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2015 Summit to introduce inaugural Local Playwrights Slam
A group of Rough Draught Playwrights at the 2014 Colorado New Play Summit.
A group of Colorado writers known as the Rough Draught Playwrights will curate the inaugural Local Playwrights’ Slam during the opening weekend of the 2015 Colorado New Play Summit, the DCPA Theatre Company announced today.
The Slam has been a popular feature for all 10 years of the Colorado New Play Summit. It’s sort of like a poetry reading for playwrights. In years past, the four or five playwights whose works are being featured in that year’s summit have been invited to read scenes from different manuscripts they are working on in a friendly and encouraging environment.
Because this year’s Colorado New Play Summit is expanding to two weekends, there is now the opportunity to have one Slam on the Saturday of the “public” weekend, and another on the “industry” weekend.
The Rough Draught Playwrights’ Slam will take place in The Jones Theatre at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 14. It is free with the purchase of any $10 Summit reading ticket.
Rough Draught promotes writer development and dramaturgy by connecting Colorado playwrights with peers, actors, directors, producers and theater enthusiasts through informal readings of their scripts. Rough Draught, headed by playwrights Leslie C. Lewis, Nina Alice Miller and Jeffrey Neuman, hosts the quarterly Open Mic Theatrical Playground, where writers have the opportunity to hear their works-in-progress read before a live audience.
“We are thrilled that the expansion of this year’s Summit will provide local playwrights with additional outlets to showcase their work,” said DCPA Theatre Company Producing Artistic Director Kent Thompson. “The expanded weekends also provide Colorado artists and audiences with the unprecedented opportunity to learn from both Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Vogel, the most respected playwriting teacher in the nation; and Denver favorite Matthew Lopez, undeniably one of the fastest rising playwrights in the country.”
The local weekend of the Summit will feature two workshops by 2014-15 DCPA Playwriting Fellow Matthew Lopez (The Legend of Georgia McBride, The Whipping Man). Lopez will lead an acting master class on Saturday, Feb. 14. This workshop will use scenes from four of Matthew’s own plays and allow writers, actors and audiences alike to discover the relationship between a playwright, his text and actors’ interpretations.
On Sunday, Feb. 15, Lopez will workshop new scenes with three Colorado playwrights. This session will provide a behind-the-scenes look into the playwriting and development process, including a Q&A session with the audience.
During the Summit’s Industry weekend, Paula Vogel (How I Learned To Drive), will lead two playwriting boot camps for all types and abilities.
“This expansion further cements the Theatre Company’s commitment to Colorado storytelling,” Thompson said. “This season alone audiences have journeyed to Leadville in The Unsinkable Molly Brown and to the fictional town of Holt, Colorado, in Benediction.”
About the Colorado New Play Summit
The Colorado New Play Summit is a premiere showcase and celebration of new plays. The 2015 festival will take place over two weekends, Feb. 14-15 and 21-22, and will feature new plays by Jason Gray Platt, Theresa Rebeck, Tanya Saracho, and Catherine Trieschmann.
Over the past decade, the Summit has introduced 44 new plays, more than half of which returned to the stage as full Theatre Company productions. Recent Summit favorites include Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale, Matthew Lopez’s The Legend of Georgia McBride, Catherine Trieschmann’s The Most Deserving, Marcus Gardley’s black odyssey, Karen Zacarias’s Just Like Us, Jeffrey Haddow and Neal Hampton’s Sense and Sensibility The Musical, and Dick Scanlan’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown.
Information and tickets
For information and tickets to the 2015 Colorado New Play Summit, click here.
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