Open Process Spring Talks: Revisiting Historical Performance Text
May 23, 2022, 7:30 - 8:30 pm EST -- VIRTUAL EVENT

What does it mean to revisit historical performance texts, and why do we do it? Acclaimed theater artists Sarah Ruhl and Jiehae Park join together to discuss navigating the works of dead writers, and their approaches to reinvigorating canonized texts and figures through utilizing theater as a forum for catharsis and political discussion. 

As always, our Open Process Talks programming is free, dedicated to dispersing creative ideas widely and accessibly. RSVPs are strongly encouraged.

About the Panelists: 

SARAH RUHL is an award-winning American playwright, author, essayist, and professor. Her plays include The Oldest Boy, Dear Elizabeth, Stage Kiss, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play (Pen American Award, Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play); Melancholy Play; Demeter in the City (nine NAACP Image Award nominations); Scenes From Court Life; How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday; Eurydice; Orlando; and Late: a cowboy song. Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally, and translated into fourteen languages. Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel. She is the recipient of a Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award for mid-career playwrights, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and a Lilly award. She is a member of 13P and New Dramatists and won the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. Her most recent books are Smile, a memoir and Love Poems in Quarantine. She teaches at Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.  
 

JIEHAE PARK's plays include peerless (Yale Rep premiere, upcoming at Primary Stages), Hannah and the Dread Gazebo (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Here We Are Here (Sundance, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, Princess Grace WIP @ Baryshnikov Arts Center), The Aves (Alley All-New, McCarter Spotlight Festival), contributions to Wondrous Strange (Humana/ATL), and the book for the upcoming musical Kill the Boyband. Development: Soho Rep, the Public, p73, ACT, Playwrights Horizons, CTG, Atlantic, PlayCo, Old Globe, Dramatists Guild Fellowship, Ojai, BAPF, and the amazing Ma-Yi Writers Lab. Awards: Steinberg, Blackburn Finalist, Leah Ryan Prize, Princess Grace Award, Weissberger, ANPF Women’s Invitational. Commissions: Playwrights Horizons, Yale Rep, Geffen, OSF, MTC/Sloan. Residencies: MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, McCarter/Sallie B. Goodman. As a performer, she most recently appeared in Celine Song’s ENDLINGS (NYTW, ART), and Ripe Time/Naomi Iizuka's adaption of Murakami's SLEEP (BAM Next Wave, Yale Rep) . TV writing: Marvel's Runaways, Hello Tomorrow; currently developing with Tomorrow Studios/Apple, Anonymous Content.  Former Tow Fellow and Hodder Fellow; current NYTW Usual Suspect, Lincoln Center Theater writer in residence, and New Dramatist. BA, Amherst; MFA, UCSD.

Upcoming Events:

• June 6, 2022, 7pm - “Composing for Adaptation” - Visionary songwriters share from their work in an intimate setting and discuss their processes around their upcoming works. How can preexisting text serve as a useful point of departure for new composition?