New Year, Creativity is Brewing!
…from the artistic director
Welcome to 2024! New Years are a time to make and experience New Things. Speaking from a thoughtful and philosophic perspective, this is the 4th year of our existence as an organization. I would never have expected to spend so much time helping theatre makers create so many New Things, and it’s incredibly exciting to share the new works coming your way from The Shattered Glass Project in 2024.
On Monday, December 11th the members of our Incubator/Mentor Cohort presented a staged reading of excerpts from their Plays In Progress. Each play generated a robust followup conversation and we are immensely grateful for the time and thoughtful feedback provided by the folks in the audience. More on that, as well as what’s to come for these plays-in-development below.
I want to introduce our newest board members, Cara Thomas and Emily Stone. Cara is an actor and a stand-up comedian who appeared in TSGP’s pandemic era Zoom production of Loom by Carolynne Wilcox. Emily is a recent graduate of UW’s PATP MFA program and is a co-creator with Darby Sherwood of A Lonely Realization. We are thrilled to have them aboard our little ship - welcome, Cara and Emily! (P.S. Board membership is a fabulous way to support live theatre. Please consider joining the TSGP board! Click here for more info on our website!)
-Rebecca O’Neil, Artistic Director
Incubator/Mentor Cohort NEWS
Snapshots from the Plays in Progress readings on Dec 11 at Seattle Public Theatre
Congratulations to the entire current cohort for the success of the Plays In Progress showcase on December 11 - it was a pretty packed house at Seattle Public Theatre, and each of the plays were well-received and commented on by the audience, who wasn’t shy about giving critical and constructive feedback for the writers to take into their continuing writing practice and for the directors to contemplate going forward. We are so proud of the work that’s been done so far and we are chomping at the bit to reveal the final stagings in May 2024. Thank you so much to the talented performers who contributed their acting talents, to the staff & volunteers who helped bring the everything together, the remarkable audience for attending, and extra special thanks to Amy Poisson & Seattle Public Theatre for hosting the event!
We’re thrilled to announce the creative partnerships for the New Works Festival which will bring these Plays in Progress to complete fruition onstage at 18th and Union, opening May 9, 2024.
On the Train, written by Lisa A. Price and directed by Christie Zhao
The Uterine Files: Episode One, Voices Spitting Out the Rainbow, written by Jourdan Imani Keith and directed by Divya Rajan
Carmilla, written by Mariah Lee Squires and S.W. Jones and directed by Aidyn Stevens
The cohort will be working with a fabulous team of emerging and established designers as well: scenic designer Bella Rivera (Want, Aug 2022), sound designer Alison Kozar (Want & director, All New Cells, June 2023), lighting designer Montse Garza, and costume design team Elizabeth Shipman and SusanAnne Luchenta.
A Lonely Realization by Darby Sherwood & Emily Stone
The Shattered Glass Project is extremely pleased to be part of the development of A Lonely Realization, a play which detangles and processes the individual and community trauma caused by sexual assault through comic absurdity. Look for it in October 2024 at a theatre venue near you!
Works-In-Progress Journal - Untitled Projects Being Created NOW
L - Carolynne Wilcox; R - Miriam Tobin
SGP Associated Artists Miriam Tobin and Carolynne Wilcox will be writing/creating 2 one-act plays in tandem to be performed in the SGP space (or immediately outside it) at the MLK Fame Center in July 2024. In the coming months, we’ll chart, from their point of view, their process of creating these works, from inception to writing to full, onstage fruition! Take a glimpse into a unique, partially partner-driven creation experience.
December 21, 2023 Writing Session by Carolynne Wilcox
Miriam and I met in the space today, it was chilly, and we had to bother Rebecca with a text all the way in Hawaii so we could figure out how to turn on the heat! Once that was done, we sat and talked through how we envisioned this process to be.
We talked over various things, like our own backgrounds and upbringings, finding some interesting common ground in our relationships to Spain and South America whilst eating Sun chips and waiting for the room to warm up.
The idea is to create two, roughly half-hour long plays using the same characters. We both agreed we were more interested in writing something thematic as opposed to issue-driven, as current events always seem to bleed through in a more authentic, universal way when creating from this perspective.
We tossed around themes like protest, migration and linguistic anthropology, alongside food and fables. I’ve written pieces with other playwrights in the past, but never quite in this way before. We didn’t get any writing done, but we got a good start in terms of feeling each other out, and planned our next writer’s meeting for January 5th, where we may pull themes, characters and prompts out of a hat! Stay tuned…
What our friends are doing
Strong Waters - SGP collaborator Maureen Hawkins (director, Want) stars in this tale of loss and love and family written specifically for these players, focusing on being artists in life’s third act. More info & tix here.
The Moors - Annie Lareau (Current Cohort Directing Mentor) directs this story dark comedy about love, desperation, and visibility. More info & tix here.
The Plague Master General Greg LoProto (frequent SGP supporter) & Sara Schweid (actor, Nevertheless, She Persisted) will be producing this “bubonic comedy” through Blue Hour Theatre in April Auditions coming up in February - more info here.