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(08/14/2010)
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Chicago Dramatists announces the playwrights and schedule for its third annual MANY VOICES PROJECT playwriting festival. The MANY VOICES PROJECT is a national competition and developmental showcase that embraces all playwrights of color. During the festival, four full-length plays will receive staged readings on July 17, 18, & 19 at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Avenue. Readings will be at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets for all readings are $5.
Exclusively sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Many Voices Project unites Chicago’s race and ethnic-specific theatres at Chicago Dramatists, all working together towards the development of new plays by playwrights of color. This year, four playwrights have been selected from a large pool of national applicants. The selected playwrights hail from New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Bellwood, Illinois and represent Filipino, African American, East Indian and Puerto Rican backgrounds.
The MANY VOICES PROJECT Plays and Playwrights
TIERRA (Land / Earth)
by Alfonso Ramirez
Thursday, July 17, 7:30 p.m.
This historical play, inspired by a Diego Rivera mural called "La Maestra Rural," follows Luz Jimenez, a young, innocent and idealistic teacher sent into the interior of Mexico by the newly-installed government to educate the peasants and help them re-possess the lands promised to them by government reforms. While the peasants embrace her wholeheartedly, she encounters opposition to her altruistic work by a rich landowner.
Alfonso Ramirez is a writer and teacher whose writing credits include The Watermelon Factory, Mexican Mermaid, Conditional Spanish, and Miss Chihuahua. He is a two-time winner of Teatro Esperanza’s Isadora Aguirre Hispanic Playwright award, and was awarded the NYFA grant for his play Todos Santos.
GANDHI MARG
by Anita Chandwaney
Friday, July 18, 7:30 p.m.
Shanti and Shardul are newlyweds and very much in love, until Shanti's sister arrives. She is Shardul's former flame from many, many years ago. The fire that brought them together also tore them apart. It's the expectations these first generation South Asian Americans have of each other and themselves that threaten to bring the past into the present, and affect the futures of everyone involved.
Anita Chandwaney is an actress, director, and writer who authored Judging Jaya and Success in the City. Her first full-length play Gandhi Marg won second place in the 75th annual Writers Digest Stage Play Competition. She has also worked with Playwright’s Horizons and Open Eye New Stagings in New York City.
CASUALTY OF WAR
by Philip Craft
Saturday, July 19, 2:00 p.m.
A Black WWII veteran’s decision to play baseball is a deadly one. Former Tank Commander, Creed Noble, loves baseball. He loves his sister, Danielle, more. So it is no surprise when he decides to play for the St. Louis Cardinals to assist his best friend, who is Danielle’s husband. Even after encountering a segregationist agent, Creed’s choice to play remains steadfast. He thought he was finished fighting. He was wrong.
Philip Craft is a graduate of Columbia College. As an actor he has appeared in YANGA (Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum); Blues for Mister Charlie (Fleetwood Jourdain); Fortunes of the Moor (e.t.a) and Day of Absence (Bailiwick Directors Festival). A Chicago Network Playwright with Chicago Dramatists, his play The Promised Land was presented at e.t.a’s Readers Theater.
YEAR ZERO
by Michael Golamco
Saturday, July 19, 7:30 p.m.
Vuthy Vichea is a sixteen year-old Cambodian American. He loves hip-hop and Dungeons and Dragons. He has thick-ass glasses. He is a weird kid in a place where weirdness can be fatal: Long Beach, California. And since his best friend moved and his mother died, the only person he can talk to is a human skull he keeps hidden in a cookie jar. Year Zero is about being chased across an ocean by death, standing firm, and finally confronting it head on.
Michael Golamco is a writer for both stage and screen whose works include Cowboy Versus Samurai, Build, and Year Zero. He is a Top 50 Project Greenlight screenwriter and was selected for the Tribeca Film Festival’s All Access Programs. His short film Dragon of Love is currently running on the Sundance Channel.
PROJECT DIRECTOR - Ilesa Duncan.
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2008 Many Voices Project
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2008 Many Voices Project