GROUNDBREAKERS

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terraNOVA

Groundbreakers
Since 2004, through the efforts of Groundbreakers, terraNOVA has developed over 75 plays and solo shows.

We pride ourselves on our script development. Groundbreakers, a weekly writers' workshop, focuses on this essential element in producing great plays and emphasizes growth in structure, story and dialogue. Through these workshops, we choose scripts to go on to the next level of development, a ten day rehearsal and staged reading. After careful consideration, one play from the second development tier receives a main stage production.

The Groundbreakers Sessions are weekly developmental labs that incorporate the creativity of the entire Collective. Committed to developing new works, Groundbreakers facilitates a fertile environment to feed our actors and writers as they generate art that they might not otherwise be able to explore in the midst of their main stream theatrical, film, and television endeavors. Once a week, writers bring in plays or solo shows in progress, and actors read the scripts. Through open discussion, our main stage plays and soloNOVA Arts Festival are shaped by the collective energy of terraNOVA.

Currently, we are open for script submissions. We will only consider plays previously unproduced. We especially want plays ripe for development and written by playwrights with a desire to enter into the process that Groundbreakers offers. Subject matter should be in the realistic realm and focus on an examination of sociology, relationships and the human condition. Solo plays/shows that are currently in the developmental stage are welcome too.

For play submissions, please send to:
terraNOVA Collective
Literary Department
401 West 24th Street, #8
New York, NY 10010

(PLEASE DO NOT SEND CERTIFIED MAIL - INCLUDE A SASE IF YOU WOULD LIKE YOUR SCRIPT RETURNED)
For questions on submission process or Groundbreakers please email literary@terranovacollective.org

 

terraNOVA Collective presented three new plays in its 2005 Groundbreakers Reading Series November 14 - 19 at Center Stage, NY. The plays on tap dealt with generational conflict, abortion, conception, commitment and serendipity, and were all developed this year in the company's weekly Groundbreakers Sessions, developmental labs of playwrights, actors and performers writing, critiquing and developing new works for the stage.

The featured plays in terraNOVA Collective's 2005 Groundbreakers Reading Series were:

Eschaton
by R.A. Carlsen
Directed by Haskell King

Featuring: Heidi Carter, Jennifer Conley Darling*, Karin Wolfe*, Betsy Klemmer

Monday, November 14 at 7 p.m.
Thursday, November 17 at 7 p.m.

In R.A. Carlsen's Eschaton, which means "end of days," the social and political changes of the last twenty-five years of the 20th century are filtered through the history of one family. In 1975 an angry young woman confronts her mother in front of their suburban home, the conflict hinging on a valuable family heirloom and the question of an abortion. Years later, we meet the granddaughter, who shares neither her grandmother's reserved sense of decorum, nor her mom's hippie-like free-wheeling, free-loving attitude. This young woman is a radical pro-lifer who will stop at nothing to defeat abortion. The disturbing, strange and funny conflict that is revealed reflects on the larger shifts the country has taken in the new millennium.

Blue Before Morning
by Kate McGovern
Directed by Michele Chivu

Featuring: Andrea Ciannavei*, Salvatore Inzerillo*, Giselle Jones*, Jinn S. Kim*, Vincent Piazza, Charlotte Purser*, Kelly Rauch, Postmidnight

Tuesday, November 15 at 7 p.m.
Friday, November 18 at 7 p.m.

Kate McGovern's Blue Before Morning finds three strangers in a cab traveling the Jersey Turnpike from New York City to Wilmington, Delaware. As they drive, their histories are uncovered in fragments that reveal lives and relationships all well imagined but unrealized: a father without a wife and child, a daughter without a mother or father, and a mother-to-be without a husband or home. These three individuals find in each other unexpected companionship that may fill more than just a day's strange journey.

 

Family Wayward
by James Carter
Directed by Dara Serber

Featuring: Jennifer Conley Darling*, Bronwen Coleman,
Jason Howard*, Giselle Jones*, Jinn S. Kim*, Michelle David, Meg Benfield

Wednesday, November 16 at 7 p.m.
Saturday, November 19 at 7 p.m.

James Carter's Family Wayward chronicles a straight couple and a lesbian couple's efforts to conceive, the struggles after birth, and the commitments they break along the way. The two couples, Julia and William, and Abigail and Victoria, seek the perfect careers, the perfect relationships and the perfect child to complete their lives. Plans are oddly and unexpectedly thrown off track, challenging the two couples' beliefs in themselves and what it means to be a parent.

*Actors appeared courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.