More Information About A Marathon of One-Acts

Website

http://www.ensemblestudiotheatrela.org/current/index04.htm

Description

For the second year, Ensemble Studio Theatre-The LA Project continues the tradition founded by its New York branch more than two decades ago of spotlighting exceptional new one-act plays. The Obie Award-winning Marathon Festival of One-Act Plays has been widely credited with reviving the one-act form, and continues to develop exciting new voices in the American theatre.

Led by Artistic Directors Michael C. Mahon and Laura Jane Salvato, Ensemble Studio Theatre-The LA Project has emerged as one of LA's most exciting developmental and producing theatre companies. "Marathon 2004" concludes a hit season featuring the acclaimed world premieres of Jacqueline Wright's Buddy Buddette, Alison Tatlock's The Shore, and L. Trey Wilson's Stage Directions.

Produced by Isabel Storey, this year's West Coast Marathon includes:

BUFFALO WINGS by Steve Monroe, directed by David Gautreaux
Two buddies face a crisis in their friendship as they try to dodge the draft in 1968. This funny, moving and timely play takes place in and around their car, just miles from the Canadian border. Will they get across?

THE HONEY MAKERS by Deborah Grimberg, directed by Michael C. Mahon
Set in London, this powerful drama tells the story of an Indian couple's attempt to save their little shop from a skinhead's menace, and the beekeeper who winds up in the middle of the conflict. A powerful play about intolerance and the immigrant experience.

THE NEWS by Billy Aronson, directed by Lisa James
When a woman gets surprising news during her hospitalization, friends, family and the patient herself start acting strange. This short, hilarious and deeply moving dark comedy is as heightened and absurd as it is real and familiar.

Playwright Bios

STEVE MONROE's first full-length play, A Kind Man and A Good Lover, premiered in Los Angeles at The Complex Theater. It won seven Drama-Logue Awards and received Ovation and LA Weekly Award nominations. His second full-length play, Serious Games, also premiered in Los Angeles where it ran for nine months at Theatre/Theater. Steve lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three sons. He is a
member of The Actors Studio Playwright Unit. He was honored to have Norris Church Mailer choose three of his plays to open the new Provincetown Rep.

DEBORAH GRIMBERG is a British playwright now living in New York. Her work has been produced Off Broadway and in the New York and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. In 2003, The Honey Makers was produced in the One Act Marathon at the EST, New York, where she was awarded the "James Hammerstein Emerging Playwright of 2003" Award. Later this year her full-length play Cycling Past The Matterhorn will open Off Broadway. Deborah has an MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School, New York.

BILLY ARONSON's plays have been produced by Playwrights Horizons, the Woolly Mammoth Theatre, and in five EST marathons, and published in Best American Short Plays 1992-93 and 1999-2000. His TV writing includes scripts for Beavis & Butt-head, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and PBS's upcoming Postcards From Buster. His writing for the musical theater includes the original concept and additional lyrics for the Broadway musical Rent, and the book for a new musical he is
presently writing with singer/songwriter Patty Larkin.

Director Bios
DAVID GAUTREAUX directed Patricia Scanlon's Hope Bloats in last season's Marathon. David is a founding member of the LA Stage & Film where he has staged first showings of new plays by Seth Greenland (Life's Too Short, Girls in Movies), Gay Walch (Good Money) and Christopher Goutman (Channel View). For
Theatre West he directed the debut of Mark Yerkes' Kitchen Comedy. In NY: at the WPA, Jerry Stubblefield's The Rodeo Stays in Town for at Least a Week; Hot & Cold Heroes for the 13th St Theater.

LISA JAMES most recently directed The Visible Horse at the Court Theatre (LADCC, Garland Awards). She has also directed the critically acclaimed Seltzer Man at the Tiffany, and Justin Tanner's Bitter Women at the Cast, named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the top ten productions of 1999. Other plays: The Water Children at the Matrix, Little Egypt, Better Days and Palladium Is Moving. In her first outing as a director, Heartstopper, she won the LA Weekly Award for best director.

About the Ticket Supplier: Ensemble Studio Theatre -- LA

Ensemble Studio Theatre - LA, one of LA's premier developmental theaters, is the West Coast branch of New York's renowned Ensemble Studio Theatre. Founded by Artistic Director Curt Dempster 30 years ago, Ensemble Studio Theatre provides a long-term artistic home to more than 450 member playwrights, actors, directors, and designers, among them winners of Academy, Emmy, Obie and Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize.

Our company has developed and launched some of the most accomplished voices in the American theater, including Christopher Durang, Richard Greenberg, David Mamet, Marsha Norman, Jose Rivera, Shel Silverstein, John Patrick Shanley, and Wendy Wasserstein.