Origins
New Play Project was founded April 2006 by Brigham Young University students James Goldberg, Arisael Rivera, Julie Saunders and Jennefer Franklin as an attempt to produce new play scripts they developed. Bianca Dillard almost immediately joined the group and developed the continuing workshop program.
In August 2006, sponsored by the BYU Experimental Theatre Group, it held its first production, a 10-minute play festival titled Love Songs and Negotiations. In October 2006 it held another play festival titled Palms, which featured plays revolving around religious themes. At the beginning of December 2006, it held its last play festival of the year titled In Progress.
In 2007, New Play Project officially separated itself from BYU and was incorporated with the state of Utah as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The next seven shows were performed in Provo City Library's Bullock Room. In December 2007, New Play Project moved to the old Provo Theatre Company building at 105 N. 100 East. [4]
Development
Part of New Play Project's goal was education. They worked to develop new writers, actors, and directors, and hone their skills. They did this both through play writing workshops and through their short play productions. [7]
- Writing
Writing was the most important aspect of New Play Project, and its heart new work. NPP welcomed submissions from anyone for their themed productions. If submitted early before deadlines, the directors were willing to give feedback, and even had a workshop program for playwrights trying to develop both their short and full-length scripts.
- Acting
Because NPP generally produced short plays, actors sometimes only needed to spend 2–5 hours per week in rehearsal and have a much lower memorization burden than in most plays. No previous acting experience was required, and directors worked with actors to develop good acting skills.
- Directing
As with acting, the ten-minute play format provides opportunities for many beginning and experienced directors without the time-consumption of managing and blocking a full-length production. Previous directing or acting experience is required for directors, and NPP generally gives preference to those who have worked on previous NPP production (in any capacity).
- Dramaturgy
NPP also included dramaturgs in its productions. In NPP, dramaturgs helped find additional information and images that help the director and actors better understand the script in terms of its larger context. They also created written and visual aids to help audience members connect the script to issues in their own lives and the world around them. Dramaturgs also helped during the script development process to give articulate feedback on scripts to improve them. They were heavily utilized in the play writing workshop program.
TV and Film
To date, there has been one TV web series and one feature-length film released based on plays originally performed as New Play Project productions.
WWJD [14] was a feature-length film released in 2022. Starring William McAllister, [15] Jason Jensen, [16] and Jessamyn Svensson, it was originally filmed in 2012, but was finally released 10 years later. Written by Anna Lewis, it was originally performed as a stage play by NPP in 2011. The only returning cast member from the original play was Thomas Gray. The film was played at the LDS Film Festival in 2022 and won 2nd place in the Audience Choice category. [17]
Adam & Eve [18] was an eight-episode mini-series [19] by Davey Morrison and Bianca Dillard, based on the play by Davey Morrison and released in 2016. [20] Starring Davey Morrison as Adam and Becca Ingram as Eve, the first season (4 episodes) of the series played at several film festivals and received awards nominations. [21] [22]
Neil N. LaBute is an American playwright, film director, and screenwriter. He is best known for a play that he wrote and later adapted for film, In the Company of Men (1997), which won awards from the Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the New York Film Critics Circle. He wrote and directed the films Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), Possession (2002), The Shape of Things (2003), The Wicker Man (2006), Some Velvet Morning (2013), and Dirty Weekend (2015). He directed the films Nurse Betty (2000), Lakeview Terrace (2008), and the American adaptation of Death at a Funeral (2010). LaBute created the TV series Billy & Billie, writing and directing all of the episodes. He is also the creator of the TV series Van Helsing. Recently, he executive produced, co-directed and co-wrote Netflix's The I-Land. He also directed several episodes for shows such as Hell on Wheels and Billions.
The Rhodopi International Theater Collective (RITC) was the original name of the Leon Katz Rhodopi International Theatre Laboratory (RITL), an annual summer, month-long event for international theatre collaboration and development, which allowed professional participants to work with and train students and each other in distinct approaches from around the world. The name was changed in preparation for the 2009 session. The program operated under the previous name during the summers of 2005 to 2008.
Playwrights' Center is a non-profit theatre organization focused on both supporting playwrights and promoting new plays to production at theaters. It is located in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In October of 2020, the organization announced plans to move to a larger space in St. Paul.
Alana Valentine is an Australian playwright, dramatist, librettist, and director working in theatre, film, opera, and television.
The Belarus Free Theatre is a Belarusian underground theatre group.
Elliott Hayes was an aspiring Canadian playwright when he was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver.
Daryn Tufts is a writer, director, producer, and actor. Tufts’s writing, producing, and directing credits include feature films, documentaries, and television commercials and he has acted in several successful independent films. Tufts has also performed and taught sketch comedy and improvisational comedy with several professional comedy troupes and is the commercial spokesperson for the Questar Corporation. He currently lives in Holladay, Utah.
Charles J. Fourie is a South African writer and director working in television, film and theatre. Fourie staged his first play as a drama student at the Windybrow Theatre in 1985. In 2021/22, he received a writing and research fellowship from the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) to develop a new theatre format involving artificial intelligence. His latest radio-drama series Alleenmandaat is currently broadcasting on SABC. As of April 2022, he will engage a residency fellowship with the Posthuman Art Network and Foreign Objekt to further develop his latest creative project - AI Performance Narratives. Fourie's play The Parrot Woman was staged in September 2022 at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.
Peta Murray is an Australian writer. Best known as a playwright, she also writes short stories and essays and is a freelance dramaturg, director and occasional performer. She leads a parallel life as a teacher of creative writing and late-blooming academic researcher, in the higher education sector.
Barbara Schneider originally from Germany, is an American playwright.
Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by actor Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and composers from all over the world. At the core of the programs is the goal to introduce audiences to the artists' new work, aided by the institute's labs, granting and mentorship programs that take place throughout the year in the United States and internationally.
Hedgebrook is a rural retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, Washington, founded in 1988. Hedgebrook's artist-in-residence program accepts up to 80 writers each year, who spend two to four weeks in residence working on their diverse writing projects. Each writer stays in her own hand-crafted cottage. Room and board are provided at no cost to the writers-in-residence. The retreat is a working farm, offering organic produce for the writers, and communal dinners each night prepared by in-house chefs.
Eric Roy Samuelsen was an American playwright and emeritus professor of theatre at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is considered one of the most important Mormon playwrights. He won the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) drama award in 1994, 1997, and 1999, and was AML president from 2007 to 2009. In 2012 he received the Smith–Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.
The Hangar Theatre is a non-profit, regional theatre located at 801 Taughannock Boulevard in Ithaca, NY. Its mainstage season and children's shows occur during the summer, but the Hangar, and other organizations, utilize the space year-round for special events. The tenets of the Hangar's mission statement are to enrich, enlighten, educate and entertain.
The Off Cut Festival is a showcase for new and undiscovered playwriting, directing and acting talent, with an emphasis on keeping the audience at the heart of the theatre experience.
Chris Tugwell is an Australian dramatist, screenwriter, and author. Best known as a playwright, his most successful play was X-Ray, which he also produced.
PlayPenn is a new play development conference located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Che'Rae Adams is the Artistic Director, along with Associate Artistic Directors, Susan Dalian and Santiago Iacinti. PlayPenn works with playwrights to develop new plays in a collaborative and supportive workshop environment.
Darko Lukić is a Croatian theatre scholar, writer, cultural theorist and playwright living and working in Germany. As an expert in multi-disciplinary expert pool for capacity building for European Capitals of Culture worked at audience development program ADESTE+. and Rijeka, European capital of Culture 2020. Lukić also publishes scientific papers and participates in international conferences and seminars and translates from English and Spanish language. He is the member of Programme Board of Maribor 2012, European Capital of Culture 2012. He was a member of the European jury of theatrologists for “Premio Europa per il teatro” award (2009), member of the jury for “Marko Fotez” theatre award of HAZU (Croatian Academy of Science and Arts, president of the Board of Gavella Theatre, editor in Hrvatsko glumište magazine HDDU, artistic advisor of HAVC, Hrvatski audiovizualni centar, artistic advisor of Ministry of Culture - Ministarstvo kulture RH and HRT for film, member of the Cultural Council for Performing Arts of Croatian Ministry of Culture, president of the Theatre Committee of the City of Zagreb, member of the Council for International Cultural Cooperation of the City of Zagreb, and President of the Cultural Council for International Cooperation Ministry of Culture - Ministarstvo kulture RH, and member of Croatian centre of PEN International, member of IETM, CAE, ENCATC, Memory Studies Association, IFTR and EASTAP.
Kaite O'Reilly FRSL is UK-based playwright, author and dramaturge of Irish descent. She has won multiple awards for her work, including the Ted Hughes Award (2011) for her version of Aeschylus's tragedy The Persians. O'Reilly's plays have been performed at venues across the UK and at the Edinburgh Festival. Her work has also been shown internationally including in Europe Australia, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. O'Reilly openly identifies as a disabled artist and has spoken of the importance of "identifying socially and politically as disabled" to her work. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Melissa Leilani Larson is an American writer and playwright based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mormon literature critic Michael Austin described her as "one of the true rising stars of Mormon literature." Producer Jeremy Long described her as the "best playwright in Utah." Her plays commonly feature women in leading roles, and some center around the faith of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
