ASW in partnership with Teatro Vivo presents SEGUNDA ETAPA: The Second Stage, the culmination of the second phase of the Latino Playwrights Initiative. Two full-length plays commissioned by Austin Script Works will receive a week of rehearsals and workshopping leading to public staged readings. The day-long event will also include a playwriting workshop and a party.
The schedule for SEGUNDA ETAPA: THE SECOND STAGE is as follows:
Saturday, December 8, 2007
10:30 AM Playwriting Workshop with Jorge Luis Cacheiro
2:30 PM Woman on Fire by Marisela Treviño Orta directed by Nakissa Etemad
7:30 PM The Bonobos by Amparo Garcia-Crow directed by Jorge Luis Cacheiro
A party will follow the evening reading.
ALL EVENTS at The VORTEX
2307 Manor Rd.
Information and Reservations:
512-454-9727 or info@scriptworks.org
THE LATINO PLAYWRIGHTS INITIATIVE is a three phase program focused on the creation, development and production of new work by Latino writers for the American stage. Austin Script Works partnered with Teatro Vivo to create the program which has three primary goals: 1) To identify new Latino writers and to encourage new work from emerging and established Latino writers; 2) To develop the work with professional support and mentorship; and 3) To connect Latino writers with producers interested in pursuing their work.
The first phase of the program included a call for short works from Latino writers based on three “ingredients”. Six of those plays received rehearsed public readings in a weekend event that included workshops and mentoring sessions. Two writers were chosen from the original six to receive full-length commissions from Austin Script Works as part of the second phase of the program. Both plays received first-draft readings over the summer and now they are receiving development support with professional director/dramaturges culminating in SEGUNDA ETAPA: THE SECOND STAGE.
ABOUT THE PLAYS AND WRITERS:
WOMAN ON FIRE by Marisela Treviño Orta (2:30 pm on Saturday, 12/8)
Orta’s re-imagining of Sophocles’ Antigone is set along the U.S./Mexico border. The unwilling heroine Juanita, the wife of a National Guardsman, is haunted by the ghost of a woman who died while crossing the border. Torn between the law of man and a higher law, Juanita must decide whether or not to put her husband’s military career at risk and give the ghost a proper burial which would put its restless spirit at peace.
Poet and playwright Marisela Treviño Orta graduated from Southwestern University in Georgetown and received an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. While studying poetry at USF she began collaborating with El Teatro Jornalero!, a theatre company comprised of Latino immigrants. As ETJ’s Resident Poet Marisela wrote poetry in response to their work. She also translated their plays for English audience members. Her first play, BRAIDED SORROW, was included in the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Ford Amphitheatre’s 2006 Summer Reading Series, and won UC Irvine’s 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in drama. Currently, Ms. Orta is Marin Theatre Company’s Resident Playwright and working with MTC to teach playwriting to youth at nearby San Rafael High School. She is also one of the founding editors of Switchback, the official literary journal of the University of San Francisco’s MFA in Writing program and recipient of Naropa Summer Writing program’s Zora Neal Hurston Scholarship. Ms. Orta’s poetry has appeared in BorderSenses, Double Room, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and Traverse.
THE BONOBOS by Amparo Garcia-Crow (7:30 pm on Saturday, 12/8)
Lorenzo and Antonia divorced each other a year ago. But lately, they’ve been having an affair, partly because of Antonia’s grief over her mother’s fast approaching death.
When a cyber porn unit comes knocking on Lorenzo’s door during a tryst, Tiffany, their seventeen-year-old daughter is quickly implicated. The “instructive videos” Tiffany has been making of herself and four friends have been sent via the internet from Lorenzo’s IP address, implicating him as a child pornographer. This dark comedy examines the hypocrisies of sex within one family which shares a “missing link” that might just bring them all together—again.
Amparo Garcia-Crow is an actress who sings, directs and writes plays, screenplays and songs. As a playwright, Garcia-Crow has been developed at South Coast Repertory Theatre and has had world premieres Off-Broadway, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville Actor’s showcase, Chicago, Los Angeles and various theatres in the Southwest. Her new play THE FARAWAY NEARBY recently received a reading from Nosotros in Hollywood, California at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre and additional development at Eugene Lee’s Black and Latino Playwright Conference at Texas State University. Ms. Garcia-Crow is also developing UNKNOWN SOLDIER: THE NEW AMERICAN MUSICAL OF MEXICAN DESCENT which was recently featured in Hector Galen’s documentary, Visiones (Visions): Latino Art and Culture on PBS. Her half hour film, Loaves and Fishes (which she also stars in) recently aired on the PBS series Territories, after premiering at SXSW Film Festival and the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. As a former James Michener Fellow, Ms. Garcia-Crow won the Larry King Playwriting Award for her play, …AND WINGS TO FLY. Most recently her play ESMERALDA BLUE: LA MUJER MODERNA won the national Female Protagonist Award offered by Seattle’s Mae West Festival. She has also produced independent musical releases and been honored with “Amparo Garcia Day” by the Austin City Council. Most recently, Ms. Garcia-Crow was a Master Acting teacher for the MFA Acting program at the University of Texas. She is the Program Director of Austin’s new Mexican American Cultural Center.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR/DRAMATURGES
Jorge Luis Cacheiro has a long history of developing new work for the American theater. He has directed world and/or west coast premieres by such prominent American playwrights as Harry Kondoleon, David Lindsay-Abaire, Eduardo Machado and Luis Santeiro. He’s also helped develop and mentor playwrights as a guest director at the O’Neil Theater Conference, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, the Iowa New Play Festival and at numerous universities around the country. Mr. Cacheiro’s own work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts in Directing, in Producing, and in Opera/Music Theater, as well as, by the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York State Arts Council among others. He is currently the Co-Artistic Director of the Jersey City Theater Center, a new professional theater company in Jersey City. Mr. Cacheiro is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and teaches acting and directing in Montclair State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance.
Nakissa Etemad is a professional dramaturg, literary manager, and producer who hails from San Francisco, CA, having worked for such companies as The Wilma Theater, San Jose Rep, and San Diego Rep. She fostered five world premieres of Latino writers through San Diego Rep’s Calafia Initiative, which included work with San Diego’s Centro Cultural de la Raza, Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT), the founding maestro of Orquesta de Baja California Eduardo Garcia Barrios, and designers Alejandro Luna and Tolita Figueroa of Mexico City. Ms. Etemad has provided dramaturgy for Arizona Theatre Company, O’Neill Music Theatre Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and La Jolla Playhouse and has worked on over 50 productions with such writers as Tom Stoppard, Luis Valdez, Doug Wright, Arthur Miller, Culture Clash, Lynn Nottage, Dael Orlandersmith, Elaine Romero, Octavio Solis, and Charles L. Mee. Producing credits include directing the 5th Annual New America Playwrights Festival at San Jose Rep and co-chairing the 2004 LMDA Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Ms. Etemad served as Festival Coordinator for the 30th Anniversary Bay Area Playwrights Festival, where she directed the staged reading of Marisela Treviño Orta’s one-act version of Woman on Fire this past August. Ms. Etemad holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from UC San Diego and is a translator of French plays.