Meet The Playwrights of the 2007/2008 Season
Sarah Ruhl
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"Sarah Ruhl is among the most acclaimed and accomplished young playwrights on the contemporary scene."
- The New York Times
Sarah Ruhl's plays include The Clean House (Susan Smith Blackburn Award, 2004, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Pen Award), Melancholy Play, Eurydice, Late: a cowboy song, Orlando, Demeter in the City (NAACP image award nomination) and Passion Play: a cycle in three parts (Fourth forum freedom award, Kennedy Center). Her plays have been performed at Lincoln Center Theater, Second Stage Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Wilma Theatre, Cornerstone Theater Company, Madison Repertory Theater, Clubbed Thumb and the Piven Theatre Workshop, among other theaters across the country. Her plays have been translated into German, Polish, Korean, Russian and Spanish, and have been produced internationally in London, Canada, Germany, Latvia and Poland. She received her M.F.A. from Brown University, and is originally from Chicago. She is the recipient of a Helen Merrill Award, Whiting Writers' Award, and a Macarthur Fellowship. She is a proud member of New Dramatists and 13 Playwrights, Inc.
Goodman Production History:
2007 Passion Play: a cycle in three parts
2006 The Clean House
Q and A with Playwright Sarah Ruhl
Q: What is your earliest memory of the theater?
A: Looking at a boat from The Tempest in Stratford, back-stage, and being in awe of this massive, gossamer thing.
Q: When did you know you would become a playwright?
A: When I saw Act I of Passion Play being performed in Providence, Rhode Island. I had been in a car accident on the way to the opening, and between a knock on the head and seeing six beautiful fish puppets march across a stage, I knew I was smitten forever.
Q: Who are your major inspirations?
A: Paula Vogel, Maria Irene Fornes, Mac Wellman, Suzan-Lori Parks, Elizabeth Egloff, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Kennedy, Shakespeare, the Greeks, Alice in Wonderland and other great children's books and my family.
Q: What accomplishment in your professional life are you most proud of?
A: Most recently, a nomination from the NAACP image awards. And getting letters from people who claim they normally hate theater but liked coming to see my play.
Q: If you weren't a playwright, what would you be?
A: A portrait artist. Or a diplomat. Or a kindergarten teacher.
Q: What is your greatest extravagance or indulgence?
A: Cabs. Baths. Fancy tea.
Q: Who do you let read your rough drafts?
A: My husband. Paula Vogel. My playwright friend Andy Bragen and directors who I adore and have worked with before--Mark Wing-Davey, of course--Jessica Thebus, Joyce Piven and Les Waters.
Q: Where is your favorite place to write?
A: A cafe in Venice beach called the Novel Cafe. I wrote Act III of Passion Play there. Other than that, my great-aunt Beulah's old writing desk in my office.
Q: What is your favorite book?
A: Just one? That's very hard. Is the Collected Works of Shakespeare a cop-out?
Q: Where is your favorite place to travel?
A: I will go anywhere with good food near water.
Q: What was your strangest job?
A: Being a lady-reader for a retired professor in Oxford. He wanted me to read philosophy out loud to him. He basically wanted to pay me to be a student, because he so missed teaching. So I would go and read Plato out loud to him and he would serve me cookies and lecture at me.
Q: Do you have a pet?
A: Nope - just a one year old. Does that count?
Q: Where were you born?
A: Evanston, IL.
Q: How do you relax?
A: Oh, if only I knew how to...being near water helps. Lake Michigan helps.
Q: What is in your CD player right now?
A: Albums of white noise that are meant to keep babies asleep through the night.
More about Passion Play: a cycle in three parts.
Edwardo Machado
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Eduardo Machado is the author of more than forty plays including Kissing Fidel, Havana is Waiting, A Burning Beach, The Floating Island Plays, Cuba and the Night, Once Removed and Stevie Wants to Play the Blues. His plays have been produced at Hartford Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf Theatre, Hampstead Theatre in London, American Place Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre and Repertorio Español, among many others. Mr. Machado has served as an artistic associate at The Public Theatre, The Flea Theater/Bat Theater Company, Cherry Lane Alternative and he was playwright in residence at Mark Taper Forum. His plays have been published by the Theatre Communications Group Inc., and Samuel French Inc. Mr. Machado is an alumnus of New Dramatists Inc., and a member of The Ensemble Studio Theater and the Actors Studio. He is currently the artistic director of INTAR Theatre in New York City and will begin teaching at New York University in the fall. Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home, a food memoir by Eduardo Machado and Michael Domitrovich, will be released by Gotham Press on October 18th. The Cook was commissioned by Angelina Fiordellisi, artistic director of New York City's Cherry Lane Theatre and received its world premiere at INTAR Theatre.
Goodman Production History:
2007 The Cook
Q and A with Playwright Edwardo Machado
Q: What is your earliest memory of the theater?
A: When I went to a variety show with my mother in Havana. There was a woman being chased by a gorilla. I was five years old.
Q: When did you know you would become a playwright?
A: When my first play was produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre.
Q: Who are your major inspirations?
A: Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Ibsen, Lorca.
Q: What accomplishment in your professional life are you most proud of?
A: Surviving in the American theater.
Q: If you weren't a playwright, what would you be?
A: An actor.
Q: What is your greatest extravagance or indulgence?
A: Taking taxis.
Q: Who do you let read your rough drafts?
A: Everyone.
Q: Where is your favorite place to write?
A: My bed.
Q: What is your favorite book?
A: Crime and Punishment.
Q: Where is your favorite place to travel?
A: Cuba.
Q: What was your strangest job?
A: Selling vacuum cleaners door to door.
Q: Do you have a pet?
A: No.
Q: Where were you born?
A: Guanabacoa, Cuba.
Q: How do you relax?
A: Acupuncture.
Q: What is in your CD player or iPod right now?
A: "Into the Woods," Ella Fitzgerald, Bola De Nieve and "Gypsy."
More about The Cook.
Conor McPherson
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"I'm not an intellectual writer. I believe we're driven by feelings, and ideas are just rationalizations of those feelings."
-Conor McPherson, quoted in The New York Times
Conor McPherson's The Weir (1997) was commissioned by The Royal Court Theatre and premiered at The Ambassadors Theatre Group. It won an Evening Standard Award, Critics' Circle Award and two Olivier Awards, including Best Play. Conor's first plays were produced on the Dublin fringe, including Rum & Vodka (1992) and The Good Thief (1994) which won the Stewart Parker Award. This Lime Tree Bower (1995) transferred from Crypt Theater in Dublin to the Bush Theatre in London, winning the Meyer-Whitworth and the George Devine Award for Best New Play. St. Nicholas (1997, Bush Theatre, London) starring Brian Cox, opened off-Broadway in March 1997 at Primary Stages and transferred to Los Angeles later that year. Shining City opened on Broadway in 2006, directed by Robert Falls and was nominated for two Tony Awards, including Best Play. His film I Went Down won the Best Screenplay Award at the San Sebastian Festival. He is currently directing his first feature film and writing a screenplay for Dreamworks SKG.
Goodman Production History:
2008 Shining City
More about Shining City.
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"I still enjoy going to the theater, working with actors, and writing," he said. "I'm at my happiest when one of my plays is in rehearsal."
-Horton Foote, quoted in The Daily Gazette, Albany New York
Horton Foote was born in 1916 in Wharton, Texas, the town he would subsequently use as the setting for many of his plays, under the fictional name of Harrison. Mr. Foote's realistic portrayal of locales and characters of southeastern Texas has been his signature over five decades of writing for the stage, television and film. His first play, Wharton Dance, was produced in New York in 1941 and was followed by Texas Town (1942), Only the Heart (1944), Celebration (1948), The Chase (1952) and The Traveling Lady (1954). He wrote The Trip to Bountiful for NBC television in 1953 and adapted it for Broadway later that year. He achieved prominence writing for television and film during the 1950s and 1960s for such works as The Dancers (1954), A Young Lady of Property (1956), Flight (1957), Storm Fear (1955) and Baby, The Rain Must Fall (1964). Mr. Foote has won two Academy Awards, the first for his screen adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and the second for his original screenplay, Tender Mercies (1983). Other film work includes Tomorrow (1972), the movie version of The Trip to Bountiful, nominated for an Academy Award (1985), Convicts (1989) and Lily Dale (1996). In recent years, Mr. Foote has returned to concentrating on theater; among the many plays which have earned him acclaim have been The Roads to Home (1982), 1918 (1987), Lily Dale (1988), The Widow Claire (1988), Dividing the Estate (1989), The Last of the Thorntons (2001), The Carpetbagger's Children and Getting Frankie Married…and Afterward (both 2002). The Young Man From Atlanta won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize, following its premiere at the 65-seat Signature Theatre Company off-Broadway, as part of a season devoted entirely to Foote works. In December 2000, President Clinton awarded Mr. Foote the National Medal of Arts. Mr. Foote has four children and continues to reside primarily in Wharton, Texas.
Goodman Production History:
2008 The Trip to Bountiful
2008 Talking Pictures
2008 Blind Date
2008 The Actor
1997 The Young Man from Atlanta
More about The Trip to Bountiful.
More about The Horton Foote Festival in the Owen Theatre.
Ifa Bayeza
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"I'm thrilled to have this distinctive new voice bring an important moment in history to our stage."
-Robert Falls, Goodman Artistic Director.
Ifa Bayeza is an award-winning playwright, producer and conceptual theater artist. Her works for the stage include Amistad Voices, Club Harlem and Homer G & the Rhapsodies, for which she received a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays fellowship. Bayeza is co-founder of DBA Studios, doing business artistically, creating innovative theater-based work to encourage dialogue among races, cultures and people. The company's premiere production, Bayeza's Hip-Hop musical Kid Zero, with music by Harvey Mason, has been seen by over 12,000 public school students in Chicago, St. Louis and New York. (for more: seedba-studios.com) Bayeza served as the original dramaturg and set designer for her sister Ntozake Shange's landmark production of for colored girls who considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, directed by Oz Scott at New Federal Theater and The Public Theater. She and Shange have joined forces again, collaborating on a new novel, Some Sing, Some Cry, which will be published by St. Martin's Press. Bayeza is also delighted to be renewing her collaboration with Mr. Scott. Awards include two fellowships to the Tuck School Minority Business Executive Program (MBEP) and the 2003 Arna Bontemps Centennial Writer's Fellowship. A graduate of Harvard University, Bayeza is a board member of the SonEdna Literary Foundation, founded by Morgan Freeman and his wife Myrna Colley-Lee, and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. She lives in Chicago.
Goodman Production History:
2008 The Ballad of Emmett Till
2007 Till, Part of the New Stages Series
More about The Ballad of Emmett Till.
Brett Neveu
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"Brett is a writer that I've wanted to bring to the Goodman for a long time. I am thrilled to produce the world premiere of Gas For Less, a project on which Brett and his director Dexter Bullard have a long shared collaboration."
-Robert Falls, Goodman Artistic Director.
Brett Neveu's plays have been produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, A Red Orchid Theatre, Strawdog Theatre, TimeLine Theatre Company, American Theatre Company, Spring Theatreworks, Aardvark Theatre and 29th Street Rep. He is the recipient of Goodman Theatre's 2004 Ofner Prize for New Work and the 2005 Emerging Artist Award from The League of Chicago Theatres and has developed plays with The New Group, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Victory Gardens, The 42nd Street Workshop, The Marin Theatre, and is a resident-alum with Chicago Dramatists. He is also an ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theatre and has been commissioned by The Royal Court Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club (Sloan Commission), Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, TimeLine Theatre Company, Writers' Theatre and Strawdog Theatre. Neveu has taught writing at Northwestern University, DePaul University and Second City Training Center.
Goodman Production History:
2008 Gas For Less
2007 Gas For Less, Part of the New Stages Series
2004 Ofner Prize for New Work
More about Gas For Less.
