Talk at Playwrights Horizons: Cultural Identity and the Creative Process

Talk at Playwrights Horizons: Cultural Identity and the Creative Process

Join a panel discussion with NYFA Fellows at Playwrights Horizons

NYFA Fellows David Henry Hwang (Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting ‘85), Edwin Sánchez (Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting ’89, ’00, ’06), Dael Orlandersmith (Fellow in Fiction ’96), and Betty Shamieh (Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting ’04) will be gathering at Playwrights Horizons for a panel moderated by Susan Haskins (Fellow in Performance Art/Emergent Form ’90) to discuss “Cultural Identity and the Creative Process.”

Cultural Identity and the Creative Process
Date: Monday, November 16, 2015 at 6:30 PM
Location: Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036
RSVP: http://goo.gl/forms/lph1ypdCpP (Tickets are limited)

This event is free and open to the public. 

In the last three season, nearly 63% of the  plays produced in America were written by white males*. The panel will discuss this ongoing issue, where progress has been made and where it was not. In addition, they will discuss their own creative process and experiences, as well how the expectations of producers, audiences, and collaborators impact their work.  

Speakers Bios:

David Henry Hwang is best known as the author of M. Butterfly, which ran for two years on Broadway, won the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, John Gassner, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Golden Child received three 1998 Tony Nominations including Best Play. His book for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song earned him his third Tony nomination in 2003 for Best Book of a Musical. He also co-wrote the book for Disney’s international musical hit Aida, with music and lyrics by Elton John and Tim Rice, and is currently represented on Broadway as the bookwriter of Disney’s Tarzan, with songs by Phil Collins. Mr. Hwang’s other works include Kung Fu, Yellow Face, Chinglish, FOB, The Dance & the Railroad, Family Devotions, The House of Sleeping Beauties, The Sound of a Voice, Bondage, Face Value, and Trying to Find Chinatown.

Dael Orlandersmith’s most recent play Forever, was seen at New York Theatre Workshop and Chicago’s Goodman Theater. She is the author of Stoop Stories which was first performed at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival and Apollo Theater’s Salon Series. Ms. Orlandersmith was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Drama Desk Award nominee for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Actress in a play for Yellowman in 2002. She is a Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwrights Fellowship and an Obie Award winner for Beauty’s Daughter. Her other works include: Bones, The Blue Album, Horsedreams The Gimmick, Monster, and Forever.

Edwin Sánchez is the winner of National Latino Playwriting Award, the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, AT&T On Stage New Play Award and the Kennedy Center Fund for American Plays Award, and A Princess Grace Fellowship among others. Recent productions include Trafficking In Broken Hearts at the Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles as well as I’ll Take Romance at the Evolution Theatre in Ohio. Other productions include Clean, La Bella Familia, Diosa, Unmerciful Good Fortune, Icarus, and Barefoot Boy With Shoes On. He has just published his first novel Diary Of A Puerto Rican Demigod.

Betty Shamieh is the author of fifteen plays including The Black Eyed, The Machine and Roar. Her European productions in translation include Again and Against, The Black Eyed, and Territories. Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Studies presented the world premiere of a suite of arias from Territories, an opera that Shamieh is writing the lyrics and libretto for based on her play. She performed in her play of monologues, Chocolate in Heat. A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, Shamieh was selected as a Clifton Visiting Artist at Harvard in 2004 and named as a Playwriting Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies in 2006. She is currently working on her first novel and the lyrics and libretto for Malvolio, a sequel to Twelfth Night.

*http://www.dramatistsguild.com/media/PDFs/TheCount.pdf

Image (left to right): Edwin Sánchez, Betty Shamieh, David Henry Hwang, Dael Orlandersmith, Susan Haskins
Homepage slider: Clarissa T. Sligh (Fellow in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists’ Books ‘05)

Amy Aronoff
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