RAW STAGES 2017
January 11–January 15, 2017
Take part in a new script’s first brave steps from the page to stage! Raw Stages: New Works Festival is your chance to get an inside look at the new scripts in progress and provide feedback for the playwrights.
Cost: $30 Raw Stages Pass $15 Each Reading
Wednesday, 1/11, 7:30
Stewardess
by Kira Obolensky
Directed by Hayley Finn
Cast: Tracey Maloney, Terry Hempleman, Sandra Struthers, Jasmine Hughes, Kimberly Richardson, Charles Fraser, John Middleton
A play about the Northwest Airlines stewardess who challenged the status quo and went sky-high with the fight for gender equality in the workplace. (A new version of the script from Raw Stages 2015).
Kira Obolensky's Kira Obolensky is a playwright and writer who lives in Minneapolis. She is currently a Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence with the award-winning theater Ten Thousand Things. Kira is also co-founder of The Gymnasium, a consortium of creative risk-takers from the arts and outside the arts that innovates, presents, and incubates new ideas for culture, technology and education. Kira is a Guggenheim Fellow and has also received fellowships and grants from the Henson Foundation, NEA and Irvine Foundations, Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, le Comte du Nouys Foundation, and a Pew Theatre Initiative Grant. Her play Lobster Alice was a Kesselring Prize winner. She is the author of three published books about architecture and design and is the co-author of the national bestseller, The Not So Big House. Her novella, “The Anarchists Float to St. Louis,” won Quarterly West’s novella contest. She is a core writer at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, and teaches playwriting at the University of Minnesota and is on faculty at Spalding’s Low Residency MFA Program for Writers.
Thu, 1/12 , 7:30pm
Mr. Hemingway
By Kevin Kautzman
Directed by Anya Kremenetsky
Cast: Steve Hendrickson, Karen Weber, Nicholas Freeman, Kate Guenztel, Sean Dillon
A glimpse into Hemingway's final days at the Mayo Clinic as he wrestles with inner demons and his ultimate writer's block. (A new version of the script from Raw Stages 2015).
Kevin Kautzman, Kevin Kautzman is a playwright and screenwriter originally from North Dakota. He is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota, where he studied history and philosophy, and holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.
Saturday, 1/14, 2pm
A Crack in the Sky
by Harrison David Rivers and Ahmed Ismail Yusuf
Directed by Harry Waters, Jr.
Cast: Darius Dotch, Dan Hopman, Adam Western, Charla Marie Bailey, Jennifer Blagen
The epic tale of Minnesota-based Somali immigrant Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, who finds inspiration in Maya Angelou and Malcom X and discovers the power of the written word.
Harrison David Rivers is the winner of a GLAAD Media Award, a McKnight Fellowship for Playwrights, a Many Voices Jerome Fellowship, a Van Lier Fellowship, an Emerging Artist of Color Fellowship and the New York Stage & Film’s Founders Award. He is the 2016 Playwright-in-Residence at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. His plays include SWEET (National Black Theatre), AND SHE WOULD STAND LIKE THIS (The Movement Theatre Company), WHERE STORMS ARE BORN (Williamstown) and WHEN LAST WE FLEW (Sundance). Harrison is an alumnus of the Emerging Writers’ Group at the Public Theater. MFA: Columbia University.
Sun, 1/15, 2pm
Lord Gordon Gordon
A new musical comedy
book by Jeffrey Hatcher
music and lyrics by Chan Poling
Directed by Ron Peluso
Music Director: Robert Elhai
Cast: Mark Benninghofen, Dieter Bierbrauer, Gary Briggle, Sean Dooley, Ann Michels, Sandra Struthers, Marty Ruben, Randy Schmeling, Sally Ann Wright
The true story of a confidence man who came to Minneapolis in 1871 to fleece a railroad baron and brought Minnesota and Canada to the brink of war.
Jeffrey Hatcher is an American playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just Stage Beauty. He also co-wrote the stage adaptation of Tuesdays with Morrie with author Mitch Albom, and Three Viewings, a comedy consisting of three monologues - each of which takes place in a funeral home. He wrote the screenplay Casanova for director Lasse Hallström, as well as the screenplay for The Duchess. He has also written for the Peter Falk TV series Columbo and E! Entertainment Television.
Chan Poling is an American musician and composer. Chandler Hall Poling was born in 1957 in Evanston, Illinois, USA. He moved to Minnesota with his family in 1961. He studied composition at MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and, after graduating from The Blake School, went on to study composition and performance at the California Institute of the Arts from 1975 to 1977 under the tutelage of his mentor the composer Harold Budd.