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Friday, September 7, 2012

Matthew Lopez is Hartford Stage's Aetna Fellow

Playwright Matthew Lopez, author of this past season's The Whipping Man, at Hartford Stage will be the 2012-13 Aetna New Voices Fellow at the theater. The announcement comes on the heels of former Aetna Fellow Quiara Alegria Hudes winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in April for Water By The Spoonful which received its premiere at the theater last November.

A longtime resident of Brooklyn, 35-year-old Lopez hails from Florida, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Dramatic Performance at the University of Southern Florida. Proud of his mixed Puerto Rican and Polish/Russian heritage, his most recent projects include the world premiere of Somewhere at The Old Globe in San Diego and his adaptation of the film Mad Hot Ballroom, which will be directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell.

In recent years, The Whipping Man has become one of the more regularly-produced new American plays. Its New York production garnered Lopez the John Gassner Playwriting Award by the Outer Critics Circle. His other plays include Reverberation, Zoey's Perfect Wedding, and The Legend of Georgia McBride.

Beginning in January, Hartford Stage will premiere Breath and Imagination: The Story of Roland Hayes by 2007-08 Fellow Daniel Beaty. 

A season-long engagement, the Aetna New Voices Fellowship Now in its eighth year) provides an artistic home for important playwrights of color to develop work and become involved in the ongoing life of Greater Hartford. The residency includes working with Hartford Stage's education department, advancing community development, and the commissioning of a new work, as well as a series of readings and workshops throughout the year. 
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Lauren Yarger with playwright Alfred Uhry at the Mark Twain House. Photo: Jacques Lamarre)

My Bio

Lauren Yarger has written, directed and produced
numerous shows and special events for both secular and Christian audiences. She co-wrote a Christian musical version of “A Christmas Carol” which played to sold-out audiences of over 3,000 in Vermont and was awarded the 2000 Vermont
Bessie (theater and film awards) for “People’s Choice for Theatre.”

Yarger trained for three years in the Broadway
League’s Producer Development Program, completed the Commercial Theater Institute's Producing Three-Day Training and produced a one-woman musical about Mary Magdalene that toured nationally and closed with an off-Broadway
run.

She was a Fellow at the National Critics Institute at the O'Neill
Theater Center in Waterford, CT. She writes reviews of Broadway and off-Broadway theater (the only ones you can find in the US with an added Christian perspective) at http://reflectionsinthelight.blogspot.com/. She
is editor of The Connecticut Arts Connection (http://ctarts.blogspot.com), CT Press Club's award winner of first place for web editing and second place in feature writing for the web in 2012.

She is a contributing editor for BroadwayWorld.com and is a theater reviewer for the Manchester Journal-Inquirer. She previously served as Connecticut theater editor
for CurtainUp.com and as Connecticut and New York reviewer for American Theater Web. Yarger is a book reviewer for Publishers Weekly and freelances for other sites. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

She is a freelance writer and playwright and member of The Drama Desk, The Outer Critics Circle, The American Theater Critics Association and The League of Professional Theatre Women. She served as a judge for the SDX Awards presented
by the Society of Professional Journalists. She also is a member of the Connecticut Critics Circle (awards committee).

A former newspaper editor and graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, Yarger also worked in arts management for the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts,
the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and served for nine years as the Executive Director of Masterwork Productions, Inc. She lives with her husband in West Granby, CT. They have two adult children.

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