All You Can Eat!
Half Moon Theatre’s 5th Annual TEN MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL
Celebrates the Hudson Valley’s love affair with food at
The Culinary Institute of America, June 12-13, 2015
Half Moon Theatre will close its exciting inaugural season at The Culinary Institute of America with its fifth annual Ten Minute Play Festival. This year’s theme, ALL YOU CAN EAT, celebrates the new partnership between HMT and the CIA with ten 10-minute plays—all written by nationally recognized playwrights expressly for this festival—set in familiar local eateries or featuring food-related themes at hot spots around the Hudson Valley.
On this culinary adventure, you will journey to Mercato restaurant with a NYC couple for a special occasion; join Margo and Dean while they fight for their future together over a tiramisù at the CIA’s Ristorante Caterina de’ Medici; eavesdrop on a master chef and her assistant as they prepare a dish at an exclusive French bistro; sit in a Cold Spring gazebo with an odd couple; and ride with a mother and daughter as they careen down the Thruway towards Junior Chef summer camp at The CIA.
Half Moon Theatre’s company of professional actors and invited artists participate in this dynamic, sophisticated staged reading. The immediacy of a reading—at which the cast has not memorized the plays and is performed with minimal costumes and sets—lends a more sophisticated, Off-Broadway vibe to the evening. The event is also geared towards a more mature audience—with adult humor and situations.
Ten nationally recognized playwrights have all written their love letters to the Hudson Valley, creating a foodie smorgasbord of dramatic delights.
The 10 Minute Play Festival runs June 12-13, with performances at 8 p.m. on Friday, June 12 and 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 13. All performances are at the Marriott Pavilion at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY. Tickets are $25 and may be purchased online at halfmoontheatre.org or by calling 800-838-3006. Pre-
Bios:
ROB HANDEL (Playwright) is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and in the Civilians R&D Group. He heads the dramatic writing program at Carnegie Mellon University, serves on the board of the MacDowell Colony, and was a founding member of the playwrights’ collective 13P, which won four Obie Awards. His latest play, A Maze, has been produced by New York Stage and Film, Rorschach Theatre (D.C.), and Just Theater/Shotgun Players (Berkeley). His plays have been produced at Long Wharf, SPF, Target Margin, City Lights (San Jose), Curious Theatre (Denver), Theater Ninjas (Cleveland), Half Moon (Poughkeepsie), and 99 Stock (San Francisco). His opera libretti have been produced and developed by NYU School of Music, Opera on Tap at Barbès, North American New Opera Workshop, American Lyric Theatre, and Opera Theater of Pittsburgh. Residencies include The Royal Court Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, The O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Soho Rep, Portland Center Stage, Todd Mountain Theater Project, and a ‘pataphysics retreat. Honors include the Helen Merrill Award and the Whitfield Cook Award. Millicent Scowlworthy and Aphrodisiac are published by Samuel French. Rob studied at Williams College and with Paula Vogel at Brown University. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, poet Joy Katz, and their son.
ROB ACKERMAN (Playwright) is deeply grateful to David, Darrah, and Half Moon for requesting this play. His work includes Teach for America (2014, commissioned and produced by ACT in San Francisco); the book for the musical Volleygirls (2013, NYMF Award winner for Best Ensemble Performance and Best in Fest, music by Eli Bolin, lyrics by Sam Forman); Call Me Waldo (2012, The Working Theater, Off Broadway, and The Kitchen Theatre, Ithaca); Tabletop (2001, American Place Theater, Drama Desk Award Winner, Best Ensemble); Volleygirls (2009, American Conservatory Theater, commission and premiere); Icarus of Ohio (2008, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts); and Disconnect (2005, The Working Theater, Classic Stage Company). He’s currently working on Factory Girls, a new musical, with Sam Forman, Creighton Irons and Sean Mahoney. His short play, Duncan and Troy Visit a Petting Zoo, was produced by Core Artist Ensemble as part of Twisted Shorts and chosen by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold for Plays for Two, (2016, Vintage Books). Another short play, You Have Arrived, will be included in Craig Pospisil’s collection Outstanding Short Plays, Volume Two (2015, DPS). Rob’s full-length plays and monologues have been published by Dramatists Play Service, Smith and Kraus, and Playscripts, and nurtured at Yaddo, Flux, and Dorset Theatre Festival. For years, he’s worked as Prop Master for the SNL Film Unit. Rob was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, majored in theater and Spanish at Middlebury College, and earned an M.F.A. in stage directing at Northwestern University. Rob and his wife, author Carol Weston, live in Manhattan and he is a member of Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.
MIGDALIA CRUZ (Playwright) is an award-winning playwright, lyricist & librettist of more than 50 works including: Salt, Lucy Loves Me, Satyricoño 21, TWO ROBERTS: a Pirate-Blues Project, Fur, & Miriam’s Flowers, produced at BAM, CSC, Mabou Mines, National Theater of Greece/Athens, Old Red Lion/London, Houston Grand Opera, Ateneo Puertorriqueño, Teatro Vista, & Latino Chicago Theater Company (writer-in-residence from 1991 to 1998), among others. She has translated four plays through the Lark’s US/Mexico Word Exchange. She won the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright Award (NYCommunityTrust). Nurtured by Sundance, she is an alumna of New Dramatists, & was mentored by Maria Irene Fornés at INTAR. Migdalia was born & raised in the Bronx. Recently: El Grito Del Bronx at Brown University (RI), April 2014 & excerpted in an evening of International work produced by the Chaskis Theatre@the Cockpit in London, England, December 2014; facilitator for Rising Circle’s INKtank 2014, a program for emerging playwrights of color, Jan-May 2014; & she’s a member of the Lark’s “Meeting of the Minds” program through June 2015.
Margaret Namulyanga (Playwright) is originally from Uganda where she worked as a script writer for a Radio serial drama Rock Point 256. Her work has been presented at Vassar College Power House summer program, Brown University, ART Harvard, as part of the Women’s day festival in Amman, Jordan and the Women Playwrights International conference in Sweden. She is a Sundance Institute East Africa and Royal Court International program fellow.Plays include, Judas Iscariot gets Gold, Dead Good Men, He Is Here He Says and A Privileged Life of Cats. She lives in Poughkeepsie.
Darrah Cloud’s (Playwight) latest full-length play, Our Suburb, premiered at Theater J in Washington, DC in December 2013. Her play for teens, Joan The Girl Of Arc, premiered at Cincinnati Playhouse in January, 2014, then toured. Other plays produced in New York, Europe and across the U.S. include What’s Bugging Greg?, The Stick Wife, The Mud Angel, Dream House, Braille Garden and The Sirens. Her musicals, written with composer Kim D. Sherman, include Heartland, (Madison Repertory Theatre, The Majestic Theatre in Dallas, TheatreWorks Palo Alto) The Boxcar Children (Theatreworks USA), Honor Song For Crazy Horse (TheatreWorks Palo Alto) and the stage adaptation of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, which has received over 100 productions in the United States and was filmed starring Mary McDonnell for American Playhouse. She has won numerous awards, including the Macy’s Prize for Theatre for Young Audiences, an NEA and a Rockefeller. She has had over 10 movies-of-the-week produced on CBS and NBC, is a proud alum of the Iowa Writers Workshop and New Dramatists, and is the co-director of Half Moon Writers, the development wing of the Half Moon Theatre in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Jenny Lyn Bader’s (Playwright) Plays include Mona Lisa Speaks (Core Ensemble), which premiered at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and was presented at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in Palm Beach; Manhattan Casanova (Hudson Stage), winner of the Edith Oliver Award (O’Neill Center), In Flight (NAAA Festival Winner, London), and None of the Above (New Georges). One-acts include Miss America (NY International Fringe, “Best of Fringe” selection), Worldness (Humana Festival of New American Plays), and History of Communication (World’s Fair Play Festival, Queens Theatre—NY Times Critics’ Pick). Ten of her short plays are published in Smith & Kraus’ Best 10-Minute Plays series. She co-founded Theatre 167, where she serves as Director of Artistic Development; co-authored The Jackson Heights Trilogy, I Like to Be Here, and The Church of Why Not; and co-produced Pirira. Last season she received the Randall Wreghitt New Producer Endowment Award and was a featured playwright in NY Madness. A Harvard graduate, she belongs to the Dramatists Guild and LPTW. For more, see www.jennylynbader.com. Twitter: @JennyLynBader.
DAVID SIMPATICO (Playwright) has been presented at major theatres around the globe, including Lincoln Center, NYC Town Hall, Edinburgh Fringe, the Hammersmith Apollo (London), Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the New York Shakespeare Festival, the New York Theatre Workshop, English National Opera, the Boston Conservatory of Music and Franklin Furnace. Using the safety net of comedy to explore life-and-death issues, his work examines man’s struggle to claim his place in a chaotic universe.
Recent events include: Saudade: dreams and longing, a dance theatre piece commissioned by the Music Theatre Company in Highland Park, IL; Prom Queen, his one act chosen for the Sam French OOB ’14 Festival in NYC; a concert presentation of the full length opera commission, The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing (w/composer Justine Chen; American Lyric Theatre, NYC, Spring ‘13); The Waiting Room (Half Moon Theatre’s Ten Minute Play Festival, Poughkeepsie, Spring ‘13); and Diesal Jeans, one act play with TimeWave Festival, June ‘13 (performed and live streamed between London, NYC and Los Angeles). David had a workshop of his play Bad Blood, at the Blank Theatre in Los Angeles, and has just developed a new play, Waiting for the Ball to Drop, at the Lark Theatre, NYC.
David’s most recent work includes the musical monodrama, Whida Peru and its companion piece, Virtuality Sal, both with composer Josh Schmidt (The Adding Machine). He was commissioned to adapt both High School Musical 1 and 2 for the Disney national stage tour and international productions; and wrote the Jonathan Larson award-winning The Screams of Kitty Genovese, with a sung-thru rock-opera score by Will Todd. He is currently working on Cruel Shoes, a backstage musical comedy murder mystery with a killer score by Ross Patterson. David also wrote the libretto for Pulitzer Prize-winner Aaron J. Kernis’ millennium symphony, Garden Of Light, which received its world premiere with the NY Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, conducted by Kurt Masur, in the Fall of 1999
Along with playwright Darrah Cloud, David runs the Half Moon Theatre Writers’ Group in Poughkeepsie, NY, and curates the Half Moon Howl, a monthly reading series for local writers. David also writes, directs, edits and stars in Zombie Hideaway, a webisodic series, as well as Rev. Jimmy’s Lake of Fire, both of which are featured on his new Youtube channel, Noise Ball. He currently lives in Rhinebeck NY with his husband and muse, Robert Strickstein, and wonder-dog, Elmo.
LISA KIMBALL (Playwright) is thrilled to be part of Half Moon Theatre’s Ten Minute Play Festival at the CIA. Her plays, Warm Milk Mamas and Miss Pudding Doesn’t Work Here Anymore, premiered in Spring Shorts, with Love Creek Productions. Alpha Jaws was part of the Midtown International Theater Festival in NYC, and The Mistletoe Martyrs and the Hostage Situation, was a finalist in the Tuscon New Playwrights Competition. Most recently, Need Not Apply was part of The Hudson Valley playwrights reading. She is currently work-shopping her full length, If I Die.
Mark Burns is a playwright and screenwriter whose credits include the screenplays for Married to the Mob and She-Devil. His most recent plays include: Club, a dark comedy about golf, violence, and the American Dream…though it’s not so much about golf; and, Traveler Under Suspicion, a one-act Kafka-ish comedy about airport security, interrogation methods, and the importance of one’s middle name. A member of the Half MoonTheatre’s Writer’s Group, this is his third HMT Ten Minute Play Festival. He has lived in the Hudson Valley for over 20 years.
KATE MOIRA RYAN’s (Playwright) most recent play is The Mysteries, directed by Ed Iskander at The Flea. The Judy Show written with and for Judy Gold at the Geffen Playhouse (dir Amanda Charlton), previously produced at DR2, Theatre J, Williamstown. Other plays include: The Beebo Brinker Chronicles based on the pulp novels by Ann Bannon and written with Linda S. Chapman (Hourglass / 37 Arts produced by Harriet Leve, Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner; GLAAD Media Award directed by Leigh Silverman); 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother (Ars Nova, St. Luke’s Theater) written with and for Judy Gold (GLAAD Media Award directed by Karen Kohlhaas.) The book version of 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother (Hyperion) was nominated for a Quill Award. OTMA (Atlantic Theater); Cavedweller (New York Theater Workshop directed by Michael Grief).
