Tag Archives: play

New York Premiere of Dipika Guha’s Play – Mechanics of Love – at the Paradise Factory (September 8 – 24, 2016)

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DipikaGuha-MechanicsofLoveThe Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is proud to announce the New York premiere of Mechanics of Love, a new play by the talented playwright Dipika Guha, a CWW affiliate and dear friend.  Mechanics of Love, which is produced by To-By-Four Productions, a female-driven theatre and film production company dedicated to making work by women, for everyone, and directed by Elena Araoz, will play at the Paradise Factory in New York City from September 8 – 24, 2016.

In the play, a man who forgets everything falls in love with a ballerina who forgets nothing. That is, until she falls in love with him. And his wife. And the mechanic. This rapidly moving, madcap comedy explores how we love, who we choose, and the cost of making sense of it all.  On Mechanics of Love, Mina Morita writes:

“Written with a finely tuned and absurd lilt, wry poetry, and unnerving humor, her plays break open character stereotypes piece by piece to reveal the shared and vulnerable underbelly of our humanity. She creates worlds that exist beyond the traditional psychological realism of most American theatre, and employs the poetry of unexpected pairings and motives to capture a more truthful human experience.  Love is that intangible force that has assured the growth of humankind and our survival, driven the creation of entire industries, and caused artists to go mad trying to capture its essence. In Mechanics of Love, Guha unveils ‘a mythical European city, pressed up against a communist state’ that has recently fallen. The citizens are suddenly awakened to the possibility of being anyone, or falling in love with anyone… and everyone! It is a moment when cultural norms are being rewritten.”

Dipika Guha’s Mechanics of Love had its world premiere at the Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco, CA in February 2016.  The cast of this mad-cap love dramedy includes actors Victoria Frings, Anastasia Olowin, Eric Miler, and Sathya Sridharan.  Performances will be held at the Paradise Factory (64 E 4th St, New York, New York 10003) and will take place on Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30pm and Friday and Saturday at 8pm with matinees on Saturday, September 17 & 24 and Sunday, September 11 & 18 at 2pm, and an opening night performance on Monday, September 12 at 7:30pm. Tickets are available online at www.tobyforproductions.com or by calling 1-800-838-3006.

DipikaGuhaDipika Guha was born in Calcutta and raised in India, Russia and the United Kingdom. She is the inaugural recipient of the Shakespeare’s Sister Playwriting Fellowship with The Lark Playwrights Development Center, A Room of Her Own and Hedgebrook. Her plays include I ENTER the VALLEY (Upcoming; Theatreworks New Play Festival, Finalist Ruby Prize ’15); THE ART of GAMAN (KILROY LIST 2016, Upcoming: Berkeley Rep Ground Floor), MECHANICS of LOVE (Crowded Fire Theatre) and UNRELIABLE(developed at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre). She is currently under commission from South Coast Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Playwrights Horizons Theatre School.

Her work has been developed at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Atlantic Theatre Company, the Drama League, Cutting Ball Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New Georges, Roundabout Underground, Shotgun Players, Red Bull Theatre, Leviathan Theatre, Naked Angels, The Cherry Lane Theatre, One Coast Collaboration, The Sam French OOB Festival, The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway and the Tobacco Factory (UK) amongst others. She’s been awarded residencies at the Hermitage Artist Residency, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, SPACE at Ryder Farm, McCarter Theatre’s Sallie B.Goodman Residency, Ucross Artists Residency and the Rasmuson Foundation in Sitka, Alaska. She’s an alumnus of Ars Nova Playgroup, the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program, Soho Rep W/D Lab, the Women’s Project Lab & the Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab.

Dipika received her BA in English Literature from University College London, was a Frank Knox Fellow at Harvard University and received her MFA in Playwriting at the Yale School of Drama under Paula Vogel. She is currently a Visiting Artist at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School and a Resident Playwright at The Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco. Despite a long run in the United States she still drinks tea. 

CWW Instructor Jade Sylvan’s “Spider Cult: The Musical” debuts at the Oberon Theatre in Cambridge, MA on June 24!

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SPIDEROBERON

Spider Cult: The Musical, an original apocalyptic lesbian, fringe, sci-fi horror, burlesque musical, will have its debut at the American Repertory Theatre in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA on June 24th, with an additional showing on June 26th. Written and produced by CWW instructor and playwright Jade Sylvan, Spider Cult is a spin-off from a previous burlesque show called Revenge of the Robot Battle Nuns by the Boston burlesque group Slaughterhouse Sweethearts. It follows Scout, a temptress from Battle Nuns who led the heroes astray into her web of lust, and shows how she became such an evil villainess. This story stars some of Boston’s most known burlesque performers, including Fem Bones, Jane Doe, and Bella Gunz.

Spider Cult will run for four shows on June 24th (at 6:30 pm and 10 pm) and June 26th (at 5:30 pm and 8 pm) at the Oberon Theatre.  For more information on the show and how to purchase tickets, please visit check out more information here.  The musical was successfully funded via Kickstarter.  And here’s an NSFW preview of the show below:

“HOME/SICK” – a play by CWW Instructor Stephen Aubrey & the Assembly debuts in Los Angeles tonight!

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Cambridge Writers’ Workshop instructor & playwright, Stephen Aubrey, has written and produced a play together with The Assembly Theatre called “HOME/SICK.”  “HOME/SICK will debut tonight in Los Angeles, and will run from June 9 – July 3, 2016 at the Odyssey Theatre.  In the New York Times, Catherine Rampell has praised “HOME/SICK,” a play about the Weather Underground, for its “cutting-edge young theater collective… By the end we have witnessed a sort of sociological big bang, when this tight, angry ball of political energy suddenly bursts and disbands irreparably.”

“HOME/SICK” is the story of a handful of political activists and leaders from the 1960s student movement who seized control of Students for a Democratic Society in protest to the Vietnam War and the government’s repression of those seeking equality domestically. In doing so, these activists reshaped the society in the name of overthrowing the United States government. Believing violence to be the only means to transform American politics and society, these passionate idealists accelerated a movement to a revolutionary fervor, but left a country behind.  Tickets for the play are available now at the Odyessey Theatre in Los Angeles.

Praise for “HOME/SICK”:

“An intelligent and dynamic package…The ensemble’s connection with one another is the truest homage they could offer to the memory of the collective they have clearly, though reservedly, come to admire.”  – Jason Fitzgerald, Backstage

“Impressively researched and clear-eyed, home/sick shows us the Underground’s internal contradictions, and we see Bolshevik passion lapsing into self-delusion and then flaring up again, until we are unsure what to admire and what to deplore.”  – Helen Shaw, Time Out New York

“This is a group of brilliant artists who will, without question, make their mark in the world of theater for a long time to come.”  – Hillary Bettis, OffOffOnline

Digital Americana: The Missing Atomic Scientist

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tumblr_mqn6rotnG41ris3y8o1_500The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and Armchair/Shotgun, an excellent literary magazine from New York, were recently featured in the Summer 2013 “Consume” issue of Digital Americana for their radio-play performance of “Roy Rogers: The Missing Atomic Scientist”:

This double issue of includes much more content than 99¢ should allow—moving from the intimacy of boiling bones to a mother’s honey, to a series of visual poems from the prolifically avant-garde Richard Kostelanetz, and much more.  Included in this is also the second installment of our author self-interview series (made possible by the lovely and gracious novelist, Ashley Warlick), as a well as a Consumed series of original illustrations from contemporary Seattle artist, Levi Hastings. And we’re also proud to have published a new piece of multimedia: the audio to a full-length radio drama featuring American icon, Roy Rogers (which was performed brilliantly by a full ensemble cast).  We also continue our investigation into the convergence of literature and media with an interview with the winner of the 2013 Transmedia Project of the Year. And after seeing what this type of multimedia future holds, we can assure you that there will definitely be no shortage of things to consume or create—only the further blurring of the lines that separate the things we consume from the things that consume us.  Radio Drama Credits: Gregory Crosby, John Cusick, Cayla Buettner, Diana Norma Szokolyai, Jonah Kruvant, Max March Steinman, J.E. Reich, Dennis Shafer, Eck Sierra, Jake Rudin, Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, Armchair/Shotgun

http://thedigitalamericana.com/issues/index.html