Experience live theatre in the making! In its expanded commitment to the development of new plays, MTC presents works by new and emerging playwrights both local and from across this country. Playwrights are brought in to work with leading local artists, and a response session/Q&A with the playwright, director, and actors follows each performance.
Here, audiences experience the first steps in making a new play. The full-length script-in-hand staged readings are intimate and exciting but without the costumes, props and sets that would be involved in a full production.
All performances are FREE with a suggested $10 donation and are performed in MTC’s Lieberman Theatre. Call the MTC Box Office at 415.388.5208 or go click below for tickets.
Please note that all Nu Werkz performances have festival seating (non-reserved).
The Nu Werkz Series is made possible by the generous support of N.J. “Sky” Cooper.
From one of America’s hottest young playwrights comes a riveting story of a young woman’s desperate search for her past. Seventeen year-old Allegra is beginning to piece together memories of her early years in the No. Californian woods on a mystical commune. Mixing with joyous recollections are darker revelations, startling images of the people she thinks she trusts most. A journey begins that will take Allegra back to the commune, back to the past, to confront the truth.
Zayd Dohrn received his M.F.A from NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing and a Lila Acheson Wallace Fellowship from Juilliard. His plays have been produced at Alchemy Theatre of Manhattan, Classic Stage Company (NYC Fringe), The Boston Actor’s Workshop, and Boston Playwrights Theatre, as well as developed at The Flea, Studio 42, the National New Play Network, Ensemble Studio Theatre (24Seven Lab), Alchemy Theatre, Prop Thtr., and Kitchen Dog. He won the IRNE Award for Best New Play, The Rita and Burton Goldberg Prize in Playwriting, received a residency at the Royal Court Theatre of London, and is currently the Playwright in Residence at Alchemy Theatre of Manhattan. His play SICK was featured in the National New Play Network Showcase in November 2007. He currently teaches writing at Columbia University in NY.
In Late Arrival, Henry and Marion are active seventy year olds trying to settle into old age. The arrival of an unexpected guest brings unresolved issues to the forefront and forces the two to examine just how well a person can ever truly know someone else.
Bay area actor/director/playwright Will Marchetti is a Marin County resident and former Artistic Director (two times during its early years!) of Marin Theatre Company. Late Arrival is a MTC commission and is made possible by support from the Marin Arts Council.
In T.I.C., a kid who’s too smart and bored for her own good creates a web-blog about her new TIC (Tenant-In-Common) apartment building. Living in the cottage with her dad in the back, she enjoys a clear view of the building's rear windows. From her room, she captures her neighbors' private moments on her cell phone and publishes them online, with commentary. When strange, menacing events begin to take place, it becomes evident that her journal isn't simply lost in the sea of online information. Someone is reading. Someone is watching.
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb (the playwright) grew up in Mill Valley and even took acting classes at Marin Theatre Company as a young, impressionable child. He now is a San Francisco-based playwright whose works include Hunter Gatherers, boom, Colorado, Meaningless, Multiplex and The Amorphous Blob. Hunter Gatherers received the 2007 Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award for best new play to premiere outside of New York and the 2007 Will Glickman Prize for best new play in the Bay Area. His work has been seen across the country at venues like Ars Nova and SPF in New York, Bailiwick in Chicago, W.H.A.T. in New England, and Impact Theatre, Magic Theatre and Killing My Lobster in the Bay Area. He is currently under commission from Encore Theatre Company and South Coast Rep.
This performance is a collaboration with San Francisco’s Encore Theatre Company.
The lives of San Rafael teens Fatima and Lalo are thrown into turmoil when their parents are suddenly deported. A social worker tries to help but Fatima wants to sort things out on her own, and Lalo relies on the guidance of his guardian angel, whom only he sees.
Marisela Treviño Orta (Playwright) Poet and playwright Marisela Treviño Orta has an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her play Braided Sorrow was read at the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, at the Ford's 2006 Summer Reading Series and received the 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama. Her short play Woman on Fire was selected for the 2007 Bay Area Playwrights Festival's BASH (Bay Area SHorts) event that features short plays by local playwrights. She has also been commissioned by Austin Script Works and Teatro Vivo to write a new play for the 2007 Latino Playwrights Initiative playfest. Recently her poetry has appeared in BorderSenses, Double Room, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and Traverse.
Two brothers have been trapped in a life of routine for over ten years. But when one decides to take in a plucky young houseguest, everything goes to hell in a French horn case. All Hail Hurricane Gordo is a quirky, dark and often violent comedy about what it means to be your brother’s keeper.
Carly Mensch (Playwright) Carly Mensch’s plays include The Delicate Business Of Boy And Miss Girl (2006 New York International Fringe Festival), The Wash Cycle, Bradshaw (Lorring Dodd Drama Prize), and All Hail Hurricane Gordo (Ars Nova Out Loud Reading). She is currently a fellow at The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program and a member of Ars Nova’s Play Group.