BloomingPlays Festival:

A Celebration of new plays by Hoosier playwrights!

The Bloomington Playwrights Project (BPP) annouces the 2010 BloomingPlays Festival, a celebration of new plays by Indiana playwrights developed at the Bloomington Playwrights Project.

Since August of 2009 playwrights have been developing their plays through a progression of rigourous readings, revisions and workshops in the BloomingPlays Development Series. The development series featured staged readings of eight new plays written by Indiana's finest up-and-coming playwrights. Each reading was followed by a feedback session where the audience is invited to provide the playwright with their commentary, thus aiding in the development of these new works to be considered for the BloomingPlays Festival.

"The development series has been great," explains playwright Chris White. "It's been just what it's supposed to be - truly developmental, truly nurturing. I've seen the plays in the festival move huge distances and become really effective pieces for the stage. I couldn't be happier than to be a part of it."

Four plays have been chosen for full productions scheduled to be performed at the times and dates above. Three one-act plays will be featured as part of a Mainstage Series showcase, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm. Tickets are $18 General Admission or $15 for students and seniors ($5 student rush tickets are available 5 min before showtime).

Russ Miles by former BPP Ensemble member April Smallwood tells the story of a man and his arch nemesis: an angry drunk who is chemically imbalanced, and unable to show any sort of healthy love. Unfortunately, it's himself. With his lover just having walked out on him and his beloved dog missing, Russ Miles puts the final nail in his coffin when his favorite son comes to visit him. Russ Miles is directed by BPP newcomer Daniel Student and features BPP ensemble members Frank Buczolich, Derrick Krober and Gail Bray, along with Taylor Crousore.

"Russ Miles follows in the footsteps of classic American playwrights like Arthur Miller and Sam Shepard in examining the legacy of self-loathing fathers whose destructive behaviors nearly tear their families apart," says Student. "Audiences should expect a chance to see a well-crafted, classic American comic-tragedy from a playwright whose name they should expect to hear a lot more of very soon."

Thespian by Depauw University faculty member Chris White is a side-splitting ten-minute play following two roofers from Brooklyn riding uptown on the F Train. One's got aspirations to be an actor and is on his way to his first professional audition, but he's a little short on experience. His buddy is going to help him beef up his resume and find his footing, whatever it takes. Thespian is directed by BPP Artistic Director, Chad Rabinovitz, and stars Ben Smith and Joe Bolinger.

"With Thespian, the audience should expect one of the funniest short plays they've seen in years," says Rabinovitz. "I've been a part of many play readings in my life and never had an audience react with as much laughter as during our workshops of this play."

Virginia's Last Drive by Matt Anderson takes place one beautiful day at the DMV, as nearly-eighty-year-old Virginia Mills takes her driving test yet again. Assigned to by-the-book Alex Jacobs as her tester, however, she finds it difficult to enjoy the ride... and her confounding lack of driving skill forces Alex to question her reasons for taking the test at all. But stuck together through one-way streets, blind spots, and an unplanned stop at the car wash, the two begin to discover how easily life can steer you off the scheduled route... whether you're the passenger or the driver. Virginia's Last Drive is directed by BPP ensemble member Jim Hettmer and stars Linda Ostermeier and Kelly Lusk.

In addition to the 8pm Mainstage show, the BPP will be running a special 10pm Dark Alley feature called BloomingPlays After Dark featuring How To Kill by Gabe Gloden. In the play, Keith is a killer. In his head. Thanks to his new method of mental murder, he has conquered his crippling social anxiety. He just has to remember two simple things: 1) Don't ever actually kill anyone, and 2) kill without joy. How To Kill is directed by BPP newcomer Timothy O'Neal and stars Jonathan Lerner, Shannon Walsh and Daniel J. Petrie.

"I love the imaginative spin Gabe has taken with this play," says O'Neal. "He's given us a wonderful challenge in having to kill someone and 5 seconds later hitting the reset button and restarting the scene, much like a skipping record that you reset on the groove when it's fallen off. Within it, though, is an interesting look into the ways people deal with each other."

On Wednesday May 19th at 8pm, the BPP will host choreographed staged readings from the four remaining plays from last season's development series.

The 2010 BloomingPlays Festival will also feature a student showcase including choreographed readings of plays written by students from Hanover College and Indiana Univerisity. The showcase will be held Wednesday May 26th at 8pm at the BPP.

To celebrate the 2010 BloomingPlays Festival, the BPP has commissioned an exhibit for its 9th Street Window Box Gallery by local artist Diana Hoffman.  The exhibit features dioramas and box scenes from each of the four featured plays, many created mostly with found objects. The exhibit will be able to be viewed throughout the run of the festival.

Playwright Biographies:

April Smallwood (Playwright, Russ Miles) is a graduate from Indiana University where she double-majored in Theatre and English. She has enjoyed working on several projects with the BPP and hopes to continue doing so. She is also currently working for Man Bites Dog Productions which is based in LA but is lucky enough to be able to do this from her cozy little home in Bloomington.

Chris White (Playwright, Thespian) received a BA in Theatre from the University of Colorado in Boulder, additional training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles, and earned an MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Her plays have been produced at 13th Street Repertory, 18th Street Playhouse, Manhattan Theatre Source, and the Goldman Theatre in NYC; at Horizons Theatre and New Works Theatre in Washington DC; at Ki Theatre in Washington, Virginia; at Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis; at Hollins, DePauw, Ball State and New York Universities; and received readings and staged readings at venues that include Horizons Theatre in D.C., Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke, Virginia, the William Morris Agency in NYC, and the Guild Theatre in Boulder, Colorado. Her play, Rhythms, was awarded the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play (Charles McArthur Award); her play, Sin Eater, earned Honorable Mention in the American College Theatre Festival; her play, Thespian, was a finalist for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville and chosen for the 2001 Ten-minute Play Festival at New York University; and her play, Mud Lotus, was a finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Conference and winner of a Basile Award for Emerging Indiana Playwrights. Chris was commissioned to write a new play for Hollins University (Sin Eater), where she also taught workshops in playwriting. In 2007, she received a Mellon Grant to direct her play, Rhythms, which played in both university and regional theatre productions, with a cast that included Rae Dawn Chong and Nicole Halmos. Another commissioned play, Two-Character Play, will be published (and was filmed for inclusion) in an introduction to theatre digital textbook for Allyn & Bacon in 2008. Most recently, her screenplay adaptation of her play, Thaw, made first cut at the 2008 Sundance Screenwriters Lab. She is currently a full time faculty member at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana teaching dramatic writing and literature.

Matthew Anderson (Playwright, Virginia's Last Drive) graduated magna cum laude from Beloit College in Beloit, WI as a Creative Writing major. While at Beloit College, a number of his plays were produced onstage, including the autobiographical My Life and the full-length musical Welcome to the Nuthouse. For the college's graduation ceremony, Anderson was voted by his peers to write and deliver the commencement speech--an homage to Dr. Seuss entitled Oh! The Spaces You'll Roam!--which received much acclaim and was later published in the Beloit Magazine. Following college, Anderson has worked at the Betty Brinn Children's Museum in Milwaukee, WI as a children's theatre writer and director, creating and producing stage adaptations of such stories as Jack and the Beanstalk and The Emperor's New Clothes. He currently works at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, writing original interactive children's scripts including All Aboard with the Reuben Wells and Captain Extraordinary's Villain, for the institution.

Gabe Gloden (Playwright, How to Kill) is the Managing Director of the Bloomington Playwrights Project (BPP), a theatre dedicated to the encouragement of new American theatre and plays. He has acted in numerous shows and is the co-founder of Gunstar Productions with his brother, Brett. As a writer, Gabe has produced work for three super-short play showcases, known as The Blizzard at the BPP. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana, by way of Toledo, Ohio.