The Cutting Ball Variety Pack

The Playwrights

Series

How do you turn words into characters? What do playwrights learn from actors? Watch words come to life.

The Playwrights Series is an incubator for experimental new works. Two unproduced and unpublished plays, selected from a pool of 150 script submissions, are presented in staged readings after a week-long developmental process to refine authorial vision and further craft these in-progress scripts. These two plays may be wildly different from one another but both push theatrical expectations and conventions in form and content. The Playwrights Series reflects Cutting Ball's commitment to the new experimental canon and the emerging artists who will shape it.

THUNDERBODIES

With the war finally over, Grotilde - a once gargantuan, ceaselessly desirable woman - and General Itterod decide to wed. But, with the knowledge that every marriage ends in heartbreak, the two decide to jump right to the main event and plan an extravagant, celebratory divorce instead. In her new comedy, THUNDERBODIES, playwright Kate Tarker constructs a muscular and unrelenting war-torn world with an absurd language all its own.

by Kate Tarker

Monday, February 5 at 7pm
Tuesday, February 6 at 7 pm

Kate Tarker

Kate Tarker's (playwright) plays include THUNDERBODIES, God is Dead Let’s Make Love, and Laura and the Sea. Her works have been developed at The Lark, The Vineyard, The Wilma, Ars Nova, NYTW, Playwrights’ Center, and The O’Neill, among others. Honors include a Jerome Fellowship, The Vineyard’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, The National Science Playwriting Award, Theater Masters’ Visionary Playwright Award, a MacDowell Fellowship, and a PWCenter/NET Ensemble Collaboration Grant. Kate has had two of her plays on the Kilroys List. MFA: Yale.

Eric Brown

Eric Brown

Michail Itterod

Matthew Capbarat

Matthew Capbarat

Boy (Son Swan)

Amanda Farbstein

Amanda Farbstein

Girl

Katja Rivera

President

Stacy Ross

Grotilde Nancy Swan

Complex (KOM-pleks)

Katie isn’t a genius but Max – the guy she's been "casually" hooking up with – just might be. Maybe it's because he's a boy? Alexa Derman, a young woman in the arts, writes intimately and incisively about what it's like to be a young woman in the arts. Complex (KOM-pleks) is a taut and funny-scary play about the gender politics of brilliance and how to survive as a “bright and promising” teenager who feels anything but.

by Alexa Derman

Monday, February 12 at 7pm
Tuesday, February 13 at 7 pm

Alexa Derman

Alexa Derman (playwright) writes about young women. Production and developmental history includes Crashbox, Fresh Ink, EST/LA, the Yale Playwrights Festival, Young Playwrights Inc., The Blank, and others. O'Neill NPC: Semifinalist, 2017 and 2015; Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award: Honorable Mention, 2017; Echo National Young Playwrights Residency: Finalist; Downstage Left Residency: Semifinalist. Her current work-in-progress is about love and longing in 1970s Hollywood and outer space. BA-in-progress: Yale.

Gianna DiGregorio

Gianna DiGregorio

Olivia

Adam MagillAdam Magill

Max

Jed Parsario

Jed Parsario

Andrew

Adrienne Walters

Adrienne Walters

Katie

The Playwright Series is made possible in part by Suzanne Johnson Schlenger.