Member Spotlight

This month, we would like to recognize the volunteerism of Nina Gooch, the facilitator for the ICWP online playwriting group.

Nina Gooch is based in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to being a playwright, she is a lighting designer and a stage/production manager. She was a co-founder and Artistic Director of Theatre OUTlanta, an LBTQ theatre in Atlanta. Her ten-minute play Dancing on a Sweet Summer Evening was produced as part of Queer Theatre Kalamazoo’s 2014 Summer Shorts program.

Nina has been a member of ICWP for over ten years. She started as a playwright participant in the pilot program of the online playwriting group right at the start, in January, 2013, and took on the moderator role when the original moderator was unable to continue. “It was a skill I had and I appreciated what I’d gotten from the process….” said Nina.

Initially started to particularly support members in areas where they did not have immediate support, the playwriting group reads each other’s plays and answers questions posed by the playwright. New plays go out about every five to six weeks. As this is a program run by ICWP, all the members of the playwriting group are ICWP members. Playwrights receive feedback from people with very different perspectives. Nina says that she has learned just as much from reading other people’s work as from getting feedback on her own.

There are currently spots open in the ICWP online playwriting group. If you are interested in joining, please email Nina at ninagooch@gmail.com

Thank you, Nina, for all the work you do!

Welcome New Members

Beverly Bowers is the director of Womens Way of Oh-Ky, an artistic support group currently working on a play THE BREEZE BENDS THE GRASS, a musical with original score written by the Julliard trained and award-winning songwriter, Krista Detor.

www.womenswayohio.org

Liesl Lafferty is a Jessie award-winning director, dramaturg and playwright, focusing mainly on creating new Canadian works. She wrote and directed CANARY for the 2010 Vancouver Fringe, a semi-autobiographical comedy about environmental illness.  Liesl is member of the Wet Ink Collective Playwriting Intensive. For more information, check out www.liesllafferty.ca. 

Eleanor Oberio is an emerging playwright and recently underwent a workshop with the award winning playwright and director Dean Lundquist. She is is also working on an illustrated children's book entitled "Goodnight Emmanuel."  In her spare time, she does volunteer work for community and conservation and artistic. She lives in Singapore with her chirpy 3 year old son and husband. 

Rosa Nagle is an experimental playwright from Boston. Her play ON THE DEATH OF JUNE had its world premiere last summer during the NYNW Theatre Festival. She is self-producing her site-specific, interactive play OCTOBER. 

Articles of Interest

Article on "The Heidi Chronicles" in the NY Times takes a sharp bend to the issue of women playwrights. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/nyregion/decades-since-wassersteins-heidi-the-glass-proscenium-holds-fast.html?_r=0

A Stage of their Own:  Why Women Playwrights are Still Marginalized

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2015/feb/26/female-playwrights-national-theatre?CMP=share_btn_tw

Coming Events

Also, Equity in Theatre is hosting a Symposium Monday, April 27^th at The Theatre Centre in Toronto. This is a one-day event tackling underrepresentation and gender inequities in the theatre industry in Canada. 

equityintheatre@gmail.com

Dramatist Third National Conference  July 16-19, La Jolla, California

http://www.dramatistsguild.com/nationalconference.aspx

ICWP Initiatives

Nominations open May 1 for the 2015 50/50 Applause Award. 

Welcome to the ICWP March Newsletter.  As you can see, we are trying to spotlight a new member each month.  I would like to extend a personal invitation for you to nominate yourself or another ICWP member for the spotlight.  We are particularly interested in people in under-represented areas but welcome suggestions from all our members.

Yours for innovative, engaging, and equitable theater,

Mona Curtis