BRIC Arts | Media presents work in progress by collaborators from Carnegie Mellon

Brooklyn's BRIC Arts | Media presents BRIClab, a commissioning and residency program that offers local artists time and space to explore and expand the possibilities of their work in music, dance, theater and multi-disciplinary performance. In February, BRIClab will present work-in-progress showings of LOOKING AT YOU, an immersive techno-noir music-theater piece confronting the issue of privacy in our digitized society and the question of how loss of privacy could transform us as a global culture.

LOOKING AT YOU has a score by composer Kamala Sankaram and a libretto by Rob Handel, head of dramatic writing at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. The project was born out of the the artists' encounter with Alessandro Acquisti's work at Carnegie Mellon’s Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory. Acquisti is collaborating on creating the technology for the piece. LOOKING AT YOU is directed by Kristin Marting, Artistic Director of HERE and Founding Co-Director of Prototype Festival.

Jess Honovich '17 at Actors Theatre of Louisville

HARDWARE by Jess Honovich (MFA '17) was one of the six plays selected from hundreds of submissions to Actors Theatre of Louisville's legendary Ten-Minute Play Contest. It opens tomorrow night. Here's a description: “Two teenage employees work to finish their last tasks before closing time at a B-list computer store in Pittsburgh. HARDWARE is a meditation on work and the understanding that no one really knows anything.”

Sanguine Theatre Company features Gillian Beth Durkee '18

The delightfully named Sanguine Theatre Company's annual Project Playwright: An Exploration of New Work will include LITTLE SOUVENIRS by Gillian Beth Durkee (MFA '18). In the play, an unlikely duo of ghost hunters spends three days in a haunted mansion, while a ghost named Greta grasps for any memory of her death and the life that preceded it. The readings take place January 15 at New York's Access Theater.

HATCHET LADY by Savannah Reich '15 in Minneapolis

Walking Shadow Theatre Company in Minneapolis produced HATCHET LADY, a feminist rock musical about “angel of destruction” Carry Nation by Savannah Reich (MFA '15) with music by Luc Parker. The company first met Reich through their Script Pitch Program: “We put out a call for 100-word proposals, and Savannah Reich's idea was selected by Walking Shadow's company members from a pool of 116 submissions.”

THREE WOMEN IN A WILDFIRE by Julianne Jigour '15 in L.A.

Playground-LA presented new work from Julianne Jigour (MFA '15) as part of their Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival collaboration. Writers were given less than a week to look into their crystal balls to generate original ten-minute plays inspired by the topic, “Probable Future or Possible Future.”

Recent alumni at the HBMG Foundation National Winter Playwrights Retreat

The HBMG Foundation describes its annual retreat in the San Juan Mountains as one that “prioritizes the playwright, not the work being produced.” 2018 residents include Amy Gijsbers van Wijk (MFA '16) and Tracy Held Potter (MFA '15).

Ensemble Studio Theatre LA recently presented Potter's play GROUNDING as part of LA FEST. Meanwhile, on the East Coast, Red Caravan presented Gijsbers can Wijk's DIRTY DIRTY in their Beehive Collective series. The reading benefited Days for Girls, a non-profit which aids in giving women all across the world access to menstrual hygiene products that are hand-made, sustainable, and created for specific living conditions and needs.