2010 Huntington Playwriting Fellows Announced

Huntington Theatre Company announces the 2010 class of Huntington Playwriting Fellows: Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, Miranda Craigwell, Lawrence Goodman, and Masha Obolensky. This artistically diverse group of writers will be in residence at the theatre for two years. They follow in the footsteps of renowned past Huntington Fellows such as Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly), Melinda Lopez (Sonia Flew), Ronan Noone (The Atheist, Brendan), and Sinan Ünel (The Cry of the Reed).

Through the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program, the Huntington fosters relationships with talented local playwrights at all stages of their careers, from emerging talents to established professionals, and encourages and facilitates conversations among Boston's playwriting community. Fellows are awarded two-year residencies during which they are provided a modest honorarium, participate in a bi-weekly writers' collective, and benefit from access to the artistic staff and to the resources of the Huntington. The four 2010 Fellows were selected from among 65 applicants. The Huntington Playwriting Fellows program is supported by the Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays and the Harry Kondoleon Playwriting Fund.

Biographical Information
Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro's plays include Behind Enemy Lines (Pan Asian Repertory Theatre), Mishima (East West Players), Martha Mitchell (Edinburgh Fringe Festival; Theater Center Philadelphia; Six Figures Theater Co., New York; and others), Barrancas (Magic Theatre), Pablo and Cleopatra (New Theater), Mexico City (The Boston Women on Top Festival), Sailing Down the Amazon (BWTF and JRV Productions), and It Doesn't Take a Tornado and Amsterdam (La Mama E.T.C.). She is writer and narrator of Japanese American Women: A Sense of Place, a documentary directed by Leita Hagemann (part of a Smithsonian Institution exhibit and aired by PBS in Seattle). Seven of her short plays have been in the Boston Theater Marathon, and seven were finalists in the National Ten-Minute Play Contest. Her plays have been anthologized by Baker's Plays, Heinemann, Charta Books, Smith and Kraus, and Meriwether Publishing.

Miranda Craigwell is a writer for stage and screen, as well as an actress. Her works includes The Strongest Shape (Paines Plough Future Perfect finalist), Reply, Please (Rose Theatre in London), Requests (Staged reading directed by Melanie Hillyard), and Sugar Moth. She attended Brown University where she was a three-year captain of the women's basketball team, graduated with a B.A. in literature and cultures in English, and was awarded a David Zucconi Memorial Fellowship, which allowed her to travel to London to study Eighteenth century female letter writers and epistolary theory. She began performing her written work in Slam poetry competitions at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Theatre Royal Stratford, and other venues before being named the Farrago Central London Slam Poet Champion in 2005. Ms. Craigwell received a Master's degree with Distinction from Rose Bruford College of Drama for both acting and playwriting. She is currently an actor/educator with Urban Improv and a writer, director, and producer for the Boston-based Production Company Beyond Measure Productions. She recently joined the board of Into Your Art LLC.

Lawrence Goodman's plays include The Disappearance of the Jews, Keep Your Distance, An Evening of Highly Self-Indulgent Semi-Autobiographical Comedy, and Rain Later. His work has been performed at The Brick Playhouse in Philadelphia, the HERE Arts Center in New York, and the New York International Fringe Festival. He received the 2011 Rhode Island Fellowship Award in Play and Screenwriting. He worked as a reporter at New York Daily News and New York Post before moving to Providence, RI, where he currently lives with his two children and wife. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont and a B.A. in English from Harvard College.

Masha Obolensky's writing credits include Not Enough Air, produced by the Nora Theatre in Cambridge in 2010 and by Timeline Theatre in Chicago in 2009. It received the Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award and first prize in Boston Theatre Works Unbound Festival, and was nominated for an Equity Joseph Jefferson Award for Outstanding New Work. It was recently presented in Transport Groups Dark Night Reading Series. Obolensky's original performance pieces have been performed at La Mama E.T.C., New Georges, HERE Arts Center, and Access Theatre. Her 10-minute play Girls Play won the 2010 Kennedy Center National College Theatre Festival and was performed in the Boston Theatre Marathon and in The Source Festival D.C. It will be published in the International Centre for Women Playwrights upcoming Diversity Scenes Anthology. The full-length version, The Girl Problem, was awarded a 2010 WordBRIDGE fellowship. Obolensky received the 2010 Pen New England Discovery Award and has an M.F.A. in playwriting from Boston University.

"The Huntington is committed to being a well-rounded company that produces the best work by local, national, and International Artists," explains Director of New Work Lisa Timmel. "The Huntington Playwriting Fellows program allows us to create thriving working relationships with writers at all stages as they develop their work for production."

Past Huntington Playwriting Fellows are leaders of the local community whose plays have been produced on the Huntington's stages and throughout the country. They are:

· Class of 2003 - 2005: John Kuntz (Jasper Lake), Melinda Lopez (Sonia Flew), Ronan Noone (The Atheist, Brendan), and Sinan Ünel (The Cry of the Reed)
· Class of 2005 - 2007: Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly), Rebekah Maggor (Shakespeare's Actresses in America), John Shea (The Hill), and Kate Snodgrass (The Glider)
· Class of 2007 - 2009: Kirsten Greenidge (The Luck of the Irish), Jacqui Parker (Jeanie Don't Sing No Mo'), Ken Urban (The Happy Sad), and Joyce Van Dyke (The Oil Thief)
· Class of 2009-2011: Patrick Gabridge (Constant State of Panic), Ryan Landry (All About Christmas Eve), and Martha Jane Kauffman (A Live Dress).

"Being a part of the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program blesses a playwright with a most indulgent and fortunate thing: the opportunity to create, to develop, to be critiqued, and to grow," says Craigwell.

ABOUT THE HUNTINGTON
The Huntington Theatre Company, in residence at Boston University, is Boston's largest professional theatre company. Under the direction of Artistic Director Peter DuBois and Managing Director Michael Maso, the Huntington creates seven new productions each season featuring world-class theatre artists from Boston and Broadway and the most promising new talent. The Huntington has transferred over a dozen of these productions to Broadway, including recent favorites Noel Coward's Present Laughter and Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. The Huntington also runs nationally renowned programs in education and new play development, and serves the local theatre community through its operation of the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, which the Huntington built in 2004. For more information, visit huntingtontheatre.org.