In celebration of the end of the 2020-2021 season, we invited the resident playwrights to share their “proudest” accomplishments of the past year living and working during the pandemic. The prompt was: What are you most proud of achieving under the circumstances of the pandemic and quarantine? Think of achievement in its broadest sense…" We compiled their responses below. It’s part recommendation list and part celebration of all that has been done under the most challenging of circumstances.
WILL ARBERY
For me, it's the run of live Zoom performances that we did of Heroes of the Fourth Turning. Director Danya Taymor got together our original cast and designers, through the generosity of producer Jeremy O. Harris, and everyone meticulously recreated the dark Wyoming night in their bathrooms and closets. And even though the performances were free, we raised a lot of money for micro-grants distributed by Playwrights Horizons!
KEVIN ARTIGUE
My proudest moment of the past year was receiving a phone call from the granddaughter of someone real that I wrote a play about (without asking for permission first). The character's name is Molly. This woman was calling to tell me the portrayal of Molly in the play felt very accurate and it was emotional for the family to see her on stage (Zoom). The woman said over the phone that her mother (Molly's real-life daughter) was suffering from terrible dementia, otherwise she would have thanked me herself, for she always felt Molly was brushed aside by history and never given her due.
CARLA CHING
Took a play that was in a drawer and did two online readings of it. Wrote two short plays during AAPI history month, for Theater Mu and 24-Hour Plays, both in support of AAPI social justice groups. Those processes brought me back in touch with the NY/LA and MN AAPI theater communities. I missed my brethren so much.
KATE CORTESI
I loved my kids in their struggles as well as I could
I loved my husband in his struggles as well as I could
I loved the world in its struggles, but honestly I could have loved it better, same with my mom
which I guess is all to say, I struggled as well as I could (to love) sometimes
but sometimes I struggled very poorly, barely put up a fight,
I am not enough I thought more than once and it's true, I'm not,
the world, like my mom, is too much
But that's why we keep struggling, I guess, to love one another in our struggles
however poorly
because none of us on our own is enough
KARA LEE CORTHRON
-I became a writer-producer on the M. Night Shyamalan thriller, Servant, on Apple TV for seasons 3 and 4. (Seasons 1 and 2 are available now to watch!)
-I sold the pilot & rights to my book, Daughters of Jubilation, to Berlanti Productions and I'm currently working with them to make it into a TV show.
-I'm writing a horror film for Warner Brothers, Alloy, & I Am Other, which is an adaptation of the YA horror novel, Survive The Night, by Danielle Vega.
-The Flight Attendant, a show I wrote for, was nominated for a WGA Award and a Golden Globe Award for writing!
-I've gotten pretty good at making quick breads like banana and apple walnut!
JESSIE DICKEY
* Signed a development deal with ABC and Twentieth.
* Got a contract to write a book with my sister.
* Wrote a play about hauntings, empty ritualistic spaces, and memory.
* Married my favorite French guy.
MATTHEW FREEMAN
Started a new play, with the support of fellow playwrights, that I've been meaning to start for a decade. Presented a reading series and dipped my toes into the podcasting world (hooray Active Listening). Wore a mask. Got vaccinated.
SARAH GANCHER
-Russian Troll Farm online production, directed by Jared Mezzocchi and Elizabeth Williamson, produced by TheatreSquared with Hartford Theaterworks and The Civilians. NYT Critic's Pick and NYT Top 10 Theater of 2020 list.
- Created Fill in the Play, an online interactive play that generates a completely new 10-minute play for every user, for Play at Home/Playwrights Realm.
-Wrote radio plays for Playwrights Horizons' Soundstage series and NPR's Playing on Air.
-Upcoming: three upcoming musicals, a film short, and two television projects.
-Received a major commission and residency from Dorset Theater Festival.
-Helped to redesign the curriculum for the New School's new MFA in Contemporary Theatre and Performance.
-Taught classes from undergrad Play 1 to MFA Comedy Master Class to third year MFA playwriting thesis for NYU Tisch and the New School; also taught remote first second grade.
MORGAN GOULD
I got 481 New Yorkers their vaccine appointments and 227 other appointments for people around the country. Get vaccinated!
MARY HAMILTON
Homeschooled (and did not murder, even once!) my 10-year-old...
Delivered instruments to the PS 230 band, and hosted a lot of squeaky horn players in my yard...
Wrote a pilot (almost)...
Knit a square thing...
CHISA HUTCHINSON
Got my first TV-writing gig with Showtime. That would not have been possible without the pandemic because the Zoom room allowed me to keep teaching. And I’m about to sell my first series.
C. JULIAN JIMÉNEZ
Two plays to be published this year (Alligator Mouth, Tadpole Ass and Julio Ain’t Goin’ Down Like That) with Theatrical Rights Worldwide
June Production of Oso Fabuloso & The Bear Backs at INTAR Theatre
Virtual Production of Alligator Mouth, Tadpole Ass at Theatre Rhinoceros
Received a 6-Month Sabbatical at full-salary from Queensborough Community College to finish a new Play.
Lincoln Center Debut this June as Book writer for Latinxoxo
Purchasing my first home in Sullivan County!
ADITI BRENNAN KAPIL:
Corrected my youngest kid’s eating habits (and consequently kinda the whole family’s). Figured out the correct bra size for my oldest. Explained the electoral college to all three.
KRISTEN KOSMAS:
hmm... pride and accomplishment are dicey frameworks for me, but i'm excited about my mail art performance attend the opening — which i started very early in the pandemic — and i'm having fun with all the questions it's raising. also i’m grateful for and surprised by the co-commission from the chocolate factory and on the boards to keep the project going so i can continue to wonder for eight more months — another whole season basically! — about things like who is performing it and where it's being performed.
MIKE LEW:
No.
MONA MANSOUR:
My play, Beginning Days of True Jubilation, created with my theater company SOCIETY, was part of the NEW OHIO's Ice Factory. It can be seen here: ,https://societytheatre.com/bdotj-stream/
And my play, Things in Order, was part of Folkteatern's URGENT DRAMA series: https://fjardescenen.folkteatern.se/node/26
Things In Order, was also done in English directed by Erin Neufer and acted by Brian Bock: https://vimeo.com/487456499
AYA OGAWA:
During the pandemic year:
I have created an interactive video adaptation of a section of my 2015 play, Ludic Proxy; directed workshops for the development of 5 projects; visited 10 virtual & real classrooms and kept 2 kids alive and healthy.
MATTHEW PAUL OLMOS:
My partner and I built a brick firepit from scratch. It is amazing.
I’ll add that I started surfing regularly.
christopher oscar peña:
i co-created an opera mini-series, hired a bunch of friends, ran a writers room, and then shot it in the desert with some of the most amazing artists of our time (premiering next month) and i became the king of the 24-hour viral monologue writing for a lot of people i love. here's the opera: https://blo.org/desert-in/
LYNN ROSEN:
Lynn Rosen pitched and sold a TV show to a major network and is now developing it with them, while spending every waking moment with her two kids in their teeny tiny apartment.
TAMMY RYAN:
My proudest accomplishment over the pandemic is adapting Agatha Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles to the stage, entitled North of Forbes which was commissioned June 2020 from the Pittsburgh Public Theater. Its development was supported by two separate one day workshops at New Dramatists in January and February and the finished play was streamed for the Public Theater's Playtime Series: Commissions N'at in March 2021. I had to read the novel ten times just to understand wft was going on, but I figured it out eventually and now it's a 10+ character play set in a Pittsburgh mansion the summer of 2016, which will either play every regional theater in the country or sit in my trunk for the rest of my career ;) It was a great distraction from the quarantine and a lot of fun in the long run and I'm pretty amazed I did it.
MADHURI SHEKAR:
Parented a marvelous new human, now 16 months old. Survived. Supported my spouse, my parents, and my brother. Understood my true priorities. Have been writing more than I thought possible.
JEN SILVERMAN:
The pandemic endeavor that meant the most to me was writing these two non-fiction essays. Each helped me gain more clarity on questions around art-making, dissent, and identity with which I've been struggling, and each was more personally vulnerable than any public writing that I'd done before.
1. https://lithub.com/on-the-many-forms-our-dissent-can-take/ (Published by Literary Hub with permission of The Gettysburg Review)
2. https://lithub.com/from-stage-to-screen-to-page-a-few-notes-on-writing-across-media/ (Published by Literary Hub)
AURIN SQUIRE:
Last year was unusual. Pandemic but a lot of creativity and productivity. So I...
- wrote Blackfish to be a part of "Seven Deadly Sins" with 6 other playwrights at Miami New Drama. The evening ran for 3 months and just won a Drama League Award for Outstanding Interactive/Socially Distanced Theatre: https://www.playbill.com/article/winners-announced-for-2021-drama-league-awards?fbclid=IwAR1G1Af_RvT6u3VGbuhRmZ00QDCrGW5o2_xXluZt-ngE-eDpjxlnnq8QJ3U
- wrote Mississippi Goddamn for "While We Breathe" digital series of plays about social justice. It also served as fundraiser for the NAACP Legal Fund. Event won the ACTA (American Connected Theatre Award) Website: https://newyorktheater.me/2021/03/10/the-acta-winners-online-theater-awards-for-pandemic-year-one/
- historical drama, Mitchelville, went up in virtual workshop for a week down in South Carolina: https://www.islandpacket.com/entertainment/arts-culture/artcetera/article246552293.html
- personal memory play, The Last Days of William Dale, and dramedy, To Whom It May Concern, was workshopped at Theatre Rhino in San Francisco...online.
- monologue for Joe Biden fundraiser in October performed "Broadway for Biden"
https://deadline.com/2020/10/joe-biden-kamala-harris-broadway-1234592059/
- writing a movie for Amazon
- promoted to co-executive producer on The Good Fight and signed a 3-year development deal at CBS Studio.
- Memories of Mom for Active Listening series at New Dramatists: https://newdramatists.org/podcast/1109
ARIEL STESS:
I started work on my first novel, taught remotely for a year, and wrote a play about teaching remotely for a year!
ANDREA STOLOWITZ:
Adapted a play into an audio drama. Parented.
KARINNE KEITHLEY SYERS:
I am proud that I started the Pelagic School, a sliding-scale/no-one-turned-away membership site and hub for writing groups, a resource for getting writing written, specializing in approaches image rich, gently weird, and structurally expansive. pelagicschool.net
CORI THOMAS:
Spent entire year writing a book. First ever. Not a play. Pretty proud of that.
I Cried to Dream Again: Trafficking, Murder and Deliverance, A Memoir by Sara Kruzan and Cori Thomas, to be published Spring 2022 Knopf/ Random House (pantheon)
Lockdown to be published (TRW)
Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at WP Theater.
Had serious rotten surgery and participated in a 3 hour on camera Columbia University seminar on prison reform one week later smiling the whole time despite feeling horrible.
Directed gut renovation of apartment while recovering from said surgery when Architect flaked out.
Learned to bake.
MELISA TIEN:
-paid off a private loan that had been eating me alive for ten years.
-wrote for and produced a live, online music-theater production, Swell, that employed 30 theater-makers.
-wrote for and co-produced with Karinne Keithley Syers the first season of an ongoing podcast, Active Listening, a New Dramatists program that promotes the use of sound and text equally as creative tools.
-produced an ongoing theatrical experience, Community Forest, that involves people from all over the U.S. and no stage.
-negotiated a standard split for an opera commission after being offered considerably less and remain on good terms with everyone involved.
-made art, wrote articles, and spoke on panels in support of fellow Asians/Asian Americans during AAPI Heritage Month.
KEN URBAN:
— the remote recording and production of audio drama, Vapor Trail, with actors Maulik Pancholy and April Matthis, director Knud Adams, and sound designers and composers Daniel Kluger and Christian Frederickson. Currently in post-production.
— completing four new stage plays that were in various states of disarray before the pandemic which now feel less in disarray.
— my band Occurrence finishing a new album called I Have So Much Love to Give that will be released on August 20, 2021 on Archie & Fox Records, a new label that I founded with Daniel Kluger: https://occurrencemusic.ffm.to/love