The plays featured in the Yale School of Drama's ninth annual Carlotta Festival of New Plays May 9 to 16 at the Iseman Theater (1156 Chapel Street, New Haven are Cardboard Piano by Hansol Jung, Bird Fire Fly by Mary Laws, and THUNDERBODIES by Kate Tarker.
ABOUT THE PLAYS AND THE PLAYWRIGHTS
By Hansol Jung
Directed by Cole Lewis
Set Design by Jungah Han
Costume Design by Steven Rotramel
Lighting Design by Joey Moro
Sound Design by Brian Hickey
Dramaturgy by Whitney Dibo
Stage Management by Will Rucker
Cast: Melanie Field, Jonathan Majors, Julian Elijah Martinez, Shaunette Renée Wilson
Northeastern Africa on the eve of the millennium. The daughter of American missionaries and a local teenage girl steal into a darkened church to seal their love in a secret, makeshift wedding ceremony. But when the civil war encroaches on their union, they cannot escape its reach. Confronting the religious and cultural roots of intolerance, Cardboard Piano explores the human capacity for hatred, forgiveness, and love.
Hansol Jung is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama originally from South Korea. Her work has been developed at the Bushwick Starr, Asia Society New York, Lark Play Development Center, OD Musical Theater Company (Seoul), Cultural Conversations New Play Festival, and Yale Cabaret. Her works include Dis/Oriented: Antonioni in China (with Yin Mei and Bora Yoon), Among the Dead, Still Murky, No More Sad Things, and Cardboard Piano. She has translated over thirty American musicals into Korean, including Evita, Evil Dead the Musical, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, while working on several award winning musical theatre productions as director, lyricist and translator in Seoul, South Korea. She is the recipient of Playwrights’ Centre Core Apprenticeship, the Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award, the Pierre-Andre Salim Memorial Scholarship at Yale School of Drama, and was a 2014 finalist for the Ruby Prize.
Bird Fire Fly
By Mary Laws
Directed by Katherine McGerr
Set Design by Adrian Martinez Frausto
Costume Design by Grier Coleman
Lighting Design by Joey Moro
Sound Design by Steven Brush
Dramaturgy by David E. Bruin
Stage Management by Emily DeNardo
Cast: Aaron Bartz, Tom Pecinka, Bradley James Tejeda
Under a tangle of branches, children play war games with birds. A boy waits in the shadows. Soldiers defend their country. Bird Fire Fly examines the transformation of fear into violence, the perpetuation of oppression, and the fight to be free.
Mary Laws is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama originally from Texas. Her plays include Bird Fire Fly, Blueberry Toast (Yale School of Drama); Wonderful, The Drive (Tympanic Theatre Company); What A Very Pretty Pageant!; Stand (an autumn play) (The American Laboratory); The Trapeze Artist (Baylor University); and This (Yale Cabaret). Her work has been read/developed by Baylor University, Theater Masters National MFA Playwrights Festival, the American Laboratory, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Endstation Theatre Playwrights Initiative, The Cherry Lane, Le Pavé d’Orsay in Paris, and The Horton Foote American Playwrights Festival. For three years she served as literary associate at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in New York. Awards include the Howard Stern Scholarship and UR/SA Grant for Playwriting. She mentors for the Yale/Co-Op Eugene O’Neill Playwriting Program, the Dwight/Edgewood Project in New Haven, and taught Playwriting at Wesleyan University. She currently serves as a Deacon at the University Church in Yale. She received her BFA from Baylor University.
THUNDERBODIES
By Kate Tarker
Directed by Dustin Wills
Set Design by Kurtis Boetcher
Costume Design by Montana Blanco
Lighting Design by Caitlin Smith Rapoport
Sound Design by Samuel Ferguson
Dramaturgy by Helen C. Jaksch
Stage Management by Shannon L. Gaughf
Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Celeste Arias, James Cusati-Moyer, Christopher Geary, Anne Katherine Hägg.
The war is finally over. General Michail proposes to Grotilde—so she skips ahead and plans the inevitable, but festive, divorce. Meanwhile, the weather is playing tricks on people, as is The President, and Grotilde's son won't accept the armistice. In this comedy of no manners, everyone is normible (both normal and terrible all at once).
Kate Tarker is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama. Her plays include THUNDERBODIES, The Green, Laura and the Sea, An Almanac for Farmers and Lovers in Mexico, Concertina, and Paper Cut. At the Yale Cabaret, she recently directed all of what you love and none of what you hate, and performed an improvised, clown inspired show, The Most Beautiful Thing in the World. Her work has been produced or developed by Yale School of Drama, Primary Stages/ESPA at 59E59 Theaters, LOCAL Lab in Boulder, the Theater Masters National MFA Playwrights Festival in Aspen/NYC, and the National New Play Network MFA Workshop at the Kennedy Center. She is the recipient of the Kennedy Center's 2012 National Science Playwriting Award, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, two Stephen B. Timbers Scholarships (Yale), and the Kaspar T. Locher Scholarship (Reed). She has mentored playwrights at the New Haven Co-Op High School and taught playwriting at Wesleyan. Kate is a member of the Dramatists Guild and received a BA from Reed College.
The Carlotta Festival productions will be performed in rotating repertory so that all three plays can be seen in as little as two days.
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