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Playwrights’ Center and Network Of Ensemble Theaters partner to support new work
$4,000 grant awarded to Cory Hinkle and Theatre Novi Most to collaboratively create Brecht’s Brain
(Minneapolis, MN—February 2, 2012)—The Playwrights’ Center and the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET) today announced that they will partner to support the creation and development of Brecht’s Brain, a new play with music. Playwrights’ Center Core Writer Cory Hinkle and NET member Theatre Novi Most will receive a $4,000 grant to collaboratively create and develop the new play, with a workshop presentation planned for the spring of 2013. Novi Most founder and co-Artistic Director Lisa Channer will direct the development and performance of the work.
The grant is part of an ongoing effort by the Playwrights’ Center and NET to build bridges between traditional playwriting and ensemble-generated theater, in which artists from multiple disciplines create a theatrical experience together. The organizations previously supported a successful collaboration between playwright Andy Bragen and Santa Fe’s acclaimed Theatre Grottesco in 2011.
"Our partnership with NET arose out of a mutual desire for playwrights to participate more fully in a collaborative theatermaking process, contributing their unique sense of structure and uniformity of voice while simultaneously expanding their own approach to writing new plays,” said Jeremy B. Cohen, Producing Artistic Director of the Playwrights’ Center.
Mark Valdez, Executive Director of the Network of Ensemble Theaters, added, “Both NET and the Playwright’s Center are committed to supporting artists. By fostering collaborations between some of nation’s most exciting playwrights and ensembles, we fulfill a collective mission to nurture new work.”
A new look at a pivotal moment in history
Brecht’s Brain will focus on Bertolt Brecht’s dramatic 1947 testimony before the House Un-American Affairs Committee, weaving together excerpts from hearing transcripts and Brecht’s writings with ensemble-generated text and original music by Minneapolis artist Annie Enneking.
The play will be developed in the rigorous creative method perfected by Theatre Novi Most, in which the company, led by the director, contributes ideas and material to form productions that bridge disparate ideas, languages, cultures and ideologies. The company’s work often combines rich visuals with an intense physicality informed by biomechanics, the athletic acting method pioneered by Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold. Most recently, Novi Most’s work was on display in The Oldest Story in the World, a retelling of the epic of Gilgamesh that won widespread raves.
In creating and developing Brecht’s Brain, Novi Most will work in tandem with Hinkle, a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer and two-time Jerome Fellow whose Little Eyes was recently produced at the Guthrie Theater by Workhaus Collective. Hinkle’s past collaborative work includes Fissures (lost and found), a piece co-commissioned by the Playwrights’ Center that premiered at the 2010 Humana Festival.
“When I approached Jeremy Cohen about this new project idea, he suggested Cory might be a good fit, and he was absolutely right,” said Channer. “We are thrilled to have the resources we need to sustain and build on this relationship.”
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The Network of Ensemble Theaters
A national coalition of ensembles created by and for artists, the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET) exists to propel ensemble theater practice to the forefront of American culture and society. NET links a diverse array of ensembles and practitioners to one another and the performing arts field, encouraging collaborations and knowledge building and dissemination. NET is committed to the advancement of the ensemble form and strives to bring about change in the world beyond ourselves through the transformative power of collaborative theater.
The Playwrights’ Center
One of the nation’s most generous and well-respected theater organizations, the Playwrights’ Center focuses on both supporting playwrights and promoting new plays to production at theaters across the country. The Center has helped launch the careers of numerous nationally recognized artists, notably August Wilson, Lee Blessing, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jordan Harrison, Carlyle Brown, Craig Lucas, Jeffrey Hatcher, Melanie Marnich, and Kira Obolensky. Work developed through Center programs has been seen nationwide on such stages as the Yale Rep, Woolly Mammoth, Guthrie, Goodman, and many others.
Cory Hinkle
Cory Hinkle’s plays include Little Eyes, SadGrrl13, Phosphorescence, Cipher and The Killing of Michael X. He is a co-creator of Fissures (lost and found), which was co-commissioned by Actor’s Theater of Louisville and the Playwrights’ Center and premiered at the 2010 Humana Festival. Cory is a recipient of a MAP Fund Grant and two Jerome fellowships through the Playwrights’ Center where he is a Core Member. His play Little Eyes was produced in a Workhaus Collective production at the Guthrie Theater and other plays have been produced or developed at the Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Williamstown Theater Festival, SPF Summer Play Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, Illusion Theater, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Salvage Vanguard, P73 Productions, Hangar Theater, and Red Eye Collective, among others. He has been commissioned twice by the Guthrie to write a play for their graduating class of B.F.A. students (Tiny Disasters and Until We See Three of Everything). He is a former MacDowell Colony fellow, a former resident at the Hermitage Artists Retreat and the Tofte Lake Center, a recipient of a Jerome Travel and Study Grant and a member playwright of the Workhaus Collective. His work is published by Heinemann, Playscripts Inc. and Dramatic Publishing. He earned his M.F.A. in Playwriting from Brown University.
Theatre Novi Most
Theatre Novi Most (Russian for “Theatre of a New Bridge”) has a mission to “combine the best of Russian and American theatre in order to conjure and explore new theatrical languages, across artistic and linguistic barriers.” Productions to date include works by Gogol, Arrabel, Mrozeck and Brecht. They have been supported by the Fox Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Artslink, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
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