Colt Coeur is thrilled to announce our 2nd commission ever, our 1stpartnership with the Women’s Project Theater (on our upcoming 4th annual Parity Plays Festival – stay tuned for more details), and the launch of our CoCo Residents program.
COMMISSIONED PLAYWRIGHT 2017-2018
Antoinette Nwandu is a New York-based playwright via Los Angeles. In June, Steppenwolf presented the World Premiere of her play PASS OVER which sparked a national conversation about bigotry and implicit bias in critical responses. Her play BREACH will receive a World Premiere at Victory Gardens in February 2018, and she is currently under commission from Echo Theater Company in Los Angeles. Antoinette’s plays have been supported by the Sundance Theater Lab, MacDowell, the Cherry Lane Mentor Project (mentor: Katori Hall), Kennedy Center, Page73, Ars Nova, PlayPenn, Space on Ryder Farm, Southern Rep, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This Time, and The Movement Theater Company. Honors include spots on the 2016 and 2017 Kilroys lists, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, the Negro Ensemble Company’s Douglas Turner Ward Prize, and a Literary Fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Antoinette is an alum of the Ars Nova Play Group, the Naked Angels Issues PlayLab, and Dramatists Guild Fellowship. Additional honors include being named a Ruby Prize finalist, PONY Fellowship finalist, Page73 Fellowship finalist, NBT’s I Am Soul Fellowship finalist, and two-time Princess Grace Award semi-finalist. Education: Harvard, The University of Edinburgh, Tisch School of the Arts.
Our 10th world premiere…
Ms. Nwandu and CoCo Artistic Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt are currently developing a new play, the company’s 10th – and their 5th play created from scratch – with a company of actors and designers. The devised theater piece will tackle thorny existential and socio-political questions: “What does it mean to be American? Who gets to determine that definition and how?” addressing the United States as a country at a crossroads. A country at odds with itself. Tensions that the play will explore include the rise of white nationalism as a backlash against the multiculturalization of America; toxic masculinity at odds with a heightened awareness of trans and queer identities; and the ubiquity of social media in the face of the loss of privacy and anonymity. For this reason there is no better time to discover afresh who we are as a nation than by revisiting moments in our storied history and exploring how they impact our lives today. We aim to uncover the parallels between historical and contemporary oppressions and how we as a nation recover ourselves from them.
Residents: Playwrights & Directors 2017-2018
The Residents program will provide 6 playwrights & directors with the invaluable resources of space, community, and a small stipend. Artistic Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt and company member playwrights MJ Kaufman, Steven Levenson, and Ana Nogueira will meet with the Residents on a quarterly basis.
Kate Cortesi is a Brooklyn-based playwright and screenwriter who grew up in Washington D.C. Her full-length plays include One More Less, Great Kills, and A Patron of the Arts. Her work has been developed at Playwrights Horizons, New Dramatists, South Coast Rep, Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, terraNOVA Collective, The Lark, and Colt Coeur, and has been produced at The Underbelly in Edinburgh, Columbia University, and Premiere Stages at Kean University. Awards/honors include Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship (2014-2015), Columbia University’s Karen Brownstein Award, NYFA Fellowship (2016), Kilroy’s List Honorable Mention (2016), and the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist (2017). Kate is a proud resident playwright at New Dramatists. She has taught writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Riker’s Island, and a lot of places in between.
Jeremy O. Harris is an actor and playwright currently residing in New Haven, CT by way of Los Angeles, CA. His full-length plays include, Xander Xyst, Dragon: 1, “Daddy”, WATER SPORTS; or insignificant white boys, and Slave Play. Short plays include: I TRIED TO WRITE A POEM & THIS CAME OUT, Untitled Merchant of Venice Adaptation (collaboration with conceptual artist David Birkin), N*Words In Paris, IDK (a cute race-based pyschosis), and NORF. He is a 2016 MacDowell Colony Fellow, 2016 Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting Award Finalist, 2016 Princess Grace Award Semi-Finalist and is under commission from Lincoln Center Theater and Playwrights Horizons. Jeremy is currently in his second year at the Yale School of Drama for Playwriting.
Rehana Lew Mirza is currently a resident playwright (w/ Mike Lew) at Ma-Yi Theater as part of the Mellon National Playwright Residency. She is also a 2017 HBO Access Fellow. Additional honors include: 2016 Rita Goldberg Playwrights’ Workshop fellow at the Lark, 2016 Lilly Award (Stacey Mindich “Go Write A Play”), Rhinebeck residency with collaborators Sam Willmott and Mike Lew for Bhangin’ It, TCG Fellowship with New Georges. Productions: Soldier X (Ma-Yi; Brooklyn College; 2015 Kilroy); Lonely Leela(LaGuardia Performing Arts Center); Barriers (Desipina and Asian American Theater Company). Commissions: NNPN/InterAct for Neighborhood Watch; E.S.T./Sloan for Particles of Pakistan; La Jolla Playhouse for The Colonialism Trilogy (w/ Mike Lew); NYSCA/Lark for Soldier X; Kennedy Center commission (w/ Mike Lew.) MFA: Columbia University; BFA: NYU Tisch. www.rehanamirza.com
Danya Taymor is a director and translator. Recent work: Nwandu’s Pass Over (Steppenwolf), Tuvalu (Sundance) and Flat Sam (PlayPenn), Yungerberg’s Esai’s Table (Cherry Lane), Kuritzkes’ The Sensuality Party (New Group), Watkins’ Wyoming (Lesser America) and My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer (The Flea), Soon-He Stanton’s Cygnus (Women’s Project), Gancher’s The Place We Built (The Flea), and Legom’s I Hate Fucking Mexicans (The Flea), which she also translated. She was a Time Warner Directing Fellow at WP, a 2050 fellow at NYTW, and is a current Artist in Residence at TFANA, a member of EST, and an Associate Artist at The Flea. Recipient of: Van Lier Directing Fellowship; Gates Foundation Grant, Rough Draft Residency (Drama League) and is an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. Upcoming: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Everybody (Juilliard) and Martyna Majok’s Queens (LCT3).
Pirronne Yousefzadeh is a Brooklyn based director, writer, and educator. Recent projects include Utopia, Minnesota by Meg Miroshnik (2016 Sagal Fellowship, Williamstown Theatre Festival), That High Lonesome Sound (Actors Theatre of Louisville; 2015 Humana Festival) and We Are Proud To Present A Presentation… by Jackie Sibblies Drury (InterAct Theatre Company), And If You Lose Your Way, or A Food Odyssey (Invisible Dog). Her productions of The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane by Jen Silverman (InterAct Theater Company) and In The Blood (Theatre Horizon) together received a total of fifteen Barrymore Award nominations, including Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Overall Production. She has directed/developed work at The Public, New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, Soho Rep, Playwrights Horizons, Atlantic Theater Company, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Rising Circle Theater Collective, Woodshed Collective (The Tenant: Best of 2011, L Magazine), Partial Comfort, Noor Theatre, Rising Phoenix Rep, HERE Arts Center, New York Musical Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Wild Project, Dixon Place, Living Theatre, Lark Play Development Center, New Dramatists, Juilliard, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Geva Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Two River, Milwaukee Rep, On The Boards, Perseverance Theatre, Berkshire Fringe Festival, Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, and Hangar Theatre, where she was a 2006 Drama League Directing Fellow. M.F.A. in Directing from Columbia University, (Shubert Presidential Fellow). Current and upcoming: Mad Forest by Caryl Churchill (Columbia), Veil’d by Monet Hurst-Mendoza (Astoria Performing Arts Center), The Invisible Hand (Cleveland Playhouse). Member, SDC. www.pirronne.com
Catherine Yu‘s plays include Le Jeté, Stargaze, The Sun Experiment (FringeNYC 2014 Award for Excellence in Playwriting; Time Out New York’s Top Ten Music and Nightlife Events of The Week, published by IndieTheaterNow), and The Day Is Long To End. Her short plays have been commissioned by the 52nd Street Project, UglyRhino, and Culture Project. Her short play “A Sand Romance” was a 2016 Heidman finalist. Her poem “To the Movement” was featured in a recent Planned Parenthood fundraiser. She has been a NYTW Emerging Artist of Color and Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab writer, a 2016 NYSCA/NYFA Playwright Fellow, and a MacDowell Colony Fellow. She is currently working on a play set in Mexico City and a libretto for a Chinese opera. BA: Stanford University. MFA: NYU.
