EVEN MORE 2008 Retreat Participants!!!

WILL POWER

Will Power is an award-winning playwright, rapper, actor, and educator.

Most recently, Power received the 2006 Lucille Lortell Award for Outstanding Musical for his play, The Seven, Theatre Communications Group’s 2006 Peter Zeisler Memorial Award recognizing innovation, the prestigious Joyce Award, a 2005 NYFA Fellowship, a 2004 Jury Award for Best Theatre Performance at the HBO/US Comedy Arts Festival, and a 2004 Drama Desk nomination for Best Solo Performance.

Power’s skills have also been captured on television and film. Recent guest appearances include Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason (PBS), The Colbert Report (Comedy Central), Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC) and Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam (HBO). He was the lead male in the film, Drylongso, a hit at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and was also featured in the documentary, All Fathers are Sons.

He has been highlighted in publications as varied as his skills. From glowing reviews in The New York Times and American Theater Magazine, to interviews in VIBE and The Source, Will Power deftly walks the line between serious, studied actor and urban hip hop MC. Will Power’s varied skills, high-energy performances and lyrics are matched only by his remarkable teaching ability, providing communities across the globe with tools of self-expression.

Will was in residence at McCarter during the 2007-2008 season through an Artists & Communities program of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, a project of the National Endowment for the Arts and Theatre Communications Group.

JOSE RIVERA

Jose Rivera is the author of 27 plays and 13 screenplays. He is the recipient of two OBIE Awards for Playwriting, a Fulbright Arts Fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Award, a McKnight Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, and a Kennedy Center Grant. He studied with Gabriel Garcia Marquez at the Sundance Institute and was writer-in-residence at the Royal Court Theatre, London.

U.S. premieres include THE HOUSE OF RAMON IGLESIA (Ensemble Studio Theatre), THE PROMISE (Ensemble Studio Theatre), EACH DAY DIES WITH SLEEP (Circle Rep & Berkeley Rep), SLAUGHTER IN THE LAKE (Ensemble Studio Theatre), MARISOL (Humana Festival), CLOUD TECTONICS (Humana Festival), REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT (South Coast Rep.), SONNETS FOR AN OLD CENTURY (Greenway Arts Alliance), SUENO (Hartford Stage), TAPE (Humana Festival), GIANTS HAVE US IN THEIR BOOKS (Magic Theatre), MARICELA DE LA LUZ LIGHTS THE WORLD (La Jolla Playhouse), THE STREET OF THE SUN (Mark Taper Forum), ADORATION OF THE OLD WOMAN (La Jolla Playhouse), SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS (Joseph Papp Public Theatre & LAByrinth Theatre), MASSACRE (SING TO YOUR CHILDREN) (Goodman Theatre & Teatro Vista), BRAINPEOPLE (ACT, San Francisco), GLIESE 581D (Chicago Humanities Festival), BOLEROS FOR THE DISENCHANTED (Yale Rep.), YELLOW (Collaboraction), and FLOWERS (Ensemble Studio Theatre).

Rivera was nominated for a 2005 Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Writers Guild of America award for his screenplay “The Motorcycle Diaries.” In 2006 he wrote and directed the short film “The Tape Recorder.” His film “Trade” was the first film to premiere at the United Nations. His screen adaptation of Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD will begin production winter 2008. In 2007 he directed the music video of Serj Tankian’s (System of a Down) song “The Sky is Over.”

ANNA ZIEGLER

Anna Ziegler’s plays include: BFF (W.E.T. at the DR2 Theatre, 2007), NOVEL (SPF, 2007), PHOTOGRAPH 51 (commissioned by Active Cultures and produced February-March, 2008), DOV AND ALI (Theatre 503, June-July 2008), LIFE SCIENCE (Bulldog Theatrical, 2007), VARIATIONS ON A THEME (to be work-shopped July 2008 by Chautauqua Theater Company, directed by Ethan McSweeny) , IN THE SAME ROOM, THE MINOTAUR, TO BE FAIR, and EVERYTHING YOU HAVE.

Ziegler’s plays have been developed by: The Sundance Theatre Lab, The Old Vic New Voices program, Primary Stages, The Geva Theatre Center, The McCarter Theatre, The Lark Play Development Center, Ars Nova, The Kennedy Center, Theater J, New Georges (where she is an Affiliated Artist), Clubbed Thumb, The New Harmony Project, The hotINK Festival, Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, Catalyst Theater, The Playwright’s Center PlayLabs Festival, Short + Sweet Festival (Melbourne, Australia), The Fireraisers Theatre Company at the Hampstead Theatre (London) and The Birmingham Rep, and by Company B at the Belvoir St. Theatre (Sydney, Australia).

She was a Dramatist’s Guild Fellow for 2004-2005, a member of the 2005 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and is currently a member of the Lark’s Monthly Meetings of the Minds writers’ group.

She has been published in Ten-Minute Plays for 2 Actors: The Best of 2004 (Smith and Kraus, Inc.) and New American Short Plays 2005 (Backstage Books, ed. Craig Lucas). BFF and LIFE SCIENCE will be published by Dramatists Play Service and BFF will be included in the anthology: New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007 (Smith and Kraus). A graduate of Yale, she holds an MFA from Tisch.

Anna Ziegler’s poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2003, The Threepenny Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Reactions, The Mississippi Review, Arts and Letters, Mid-American Review, Smartish Pace, The Saint Ann’s Review, and many other journals.

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