NEW WORKS BROOKLYN at Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College Department of Theater presents:

New Works Brooklyn

a festival of readings

with playwrights Erin Courtney, Kristoffer Diaz, Keith Josef Adkins, Alexandra Collier, and Rehana Lew Mirza

at Brooklyn College’s Roosevelt Hall, June 22-26, 2015

The Brooklyn College Department of Theater will present its second annual New Works Brooklyn festival on June 22-26. The series will feature staged readings of one-act plays written by award-winning playwrights Erin Courtney, Kristoffer Diaz, Keith Josef Adkins, Alexandra Collier, and Rehana Lew Mirza, all of whom will take part in audience talkbacks during the week.

The New Works Brooklyn festival will be held in Room 307 of Roosevelt Hall Extension on the campus of Brooklyn College.

Roosevelt Hall Extension is at 2950 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (Flatbush Avenue stop on the

2 and 5 train). For further information, visit the Department of Theater Web page at http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/theater.

No reservations required; suggested donation is $5. The performance schedule is as follows:

A Small Ship by Erin Courtney on Monday, June 22, 7:00 PM

directed by Dan Rothenberg, curated by Christina Roussos

Neighborhood Watch by Rehana Lew Mirza on Tuesday, June 23, 7:00 PM

directed by Benjamin Kamine, curated by Christine Snyder

The Final Daze by Keith Josef Adkins on Wednesday, June 24, 7:00 PM

directed by Kamilah Forbes, curated by Ben Coleman

The Crying Lettuce by Alexandra Collier on Thursday, June 25, 7:00 PM

directed by Meghan Finn, curated by Andy Buck

Things with Friends by Kristoffer Diaz on Friday, June 26, 7:00 PM

directed by Lear deBessonet, curated by Joshua Bastian Cole

Erin Courtney’s play I Will Be Gone premiered at Actors Theater of Louisville, Humana Festival in 2015. A Map of Virtue won a special citation Obie in 2012. Her plays have been produced or developed by Clubbed Thumb, The Public Theater, The Flea, the Vineyard, Playwrights Horizons, NYS&F, and Soho Rep. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, a member of the Obie-winning playwright collective 13P, and the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writer’s Space. Courtney teaches at Brooklyn College, where she earned her MFA in playwriting with Mac Wellman. She is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow and a member of New Dramatists.

Kristoffer Diaz is a New Dramatists resident playwright, Guggenheim fellow, educator, and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie- and Lortel-winning play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, as well as Welcome to Arroyo’s, The Upstairs Concierge, and The Unfortunates. His work has been developed at The Public Theater, Geffen Playhouse, the Goodman, Second Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, the Lark, Donmar Warehouse, and South Coast Repertory, among many others. He holds an MFA from NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing and an MFA from Brooklyn College’s Performing Arts Management program.

Keith Josef Adkins’ plays include two world premieres in 2014: Pitbulls, at off-Broadway’s Rattlestick Theater, and Safe House, at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. The Last Saint on Sugar Hill received six Audelco nominations for its 2013 New York premiere at the National Black Theatre and, in 2012, a Jeff Award nomination for Best New Work for its Chicago world premiere. The People Before the Park, about a 19th-century black community that was destroyed to create Central Park, runs at Premiere Stages this year. Adkins is a screenwriter and the artistic director of The New Black Fest. He is the recipient of the 2015 Helen Merrill Playwriting Award for Mid-Career Playwright.

Alexandra Collier’s plays have been developed at Sydney Theatre Company in her native Australia, as well as at the New Group, Women’s Project, New Georges, the Lark, and Dixon Place. Her recent work includes Underland (59E59), Take Me Home (Incubator Arts Project), We Play for the Gods (Women’s Project, Cherry Lane), and Holy Day (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist and Kilroys List). Collier performed in her premiere of Still Waiting (La Mama in Melbourne), which subsequently toured to the Adelaide Fringe Festival and was awarded the RE Ross Trust Playwrights Award. She is a graduate of Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney’s MFA playwriting program at Brooklyn College.

Rehana Lew Mirza’s full-length plays include Soldier X (Ma-Yi), Lonely Leela (LPAC), Barriers (Desipina and Asian American Theater Company), and if it’s sad i don’t want to see it (reading at Queens Theater in the Park, 2G). Awards include an E.S.T. Sloan Commission, a Lark residency, and a TCG Future Leader fellowship with New Georges. She was the co-director of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab in 2011-2013 and is a current member. She is also a member of the Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group and artistic director and co-founder of Desipina.

Brooklyn College’s Department of Theater—Kip Marsh, Chair; Mary Beth Easley, Artistic Director—is one of New York City’s leading institutions in the training of actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs, performing arts managers, and theater technicians. The Department offers undergraduate degree programs leading to the Bachelor of Arts in Theater, the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting, the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design & Technical Theater, the Master of Arts in Theater History & Criticism, and the Master of Fine Arts with concentrations in Acting, Directing, Design & Technical Theater, and Performing Arts Management.