New Works Initiative

The New Works Initiative (NWI) is an Artist-in-Residence program and developmental platform in the Department of Theatre and Dance in Montclair State University’s College of the Arts. NWI’s mission is to bring together established and emerging playwrights, composers, choreographers, theatre-makers, and professional directors with Montclair State University theatre students to explore adventurous theatrical works.

The New Works Initiative is made possible through the generous support of Bob and Holly Gregory.

ANNOUNCING THE NEW WORKS INITIATIVE PREMIERE OF THE NAMES WE GAVE HIM

Wednesday, December 8 @ 7:30 pm | Thursday, December 9 @ 7:30 pm
Friday, December 10 @ 7:30 pm l Saturday, December 11 @ 2:00 pm
Box Office: 973-655-5112 or peakperfs.org

The Theatre and Dance family dedicates this production to a great artist and a noble man, Peter Foley (1967-2021). We celebrate his life, his work, his friendship, and the extraordinary gift he has given us in this remarkable score.

Ellen McLaughlin, Book & Lyrics | Peter Foley, Composer | Lisa Rothe, Director

The Names We Gave Him: Loosely based on a true story, this is a musical about an amnesiac veteran of the First World War, the doctor who treated him, and the many women who, in denial of their grief, claimed him as their lost beloved. The piece explores the agony of war for both the soldiers and the families they leave behind, the distorting power of loss and the insistence of love. What is a country’s identity in the aftermath of such devastation? What is a self without memory?

Ellen McLaughlin has worked extensively in regional, international and New York theater, both as an actor and as a playwright. Plays and operas include, Tongue of a Bird, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Trojan Women, Infinity’s House, Helen, Oedipus, The Persians, Penelope, Ajax in Iraq, Pericles, Septimus and Clarissa, Blood Moon, and The Oresteia.  Producers include The Public Theater, National Actors’ Theater, Classic Stage Co., New York Theater Workshop, The Guthrie, The Intiman, The Mark Taper Forum, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Actors’ Theater of Louisville, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Theatre, DC, Prototype, and The Almeida Theater in London. Acting work includes originating the part of the Angel in Angels in America, playing the role in workshops and regional productions through its original Broadway run.

She is the recipient of the Writer’s Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund as well as other honors, including the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, The Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, and grants from the NEA. She has taught in several programs, including Yale School of Drama, Princeton and Bread Loaf School of English. She has taught playwriting at Barnard College since 1995.

Peter Foley’s theater work includes music and lyrics for The Hidden Sky, music for “To Sing” in Songs From an Unmade Bed, scores and songs for several plays including Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare Festival of New Jersey, and several musicals in development, including The Names We Gave Him. He received the Richard Rodgers Award, Stephen Sondheim Award, Jonathan Larson Foundation Award and an NEA grant for The Hidden Sky, and The Names We Gave Him was a Richard Rodgers Award finalist. As lyricist, he created the English translation for the published edition of Kurt Weill’s Zaubernacht. He has received commissions from the Public Theater and Signature Theatre (VA), and his songs have been performed at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook, the New York Festival of Song, NYC’s Symphony Space and many other venues.

He served as Music Assistant on Sting’s The Last Ship, and as Associate Music Director for the recent workshop of Elvis Costello’s A Face in the Crowd. He also composed music for seven seasons of the Emmy-nominated PBS series, Art21.

Lisa Rothe is a NYC-based freelance theater director, coach and educator. She was nominated for SDC’s Joe A. Callaway Award for Direction for Hold These Truths by Jeanne Sakata, starring Joel De La Fuente. This production has toured the country and won Theatre Bay Area Awards for Outstanding Direction, Performer and Production.

Recent directing work has been seen at The Guthrie Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theater, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Irish Repertory Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Theatreworks/ Silicon Valley (nominated for 8 Bay Area Critics Circle Awards), Two River Theater, People’s Light and Playmakers Repertory Theatre. Most recent productions: Steel Magnolias at the Guthrie Theatre; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Fun Home at Kansas City Repertory Theatre.Lisa is the Director of New Works at Kansas City Repertory Theatre, co-Artistic Director of The Actor’s Center in NYC, a recent co-President of the League of Professional Theatre Women, a Usual Suspect with New York Theatre Workshop, member of the National Theater Conference, an Artistic Affiliate and former Audrey Fellow with New Georges, and a Drama Leagueand Fox Fellow alum. She was also the Director of Global Exchange at The Lark for over five years, providing expanded opportunities for playwrights, aimed at advancing new work to production, both nationally and globally.  www.lisarothe.com

2022-23 NWI Submission Announcement:

2022/2023 NWI Artist-in-Residence: Seeking a playwright, theatre maker/deviser, composer/ lyricist or choreographer for a new full-length work in progress that has been partially developed but not yet fully produced. Potential commissions will also be considered. Artistic collaborators may apply as a team. NWI is particularly seeking stories and voices from under-represented communities in the theatre.

Fall 2022 Developmental Workshop culminating in a staged reading in Montclair, New Jersey (two to four-week rehearsal period).

Spring 2023 Full Production in the main stage department season, venue and budget appropriate for the demands of the piece (minimum four-week rehearsal period).

Venues include:

Alexander Kasser Theatre, a state of the art 500-seat proscenium theatre
Memorial Auditorium, a 988-seat proscenium theatre

Howard Fox Theatre, a flexible black box
Performance Studio Theatre with flexible seating for immersive productions

Artist(s) fee to be determined by the scope of the project.

Criteria:

Preferable minimum of 10 performers
Age appropriate roles for undergraduate actors
Innovative form and content

Submissions of Complete or In-progress Works:

Please submit proposal, artist’s statement, resume and/or CV, project description, cast breakdown, and a sample of the work (video, text, or other format). All submissions will be curated by the NWI Committee.

Submissions for Commissioned Works:

Please submit an artist’s statement, resume and/or CV, detailed project concept and description for the proposed work including projected cast size, and a representative complete work (text or video). Evidence of other produced work or work in development appreciated but not required.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: April 1, 2022

Send submissions to msu.nwi@gmail.com

2019 – 20 New Works Initiative

How to Mourn the Dead: A Tragedy in Flux
by Eric Marlin
Directed by Ilana Khanin

Two bros watch the dissident Antigone buried alive on national television, captivated by her martyrdom. A chorus of women, Antigones throughout the ages, observe, debate, and dispense with the men, to tell their own stories. A large-scale, explosively theatrical investigation of the allure of spectacle, the dangers of myth making, and the ease with which suffering becomes co-opted for personal profit.

NEW WORKS INITIATIVE 2019 – 20 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

Eric Marlin

Eric Marlin was featured in the January 2020 issue of American Theatre magazine’s Role Call: People to Watch by Amelia Merrill

As a part of his residency with Montclair State University’s New Works Initiative, he’ll present his play How to Mourn the Dead: A Tragedy (in flux) at Montclair February 20-23, with direction by Ilana Khanin.

While the forms of his work vary, Marlon says he can trace the “core concerns“ of his writing to a quote from Anne Carson, a translator of Greek tragedians: “Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.” Marlon says that this combination of “deep thinking and deep feeling” is the source of his new work, adding that he is “endlessly inspired by the new generation of writers who fearlessly explore their own rage and grief.

Marlin has been produced and developed by the Ars Nova ANT Fest, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Dixon Place, Samuel French, HOT! Festival, Play Date @ Pete’s, Exquisite Corpse Company, PTP/NYC, Tennessee Williams Festival, Wildclaw Theatre, Metro Arts Initiative, Buffalo United Artists, and Left Coast Theatre. Winner of the Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival and shortlisted for the Berliner Festspiele Stuckemarkt. Finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and SPACE at Ryder Farm. Co-founder of the Healthy Oyster Collective, with whom he has created three original works.

He has worked as a stage manager and producer for the Bushwick Starr, New Georges, the Women’s Project, Red Bull Theatre, CTown, PTP/NYC, the Public Theater, the New Ohio Ice Factory Festival, & PRELUDE. MFA: Iowa Playwrights Workshop. BA: Bennington College. www.ericmarlin.com

Ilana Khanin

Ilana Khanin is a New York based director. Directing: Ars Nova ANT Fest, HERE, Theaterlab, Exquisite Corpse Company/ Governors Island, Joust Theater Company, Samuel French, Center at West Park, Primary Stages, The Brick, The Tank, Dixon Place, Atlantic Stage 2, among others. She has worked as an associate for Lila Neugebauer, Lee Sunday Evans, Annie-B Parson.

She has worked on productions at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Old Vic (London), Deutsches Theater (Berlin), Canadian Stage (Toronto), Carolina Performing Arts, Playmakers Rep, La MaMa, WP Theater, Bushwick Starr, Clubbed Thumb, New York City Players, and Big Dance Theater. M.A. in Performance Studies and B.F.A. in Directing from NYU. www.ilanakhanin.com

2019 – 20 NWI INCUBATOR PROJECT

GREY LADY
by Kate Mulley
Directed by Dara Malina

Grey Lady is, simply told, a love story and a story about a woman discovering her vocation. When Nantucket native Cady Hood learns that her husband has died on the battlefield in Antietam she disguises herself as a man to fight with the Massachusetts 20th Regiment. There she meets two men who change the course of the war for her. One, Ralph Lewis, awakens a deep sexual longing that she has never experienced before. The other, Nathan Hayward, teaches her how to be a nurse and eventually possibly even a surgeon. As the Civil War rages on, the consequences of Cady’s decision to go to war deepen and her safety and her secret are threatened.

Kate Mulley

Kate Mulley is a playwright, librettist/lyricist, producer, dramaturg and founding member of Vox Theater. Her plays and musicals have been developed and performed on four continents at theaters including Hayes Theatre Company, Luna Stage, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, Dixon Place, the Flea, Theatre503 and the Soho Theatre. Kate has been an Artist-in-Residence at Arteles Creative Center, a Playwriting Fellow at Shanghai Theatre Academy, and a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Theater and History, received an MA in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College, London, and an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University. She currently lives in New York.
Dara Malina

Dara Malina is a director of theatre, performance, opera and film. She devises radical performance experiments, develops new plays, directs opera films, and reinvents classic works. Recent projects: INFINITE MEAT (New Georges Jam/Dixon Place); Sophie Treadwell’s MACHINAL (Pace University); THE CYMBELINE PROJECT (Rutgers University). In 2019, she developed an opera adaptation of Clarice Lispector’s THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H. with composer Lacy Rose under the mentorship of Mabou Mines Resident Artist Program. She has collaborated with playwrights at Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Tank, Dixon Place, JACK, The Flea, Chez Bushwick, New Ohio, and Rattlestick. Next, she is directing MEASURE FOR MEASURE with LIU-Post. MFA Theatre Directing, Columbia University. Member: New Georges Jam, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Commitment Experiment Performance Collective. daramalina.com

2020-21 NWI Submission Announcement:

2020/2021 NWI Artist-in-Residence: Seeking a playwright, theatre maker/deviser, composer/ lyricist or choreographer for a new full-length work in progress that has been partially developed but not yet fully produced. Potential commissions will also be considered. Artistic collaborators may apply as a team. NWI is particularly seeking stories and voices from under-represented communities in the theatre.

Fall 2020 Developmental Workshop culminating in a staged reading in Montclair, New Jersey (two to four-week rehearsal period).

Spring 2021 Full Production in the main stage department season, venue and budget appropriate for the demands of the piece (minimum four-week rehearsal period).