Chautauqua Theater Company Announces 2024 New Play Workshops
Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC), the resident theater company of Chautauqua Institution, today announced its New Play Workshops for the 2024 season.
CTC’s audience will have the chance to experience plays at every stage of development, showcasing the work of the country’s most exciting playwrights. From a first new play reading to a staged workshop, a revival of a New Play Workshop, and a commissioned world premiere, the audience will be a part of the process as CTC deepens its long-standing commitment to new work.
CTC will present readings of three new play workshops: C.A. Johnson’s Tell Me You’re Dying (the trial of millicent bonhomme), Anna Ziegler’s Celebrating Sixty-Five Years of the Ladies Journal of Cambridge, Massachusetts!, and Hilary Bettis’ falcon girls.
“I’m thrilled to welcome these four visionary playwrights to CTC this summer. It is such a privilege to create an artistic community of playwrights and commission and develop plays in a way that centers the writing process and meets the plays where they are,” shared Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll. “CTC is proud to help give life to plays at every stage of their life cycle. CTC’s New Play Workshops are truly a special part of our theater’s ecosystem and one of my favorite parts of our summers.”
New Play Readings
Tell Me You’re Dying (or the trial of millicent bonhomme)
By C.A. Johnson
Dramaturgy by Otis Ramsey-Zoe
June 28-30 • $15
When five individuals unite in their weekly support group, they forge a sanctuary of care and companionship despite the apocalypse currently plaguing their world. Characterized by discussions of illness and mortality, grandiose philosophical speeches, spirited swearing, and the undeniable physical urge for human connection and family, Tell Me You’re Dying compels us to question not only if we can change but if we have time to do so while the world appears to be ending.
This reading may not be suitable for children under 12.
Celebrating Sixty-Five Years of the Ladies Journal of Cambridge, Massachusetts!
By Anna Ziegler
Directed by David Auburn
July 18-20 • $15
A time-shifting exploration of the life of a women’s magazine – why it starts, why it ends, and whether very much at all has changed for women over the course of the last 65 years. From underestimated faculty wives at Harvard in the 1950s who long to break free of their societal roles to modern-day midwestern office workers still wishing for more, Celebrating Sixty-Five-Years of the Ladies Journal of Cambridge Massachusetts! is a sharply funny and poignant play about the progress of feminism and whether it’s ever possible (or indeed desirable) to have it all.
This reading may not be suitable for children under 10.
falcon girls
By Hilary Bettis
Directed by Lily Wolff
Dramaturgy by Liz Frankel
August 16-17 • $25
This is a true story. It’s the 90s in rural Falcon, Colorado. Six teenage girls on the FFA horse judging team are determined to make it to nationals come hell or high water. But to do that, they must grapple with jealousy, rivalries, sex, Jesus, AOL chat rooms, impossible expectations, and rumors of a serial killer. Hilary Bettis’s falcon girls is an achingly funny and brutally honest coming of age memoir––and a love letter to the girls she grew up with and the horses who saved their lives.
This staged reading may not be suitable for children under 12.
This New Play Workshop will take the format of our signature staged readings, which will feature design elements.
The New Play Workshops and Readings are made possible in part by a generous grant from the Roe Green Foundation.
Visit our website to view a comprehensive timeline of a New Play Journey.
Early New Play Development
Sharyn Rothstein’s Best for Baby
CTC is elated to welcome award-winning playwright Sharyn Rothstein for a 2024 residency to work on her newly commissioned play with the working title “Best for Baby.” This marks the third commission under Carroll’s artistic leadership and was made possible by a New York State Council on the Arts grant with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State.
Visit our website to learn more about our playwrights for the 2024 season.
Visit tickets.chq.org to save your seats at one of our New Play Workshops.
CTC’s Evolving New Work Practices
As a reminder to our beloved audiences, all New Play Workshops (NPWs) will continue to receive a weeklong workshop, but patrons may notice that two of the NPWs will be at music stands while one of them will be staged in CTC’s Signature Staged Reading format. This year, we will begin to deepen our development process even further as we move toward more industry standards — focusing on the individual needs of each playwright, and thus presenting some readings at music stands.
What playwrights desperately need and crave in the long and rigorous journey toward production is the dedicated time to write, work with actors, cross out sections and rewrite, drop in new pages, and hear them read by those same actors. It can take a handful of music stand readings before arriving at the point where a staged reading is truly helpful in the process of new play development.
Being able to meet playwrights wherever they are in the process and offer this holistic developmental experience makes CTC a truly viable player in the competitive world of new play development. This kind of dedicated script work and focused time will allow CTC to establish itself as a future home for world premiere plays that are now in the earlier stages of development. Ultimately, this is an exciting path towards becoming a more nationally recognized theater company — a path which could lead to partnerships, co-productions, transfers, publications, participation in royalties, and even award nominations and wins.
In light of this change and the shift in audience experience, CTC felt it appropriate to charge only $15 for a reading at music stands. Chautauquan audiences can look forward to becoming an integral and irreplaceable part of the development of the American classics of tomorrow.
ABOUT CHAUTAUQUA THEATER COMPANY
Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC) produces high-quality, live theater in a vibrant nine-week summer season. We are committed to the development of new work, the next generation of theater artists, producing galvanizing world premieres as well as exceptional modern and contemporary plays, and infusing fresh insight into the classical canon.
CTC is dedicated to becoming a national home for exciting new plays: commissioning, developing and producing new and established American playwrights. We are where the finest artists of tomorrow bridge the gap between their training and the professional world. CTC is actively building the future of the American theater.
ABOUT CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION
Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer — and year-round through the CHQ Assembly online platforms — with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through engaged dialogue.
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