and has won the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, the Excellence in Playwriting Award at the NY Fringe Festival, Producer's Pick at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and Producer’s Encore Pick at the Hollywood Fringe. Jacob was a 2017 Playwright Observer at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, is a member of The Shelter, and is currently an MFA candidate at NYU for Dramatic Writing.
Matt Minnicino // Some Pictures of the Floating World
Matt Minnicino is a Virginia-born, Manhattan-based playwright, adaptor, actor, director, teacher, and theatre-maker. He has been a resident with SPACE on Ryder Farm, Exquisite Corpse, Sugarglass Theatre / Trinity College, Barn Arts Collective, Letter of Marque, the box collective, and numerous others. He is a Jeffrey Melnick New Playwright Award Nominee, winner of the 2016 Arts & Letters Prize, and member of Pipeline Theatre’s PlayLab, Everday Inferno’s Writer/Director Lab, The Flea's Inaugural Serials Writer Room, and 2018 Great Plains Theatre Conference PlayLab. He has written for Serials@The Flea, Rule of 7x7, multiple university theatres, and the NYC Fringe, FauxReal, and Shenandoah Fringe Festivals. He has professionally adapted Chekhov, Strindberg, Ibsen, Gorky, Homer, Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Moliere, and more. His essays on theatre have been published by The Dramatist, Gathering of the Tribes, and HowlRound. MFA: Columbia. www. mattminnicino.com.
Gina Stevensen // The Colony
Gina Stevensen is a playwright who embraces magic and myth to tell stories about gender, power, and identity. Her plays include The Colony (Finalist, Kennedy Center 2018 MFA Playwrights Workshop), Cruel Sister (Semi-Finalist: Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 2018 National Playwrights Conference), KIDS (Williamstown Theatre Festival 2017), and Book of Esther (Top Ten Finalist: 2017 Jewish Playwriting Contest, Semi-Finalist: 2016 Princess Grace Award). Gina teaches playwriting at Tribeca Performing Arts Center and The Writer’s Rock. BFA Drama: NYU Tisch. MFA Playwriting Candidate: Columbia University. www.ginastevensen.com