Houston's Supergravity opens tonight

 

Opening tonight at the Factory Theatre, Vagabond Theatre Group’s production of Heather Houston’s Supergravity and the Eleventh Dimension...Heather's thesis play. Read more about its early development here. Break a leg!

Alumni news, in brief:

Heather Houston's Supergravity and the Eleventh Dimension opens July 11 at the Factory Theatre, a production by Vagabond Theatre Group...

Lydia Diamond's Stick Fly is part of Arden Theatre Company's 2013-14 season...

Gregory Fletcher directed a reading of the new musical The Fairy Hoax at WorkShop Theater Company last weekend...

Peter M. Floyd's play Absence (a finalist in the 2013 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition) was read on the main stage of Atlanta's Alliance Theatre this week...

Jinxed, by K. Alexa Mavromatis, is included in the new Smith & Kraus anthology The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2012. The volume also includes plays by BTM vets Christopher Lockheart, Nina Mansfield, R.D. (a.k.a. Bob) Murphy, and Marisa Smith. Kirsten Greenidge's Milk Like Sugar (which began its life as Annie Desmond Gets a Tattoo in BTM XI), is in S&K's New Playwrights: The Best Plays 2012, also just published...

And speaking of BTM plays, Ronan Noone's Boyfriend and Phil Schroeder's Bad Dogs and Best Friends were featured in Image Theater's 3 For 3 last weekend...


Alumni news will return on July 9.

Alumni news, in brief:

New plays by Lydia Diamond (Smart People) and Melinda Lopez (Becoming Cuba) will be part of the Huntington Theatre Company's 2013-14 season...

Heather Houston’s Supergravity and the Eleventh Dimension has been announced as Vagabond Theatre Group’s next full production, this July…

John Greiner-Ferris’ play Turtles will be read on March 13 at the Provincetown Theater, part of its Winter Reading Series…

BTM XIV running order announced!

 

12-1 PM

Preview of Coming Attractions by Andy Dolan, Merrimack Repertory Theatre

Saving Walter Cronkite by Cliff Blake, Simple Machine

Lycanthropy by Danny Sklar, Theatre on Fire

A Game of Chicken by Sean Walsh, Centastage

Nothing Personal by Tom Kee, Actors’ Shakespeare Project

The Comfort Station by Robert Brustein, American Repertory Theater

1-2 PM

Shrapnel by Yavni Bar-Yam, Nextdoor Theater Company

Love, Billy Bunny by Peter M. Floyd, Emerson Stage

The Flying Winter Princess by Mary Conroy, Stoneham Theatre

The Experiment by George Matry Masselam, laulapides Company

Storrow Drive by Jefferson Navicky, Playwrights’ Platform

On the Ground Floor With...Heather Houston

Playwright Heather Houston

On May 1-4, work by this year’s MFA class – Peter Floyd, John Greiner-Ferris, and Heather Houston -- will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with Reginald Edmund’s Southbridge. Southbridge was the winner of the 2011 Southern Playwrights’ Competition, and is part of the Sister City Playwrights Exchange.

But first, we celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays.

All four readings are free – reserve your seat and get additional information here.

Tell us a little about your thesis play.

My play, Supergravity and the Eleventh Dimension was sparked by two separate ideas that sort of crashed into each other, scattering shrapnel everywhere, shrapnel which I then tried to direct at my characters.  One idea was that of isolation, seclusion for four characters at a cabin.  The other idea was that of M theory in physics (which isn't really my idea at all, of course).  I started thinking about loss, and how each person deals with it differently, which seemed to play right into physics and relativity... and at that point I started confusing myself, and so I thought I should write a play about it.  What resulted were Dan, Fred, Leslie, and Tom (a theoretical physicist), four friends who deal with the loss of their friend, Carmen, by visiting her cabin, which then becomes a space where time and memory are twisted.

What makes you passionate about this idea?

I'm struck again and again by the human impulse to fight for explanations for loss, and how each explanation is so different, so personal.  Also, of course, I'm excited by any opportunity to totally geek out over concepts which completely blow my mind, like black holes and superstring theory.