Brown Couch Theatre Company concludes is 2006-2007 season with their fifth annual ten-minute play festival, How Now, Brown Couch, celebrating the emerging artist.
For this year’s theme, Brown Couch challenged playwrights to create scripts using only one brown couch and one additional hand prop. After receiving over 350 submissions, the company has selected ten plays which place the couch in such varied locations as the stage, a veterinarian’s office, a Chicago alley, and the middle of the desert. In addition to the ten plays, performed Thursday - Saturday, How Now, Brown Couch will feature third act performances by several local improv and sketch comedy groups. Each Sunday, Brown Couch will present a staged reading of a new work.
Chicago Playwright Walt McGough's one-act play Fugitive Motel was recently performed as part of the May 2007 Bailiwick Directors Festival. His play Baggage placed third in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival's 2006 David Mark Cohen National Playwriting contest, and won the University of Virginia's 2006 DeLauney Playwriting Award. Ian Grody of New York, NY, has had plays produced at The New York Collective For The Arts, The Kennedy Center, and The American Globe Theatre, among others. Theresa Giacopasi is also based in New York and is currently studying dramatic writing at the Tisch School of the Arts (NYU).
Dennis Jones, of Powhatan, VA, was named as a finalist for the Heideman Award by Actors Theatre of Louisville, and has another of his plays published in Ten Minute Plays from Oxford. Playwright Rebekah Lopata is currently based in Costa Rica where she teaches drama, math and science. Other playwrights are Matt Haldeman (Haverford, PA), currently attending Harvard Business School; Brian Allard, Educational Director for the Blue Monkey Theater in Portland, OR; Chicagoan Ryan Dolan, whose work has been seen at Second City and IO in Chicago, as well as the Improv Asylum in Boston; company member Colene Byrd, whose play A Bunny Tale was featured in Brown Couch’s 2006 festival; and Michelle Jane Wilson, a former playwright-in-residence with the Playwright’s Lab in Minneapolis, MN..
Artistic Director Mark Pracht directed Stop Kiss for Brown Couch, as well as Caught In the Act’s production of Play It Again, Sam. Managing Director Micky York, recently directed and music directed Brown Couch’s production of Happy End. Beth Cummings has recently accepted the position of Associate Artistic Director for Babes With Blades, where she has directed a number of productions. She will also direct the staged reading of The Battle of Anzio by Brenda Kilianski on the first Sunday of the festival. Returning festival director Ryan Magnuson also previously directed for Brown Couch with productions of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris and The Twilight of the Golds. Lydia Milman also returns after last year’s festival and has recently directed with the Women’s Theatre Alliance and will be directing for Speaking Ring’s Vitality.
She will also direct the staged reading of Adam Szymkowicz’s Open Minds, playing on the second Sunday of the festival. Andrew Hobgood has directed productions for Common Theater Company and Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, as well as a production of Cabaret for the Starlight Theatre in Orlando, Florida. Lauren Shepard has worked extensively with Milwaukee Repertory Theatre. Other directors are Margaret Lebron, Lance Hall and company member Colene Byrd, who will also direct the reading of Along For the Ride by Omaha playwright Randall Wheatley. -- www.theatrebuildingchicago.org
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