[NEohioPAL] Weathervane 8x10 TheatreFest - Meet The Playwrights!

[Eileen Moushey]

Weathervane 8x10 TheatreFest

Friday, August 16 (8pm)    Saturday August 17 (8pm)    Sunday, August 18 (2:30pm)



Following Sunday’s performance, prizes will be awarded, including Fan Favorite

(as determined by votes from all audience members over the weekend)

Also following Sunday’s performance a reception will be held in the lobby.

Tickets are $10 each.   Phone 330-836-2626     Online tickets can be purchased here.

www.weathervaneplayhouse.com



In August, Weathervane Playhouse presents it’s 3rd  Annual 8x 10 TheatreFest.   The finalist playwrights are a diverse group and each brings a unique voice to our competition.   We’re very excited to bring their work to our stage.  Read about the finalists below.  We are thrilled that FIVE * will be in attendance at TheatreFest and we hope you will attend and meet them in person ! 



* WALTER CUIRLE (The Wife of Sisyphus)                                                                                     

Walter Cuirle is a physicist and has taught the subject for more than thirty years. He has published some fiction and quite a bit of non-fiction, but, unless you count teaching as a performing art, has had no involvement with theater. The Wife of Sisyphus is his first play. He is a member of the National Writer's Union (UAW Local 1981) and SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He and his wife live in Washington, DC; their son and his family live in Akron, Ohio..



* ANDREW ADE  (Little Miss Understanding)  

Andrew Ade has written full-length and one-act plays, as well as the book and lyrics for a musical, How the Children Stopped the Wars (music by Anthony Billera). Recent productions include Reports of a Home Invasion (Spotlight Award, 2013 New Voice Play Festival, Charles Town, WV) and the New York premiere of A Question of Taste in the 2013 Midtown International Theatre Festival.  The latter had won the Best Play Award at the 2007 Theater Festival in Black & White (Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company) and received the 2009 Arts & Letters Prize in Drama. Other produced plays include Language Barrier (Best Play Award, 2010 Theater Festival in Black & White) and Off-Color Remarks (Finalist, Outstanding Playwright Award, 2011 Pittsburgh New Works Festival). Ade is a 2012-2013 Heinz Endowments Fellow; was the sole playwriting recipient of the 2009 Kennedy Center National Teaching Artist Grant; and has had residency fellowships at The MacDowell Colony, The Ragdale Foundation, and The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences.  A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Ade earned his B.A. in English at Northwestern University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He served as a Peace Corps high school teacher in the Republic of Zaïre (today, Democratic Republic of Congo) and as the American Lecturer at Groupe HEC (Paris), a leading business school in France. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at Westminster College in nearby New Wilmington, PA, where he teaches dramatic literature and criticism, literary theory, world fiction, film history and playwriting.



MARK CORNELL (Bad Thing)

In the past year, Mark has had 14 new plays premiere around the country.  Recent awards include the grand prize at Short + Sweet Brisbane (Australia) in 2012 for The Rental Company, and the 2013 LW Thomas Award from Theatre Oxford for Bad Thing.  His plays The Inciting Incident, The Killing Room, and All the Answers (Best New Work nomination from the Central Ohio Theatre Critics Circle) appeared at MadLab in Columbus, OH.  He has an MFA in playwriting from UCLA and lives in Chapel Hill, NC.  He is a member of the Dramatists Guild.



LENNY LEVY (Why Did I Marry An Illegal Alien)

Lenny Levy, a member of the Dramatist’s Guild, is an award-winning playwright who has been writing plays and movie scripts for many a moon.  Although the Federal government pays Lenny a princely sum to devote much time and energy to his bureaucratic endeavors, he still finds time during his non-work hours to nurture his creative side.  Lenny holds a B.A. degree from the University of Maryland at College Park in Government & Politics, a J.D. degree from the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, and a Master of Laws degree from the Georgetown University School of Law.  How does this training prepare one to be a playwright?  A variety of life experiences is invaluable to anyone who writes.  Besides writing plays, Lenny is also an actor, scriptwriter, lyricist and painter.  Wacky, wild, off-beat, maybe even absurd, are just a few adjectives to describe Lenny’s works.  But it is the challenge of putting words on paper to evoke humor and/or drama that he finds most rewarding.  His one-minute play, “I Brought You In …!” won first prize in the “In A New York Minute Play Festival” and was also performed in the Gi60 Festival in Halifax, England.  The idea for this play came from the ongoing debate about immigration.  Lenny decided to spin the discussion to perhaps its most absurd version.  And now the time has arrived for Lenny to accept the challenge of moving from a one-minute play to the more complex ten-minute play format.  If this play is successful, what next?  A one-act?    



* BEN GORMAN (Again) 

Ben Gorman is a native of Cleveland and resident of Columbus. Principally an actor, he has also directed and designed for theatre, and has performed in California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Ohio. Ben is also an award-winning poet and avid Shakespeare aficionado. Favorite roles include Hamlet, Dr. Miller (Inventing Van Gogh; winner, Outstanding Acting Award, Theatre Roundtable), Torvald Helmer (A Doll’s House), Richard Hannay (The 39 Steps, CATCO), Renfield (Dracula), Rick Steadman (The Nerd), and Charlie Baker (The Foreigner). 



* B.N. REICHENBERGER (Hey, Hey, I Wanna Get Married)

Brandy Reichenberger is a Chicago-based playwright and dramaturg. She received a BA in Theatre and English from Loyola University Chicago in 2012. Brandy has worked as a dramaturg and assistant dramaturg at Northlight Theatre (Tinker to Evers to Chance, Stones in His Pockets, The Whipping Man, The Odd Couple, Woody Sez), American Theatre Company (She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange), Next Theatre (Everything is Illuminated), and Steep Theatre (Making Noise Quietly). Plays include Swimming (LUC 2010), The Brain Play and Other Stories (Workshop, LUC 2012), Hey, Hey, I Wanna Get Married, and The Future.  Her play Low-Fat Kosher Recipe Book: An Orthodox Guide to Fitness received a staged reading at the Chicago History Museum in 2013, and was the recipient of the Emerging  Talent Award from the Chicago Jewish Historical Society. 



* ROSS TANDOWSKY (Doubles Troubles)                                                                                

Ross is  51 years old and lives in Tracy, California with his wife, Judi.  He works for the United States Postal Service and has  been writing and entering play contests and festivals for the last year.   Ross has a B.A. degree in Theatrical Arts after attending UCLA and UC Santa Cruz.   He’s  always loved theater and has spent much time as an actor and a director, as well as a stint as a stand-up comic.   His only connection to Ohio was listening to his mother sing the song by that title from the musical Wonderful Town.   Doubles Troubles is the third play he’s written that feature the main characters, Ralph and Marion.   He enjoys watching navigate adverse situations, while trying to cope with each other.   He hopes the audience will love them as much as he does! 



TESS LIGHT (Shimmer)

Playwright Tess Light lives and works in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  Her plays tend to incorporate any or all of the following: sarcasm, death, sarcastic death, Buddhism, foodism, poetry, song, and Shakespeare.   Tess' full-length plays have received several distinctions.  Her comedy "Tower of Magic" won the 2012 New Play Contest at Theatre Conspiracy in Fort Myers Florida, and premiered there in October 2012; her comedy "Stalking Serendipity" was a finalist for both the AACT 2013 New Play Contest (1 of 12), and for the 2012 Heiress Productions Playwriting Competition; her drama "To Conceive Gods" was a semi-finalist for the 2013 National Arts Club Playwrights First award; and another drama "The Cadence of a Dream" was a semi-finalist (1 of 12) for the Dayton Playhouse FutureFest in 2010.  She also writes short plays and one-acts; her one-act play "The Last Days of Wonder" won second place in the Dubuque Fine Arts Players National One-Act Playwriting Contest (2013) as well as being a finalist for the Arts & Letters 2013 Prize for Drama (1 of 8).  



Both Tess and her husband have aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins scattered throughout Ohio; his mother's family and her grandmother's family originated there before striking out west.  After living in eight cities in four countries, Tess settled in Los Alamos with her husband and sons, where she works as a physicist in the Space and Remote Sensing Sciences group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 



Tess is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, the Santa Fe Theatre Guild, The Albuquerque Theatre Guild, and the American Association of Community Theater.






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