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NEW PLAYS with GINGOLD!

Speakers’ Corner 2020-21 Writers

This season, under the guidance of GTG’s Associate Director Ilana Becker, Speakers’ Corner will meet November 2020 through June 2021.

Named after the corner of London’s Hyde Park where Shaw and other political speakers have delivered speeches since 1855, GTG’s Speakers’ Corner brings together six to ten writers who spend the year exploring a specific Shaw play and writing new work in response to that text.

Speakers’ Corner, located at Hyde Park in London, was designated as an official safe place where anyone could offer their own beliefs, opinions, and treatises with no fear of arrest. Along with many of his time, Shaw regularly used this location as an opportunity to openly communicate with the general public who may not have been able to afford going to the theatre.

Member writers read and discuss a specific play by George Bernard Shaw before responding to Shaw’s work through targeted writing prompts. The writers’ new works needn’t be commentaries on Shaw or adaptations of Shaw’s work, but original works inspired by the ideas sparked by reading and discussing the initial Shaw play as a cohort. Speakers’ Corner writers then spend the remainder of the year developing these ideas into plays to be developed through readings and workshop labs.

At monthly and bi-monthly meetings, writers share their work and receive constructive feedback from one another and from members of GTG’s artistic staff. The goal, ultimately, is to create play that will be fully produced as part of the GTG future seasons.

Some works developed through Speakers’ Corner will be nurtured through a multi-year developmental process aimed at bringing Speakers’ Corner plays to full production.

The following plays have been developed and workshopped through Speakers’ Corner:

• The Unbearable Lightness of Christopher Cross by Hank Kim
• Album of the Year, or Kathleen Lempit in Hell by James Presson
• Mamó by Emily Daly
• La Greña by Julissa Evette Contreras
• Something in the Balete Treeby Ren Dara Santiago
• Howl From Up High by Mallory Jane Weiss
• Untitled by  Nikhil Mahapatra

If you have questions about Speakers’ Corner, please email speakers@gingoldgroup.org 

Kate Douglas (she/her) is a writer, composer and performer. Recent work includes The Ninth Hour, her operetta with Shayfer James at The Met Cloisters (the first performance of its kind in the Fuentidueña Chapel), her immersive play Extinct (produced with support from a LMCC Engagement Grant) and her audio experience Dandelion Story, which received an Honorable Mention from SPACE on Ryder Farm’s CSArt Program. Her work has been developed at The Orchard Project, New Victory Theater, The Civilians R&D Group, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Rhinebeck Musicals and the Writer’s Colony at Goodspeed. She is a Dramatists Guild Fellow and a current member of The Orchard Project Greenhouse. As a complement to her artistic practice, she is a student of herbalism, horticulture and biodynamic craniosacral therapy. www.kate-douglas.com

Aeneas Sagar Hemphill (he/him) is an Indian-American playwright and screenwriter based in NYC and DC. Weaving through many genres, his work builds new worlds to illuminate our own, investigating the ghosts that haunt our lives and communities with passion, pathos, and humor. He was a 2019 Resident Artist with Monson Arts Center and 2017-2018 Playlab fellow at Pipeline Theatre, as well as semi-finalist for the 2019 Princess Grace Award, semi-finalist for the 2019 Mabou Mines Resident Artist Program, and finalist for the 2017 Many Voices Fellowship. His plays include: Black Hollow (Argo Collective, Dreamscape Theatre), The Troll King (Pipeline), Childhood Songs (Monson Arts), The Republic of Janet & Arthur (Amios), The Red Balloon (Noor Theatre), A Stitch Here or There (DarkHorse Dramatists, Slingshot Theatre), A Horse and a Housecat (Slingshot Theatre). MFA Playwriting, Columbia University.

Divya Mangwani (she/her) is a writer and theatre artist from Pune, India, now based in New York. She examines the absurdities of the social, political and mythical. Divya was the founder and Artistic Director of Moonbeam Factory Theatre, where she wrote, directed and produced plays that were staged in India, Singapore and Glasgow. In New York, she has developed work with UNICEF, Soho Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, The Flea, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Mabou Mines, Hypokrit Theatre, Project Y, Pipeline Theatre, Rising Sun, LMCC and Governors Island. Selected work: Elements of Change (UN Climate Change Week), Yes, Uncle (finalist, Leah Ryan Prize 2018), Rise of the River (semi-finalist Playwrights Realm 2019), and One, Two, Three (winner of best script, director, play and audience vote, Short+Sweet Festival). Divya was a NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellow, Hypokrit Theatre Tamasha playwright, Playlab fellow at Pipeline Theatre and is currently in the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab.

Seth McNeill (he/him) is a New York City based playwright and theatre artist. His plays include Bastard (Dixon Place, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Up Theater Company), we’re all athletes (Amios First Draughts, Samuel French OOB Festival), and Natchetoches (Fresh Ground Pepper, Hambidge Center, JookMS). Other plays have been presented or developed with Fresh Ground Pepper, Amios NYC, Exquisite Corpse, The Barrow Group, Primary Stages, TinyRhino, The Secret Theatre, and Rule of 7×7, and he has been a semifinalist for the Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries Prize and Primary Stages ESPA Drills. As a script reader and dramaturg he has worked with Theatre for a New Audience, the American Shakespeare Center, the Hambidge Center, and The Farm Theater, and he is a two-time recipient of the Vera Mowry Roberts Fellowship. Member of the Dramatists Guild. Education: Masters from Hunter College. Teaching: Hunter College. www.sethmcneill.com

Sophie Sagan-Gutherz (they/them) is a NYC based writer, actor and singer. Their first full-length play Marked Green at Birth, Marked Female at Birth has been supported by Pride Plays (Rattlestick), the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Tribe Theatre Company. They’ve written a monologue with the 24 Hour Play Festival (performed by Lea DeLaria) and have devised and performed a 10 minute solo piece Disability & Celebrity Culture (Am I Write Ladies?). They have been a finalist for the Emerging Writers Group (The Public) as well as a semi-finalist for The R&D Group (The Civilians) & PlaySpace (Pipeline Theatre Company). BFA: NYU Tisch in Drama with an Honors Thesis in Theatre Studies. sophiesagangutherz.com

Marcus Scott (he/him) is a playwright and journalist. Selected works: Fidelio (Libretto; Heartbeat Opera at Baruch Performing Arts Center, 2018; called “poignant” by NY Times), Tumbleweed (Finalist for the 2017 BAPF; semi-finalist for the 2017/2018 New Dramatists Princess Grace Fellowship Award), Cherry Bomb (recipient of the 2017 Drama League First Stage Artist-In-Residence; 2017 Finalist for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre) and Sundown Town (Finalist for Abingdon Theatre Company’s Virtual Fall Festival Of Short Plays). His work has been developed or presented by Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, APAC, Dixon Place, Space on Ryder Farm, Cherry Lane Theater (DUAF), CoLAB Arts, Symphony Space, MicroTheater Miami, among others. Scott is a four-time finalist for the R&D Group at The Civilians, a two-time finalist for NBT’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency and a 2019 finalist for the Bushwick Starr’s Starr Reading Series. His articles appeared in TimeOut New York, American Theatre, Playbill, Elle, Out, Essence, among others. MFA: NYU Tisch.

PLEASE NOTE:

• Gingold Theatrical Group accepts no unsolicited manuscripts.
• Gingold Theatrical Group presents no new works not specifically developed through its programs

Speakers’ Corner is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.