2011 Winners
Meet the ANPF 2011
Playwrights and Their Winning Scripts
Couples by
Gary Dontzig
 Gary Dontzig wrote and produced such
television shows as Murphy Brown, Suddenly Susan, Becker, and
State of Grace
and in the process won three Emmy Awards as well as
the Humanitas, Alma, Prism, and a few others he
can’t quite remember. Prior to his work behind the
camera, he was a modestly successful actor, working
in many major US regional theaters, including Arena
Stage, Hartford Stage, the Mark Taper Forum, the Old
Globe, and Seattle Rep, to name a few; he also
appeared on TV in sitcoms and in a number of pilots
that went nowhere. He did this for more years than
he cares to remember. He now resides in hills of
Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he wakes every morning
to a spectacular view of the Sangre de Christo
Mountains. After an appalling cup of Chinese
medicinal tea, he hikes his dog, Max; has a soy
protein drink; and spends at least part of his day
writing plays. He’s a proud vegetarian/vegan of 36
years; this is amazing since he tells people he’s
only 34 years old. He does consider the number of
animals still living because of his diet to be one
of his major accomplishments.
Couples
explores the question What happens to a
couple over the 30 years of a relationship?
The nervousness of the first meeting, the excitement
of the attraction, the warning signs, the inability
to resist, the fear of the commitment, the leap into
the void, and then, 30 years later, who
they have become—as
a
couple
and
as
individuals. Told through a series of vignettes, Couples is a
dramedy about three entirely separate relationships,
their love for each other, their resentments, their
anger, their needs, their wants, their ability to
negotiate the difficult terrain of a partnership,
and their willingness to compromise . . . or not.
Directed by
Caroline Shaffer, the cast comprised Cristofer
Jean, Michael Elich, Gina Daniels, Caroline
Shaffer, Ted Deasy, Benajah Cobb, Kimberly Scott,
Caroline Shaffer, and Dayvin Turchiano.
Performance were Thursday, October 20, at 2 p.m.
and Saturday, October 22, at 8 p.m.
Fernando by
Steven Haworth
 Steven Haworth wrote [home] or The Quest
for the Lost Tablet of Ur for Zoo District
and adapted Mikail Bulgakov's Flight for the
Open Fist Theatre, both in Los Angeles. In New York
his Little Fishes
was produced at Abingdon Theater, Dark Age was
staged at Project 3 Ensemble Theatre, as well as The White Cave. In
Pittsburgh Two
Tribes was featured at the Carnegie Mellon
Showcase of New Plays. In New Zealand he was one of
four playwrights contributing to the Big Kahuna project
directed by Christine Sang. Haworth was associate
artistic director of the Project 3 Ensemble Theatre
in residence at the Ohio Theatre in Soho, New York.
He has an MFA in playwriting from Carnegie Mellon
University.
In Fernando, Zachariah
Smythe,
assistant professor of art, has come to Madrid to
study a painting by Fernando De La Cruz. Zach
considers the enormous painting a masterpiece and
the painter one of the greatest Spanish artists of
the past 100 years. He is entirely alone in this
belief. Still, Zach is willing to bet everything on
an article about this painting. Unfortunately, he
has run out of professional chances, his time in
Madrid is limited, and his sobriety is tenuous.
Enter Teresa, an astonishingly brilliant and
beautiful Spanish woman full of secrets and rage.
Directed by John
Stadelman, the cast comprised Rex Young, Miriam A.
Laube, Jim Garcia, Doug Rowe, and Holly Weber
Neimark. Performances were Friday, October 21, at
2 p.m. and Sunday, October 23, at 2 p.m.
Spin, or Twilight of
the Bohemians by Carol Verburg
 Carol Verburg wrote her first
prize-winning play at 16 and her second, a rock
musical, in 1968. Alongside a career in academic and
trade publishing, she helped found the Provincetown
Playwrights’ Lab and headed Cape Cod theater
companies in Provincetown, Bourne, and Cotuit. There
she produced the late artist Edward Gorey’s many
original “entertainments” and directed scripts
ranging from Hamlet
(with a Gorey set design) to the US debut of
Peter Shaffer’s The
Gift of the Gorgon. Carol’s own plays
include The
Whistling Pig (Cotuit; honorable mention,
Jane Chambers Award), The Abduction (Bourne; Utah
Shakespearean Festival), and Lady Day in Love
(Bourne, Sandwich, San Francisco: Eureka Theatre
staged reading starring Ledisi, 1999; production
starring Kim Nalley, 2006). She currently lives
mostly in San Francisco, works as a freelance writer
and editor, and leads the Mechanics’ Institute
Library’s indie publishing workshop. Recent books
include Edward
Gorey Plays Cape Cod and the mystery Croaked.
In Spin, or Twilight of
the Bohemians, Jerome Hart’s
unexpected death devastates Mimi Locke. What will
she do? What will Jerome’s family do with his cats,
belongings, and the home he and Mimi shared? She’s
already fighting off Vince, a handyman sniffing for
loot. When Jerome’s sister Catherine, her husband
Anton, and their daughter Stella move in, Mimi feels
as besieged as the ’60s lesbian warrior heroine
Lavender Jones. Stella, who hates her parents and
idolizes Lavender Jones, becomes a soft target for
Vince. Meanwhile Anton's making friends with ex-monk
Ricardo Yount, who wants Jerome’s house for the new
HQ of his Ethical Wealth Institute. As betrayals and
losses pile up, both Stella and Mimi must rediscover
their inner Lavender Jones.
Directed by Lenny
Neimark, the cast comprised Douglas Rowe, David
Kelly, Rodney Gardiner, Mark Barsekian, Brandy
Carson, Terri McMahon, Ellie von Radics, and Holly
Weber Neimark. Performances were Thursday, October
20, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, October 22, at 2 p.m.
Countdown to the
Happy Day by Thomas W. Stephens
 Playwright, director, actor, and
educator Tom Stephens founded the Department of
Theatre at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now
Randolph College) in Lynchburg, Virginia. He has
written dozens of plays that have been produced or
developed at numerous venues, including the National
Playwrights Conference of the Eugene O’Neill Theater
Center, Berkeley Stage Company, Source Theatre
Company, Pittsburgh New Play Festival, the
University of Virginia, the J. F. Kennedy Center’s
Page to Stage Festival, Barter Theatre’s Appalachian
Festival of Plays and Playwrights, and DC’s Capital
Fringe Festival. Tom is a member of the Dramatists
Guild and Washington, DC’s Playwrights Forum. He is
also a regular participant in Charles Maryan’s
Playwrights and Directors Workshop in New York City.
Countdown
to the Happy Day is a two-character drama
that depicts, in vivid street language and with
occasional grim humor and profanity, the chance
involvement of Gertie, thirties and a self-inflicted
street person, and Cervin, a hulking 15-year-old,
both of whom are African American. From their first
encounter on a nighttime city street, the two are
chary of each other and emotionally combustible.
Gertie, a troubled US Army vet, resists being drawn
into the world of Cervin, a seventh-grade dropout.
Their relationship nonetheless grows ever more
overlaid, complex, and inevitable. In the play’s
final moments, they together chant a “countdown” to
a happy day they both so crave and for which they
continue waiting.
Directed by Claudia
Alick and Brian Demar Jones, the cast comprised
Kimberly Scott, Christopher Livingston, and Brian
Demar Jones. Performances were Wednesday, October
19, at 8 p.m. and Friday, October 21, at 8 p.m.
Host
Playwright EM Lewis
 EM
Lewis, an ANPF 2008 winner with her
play Song of Extinction, is
returning to Ashland this year as our ANPF
2011 host playwright. She will be welcoming
this year's winners, moderating the
talkbacks, and leading
the playwriting workshop. Lewis won the 2009
Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award from the
American Theater Critics Association
for Song of Extinction, which
premiered in Los Angeles, produced by Moving
Arts at [Inside] the Ford. The play also won
the University of Oregon’s EcoDrama
Festival, the Ted Schmitt Award for the
premiere of an outstanding new play from the
Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and
Production of the Year from the LA Weekly Awards.
It was published in Dramatics magazine
and
by
Samuel
French,
leading
to
productions
in
the
Edinburgh
Fringe Festival, at Ion Theater in San
Diego, and at the Guthrie.
Lewis also
wrote the Primus Prize–winning Iraq War
hostage drama Heads and Infinite
Black Suitcase, about a
group of people dealing with tragedy in
rural Oregon, which will be published by
Samuel French this fall. Lewis is a member
of Moving Arts Theater Company, the
Dramatists Guild, the International Centre
for Women Playwrights, and the Alliance of
Los Angeles Playwrights. She is originally
from Oregon, lived in Los Angeles for quite
a while, and is at Princeton University
now—the recipient of a 2010–2011 Hodder
Fellowship—working on a new play. She will
be workshopping Magellanica: A New and Accurate
Map of the World at
the William Inge Center for the Arts
immediately following ANPF. www.emlewisplaywright.com.
Lewis moderated
the talkbacks after all the readings and
led the playwriting
workshop on Saturday, October
22, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
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