ARKANSAS NEW PLAY FEST
March 27 & 28
$5 per show/ $20 for festival Pass
Walton Arts Center’s Nadine Baum Studios
Northwest Arkansas loves new plays, and TheatreSquared is committed to continuing the tradition.
So is the Department of Arkansas Heritage, which recently awarded T2 a generous grant to fund a
new play festival highlighting our state’s rich culture and history. The festival will present staged
readings of six new plays about Arkansas, FIVE by professional playwrights and FOUR by high
school students. Visit www.theatresquared for tickets. Remember that seating is very limited for
these readings. We encourage you to reserve a spot in advance, or get to the theatre early!
UPDATED SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, March 27
6pm
Opening Reception
7pm
Disfarmer
by Werner Trieschmann
directed by Kate Frank
This work is based on the life of the eccentric portrait photographer, Mike Disfarmer, of Heber Springs and captures the frenzy that ensued among New York gallery owners to acquire his work.
Ensemble Cast: Vickie Hilliard, Cassie Self, Mick Simons & Mark Smith
8:30pm
Look Away
by Robert Ford
directed by the author
Alonzo and Matthew escape a lynch mob by slipping into the kitchen of the Wilson plantation house, where Alonzo’s mother is housekeeper. It’s the 1930’s. They’re black. The powerful Wilson family—a pack of eccentrics—is white. The ensuing ten hours are pure theatre. Based on a true story.
Cast
MATTY – Justin Cunningham
BOBBY – Liam Selvey
ALONZO – Terrence Tucker
MARIE – Virginia Scheuer
ROY – Bill Rogers
SATURDAY, March 28
11am
Fact or Fiction: Playwrights Panel
(Meet the playwrights!)
12pm
Vinegar Pie and Chicken Bread
by A.E. Edwards
directed by Emily Jones
Adapted from the book of the same name by Margaret Bolsterli (author of Born in the Delta), Edwards’ play is built from the frontier diaries of 1890 and 1891 written by Nannie Stillwell Jackson.
Cast
Val Andrews
1:45pm
Young Playwrights Showcase
(mentored by Clinnesha Dillon)
This year’s festival will feature four emerging playwrights from Arkansas High Schools. These short plays were selected, from a large pool of submissions, to receive this weekend workshop and individual mentoring.
The Devil’s Oven by Mary Browning (Augusta, AR)
Mineral Water Cures All! by Stephen Kennedy (Bentonville, AR)
Anna’s Flood by Audrey LeBert (Rogers, AR)
Open House by Morgan Mansour (Fayetteville, AR)
3:30pm
Ivanhoe, Ark.
by Sherry Kramer
directed by Emily Jones
In this play, Ivanhoe (a.k.a. Eureka Springs) stands in for America, with a Passion Play in rehearsal, a Nascar track under construction, a swarm of white supremacists, and an old Scottish myth played out in the Ozark highlands.
Ensemble Cast: Mark Beasley, Beth Brooks, Pete Brooks, Will Grayson, Brandi Hoofnagle, Maeve Odom,
Greg Parker, Brandt Kesselberry, Evan Adney, Bill Rogers, Mick Simons, John Thomas Smith, Mark Smith, Jules Taylor & David Wright
8:00pm
Sundown Town
by Kevin Cohea
directed by David Pickens
Healing Springs, Arkansas, was a good place to live in 1918. Clear skies. Healing waters. No mosquitoes.
No malaria. And no Negroes…until a drifter named Moses arrived. Employing traditional gospel music,
Sundown Town explores virtue, sin and the fear of change.
Cast
REVEREND JOHN LOFTON: Mike Thomas
DUB HALE: Will Grayson
LORETTA HALE: Julie Gabel
ANNIE HALE: Emily Tomlinson
BILL CHEATHAM: John Thomas Smith
MUTT MCCLELLAND: TJ Osbourne
JOSHUA “JUNEBUG” KELLEY: Pete Brooks
HAROLD “SCRATCH” KELLEY: Roger Gross
MOSES LARUE: Justin Cunningham
Featured Playwrights
Kevin D. Cohea’s plays have appeared at the University of Arkansas, which premiered 2 A.M.(A.lpha M.ale) on its main stage, and at Laughs on the Landing in St. Louis. Earning his MFA in playwriting from the U of A, he received the Carrie Hamilton Memorial Scholarship and was a member of the Arkansas Project led by television creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Also an actor, Cohea played Ben Hecht in T2’s Moonlight and Magnolias. He teaches English at Main Street Academy in Siloam Springs. Sundown Town is under consideration for the PONY Award. A.E. Edwards received her MFA in playwriting from University of Arkansas during which time she won a National Playwriting Award at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Washington and was a Kennedy Center Fellow at Dad’s Garage Theatre in Atlanta. She currently lives in Bella Vista and is an Associate Faculty Member at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville.
Robert Ford is Artistic Director of TheatreSquared and directs the Arkansas Playwrights Workshop. Last May, T2 premiered his play My Father’s War, which will travel to Berlin in July. Alabama Shakespeare Festival expects to premiere his play The Fall next season. Ford is a winner of the Stanley Drama Award and a fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council, and his award-winning novel The Student Conductor was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Ford is an alum of the Mount Sequoyah New Play Retreat and teaches drama at the University of Arkansas.
Sherry Kramer’s work has been seen at the Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, InterAct Theatre, Yale Repertory Theater, Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theater, New York’s Second Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Theater of the First Amendment, and at Rude Mechs in Austin, TX, in a co-production with Red Then. She is a recipient of NEA, New York Foundation for the Arts, and McKnight Fellowships, the Weissberger Playwriting Award and a New York Drama League Award, the LA Women in Theater New Play Award, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, and a commission from A.S.K. She was the first national member of New Dramatists and teaches playwriting at Bennington College and in the MFA programs of the Michener Center for Writers, UT Austin, and the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, where she was previously
head of the workshop.
Werner Trieschmann’s plays have been staged at Moving Arts in Los Angeles, Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, The New Theatre in Boston, Mobtown Players in Baltimore and Red Octopus Productions in Little Rock. His comedy You Have to Serve Somebody (Dramatic Publishing) was developed at the Mount Sequoyah New Play Retreat in Fayetteville. Trieschmann won first prize in the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans New Play Competition and was the first playwright to receive the Porter Prize. He has an M.F.A. in playwriting from Boston University and lives in Little Rock.
