Opening night for 'Becoming Cuba'!

Happy opening night to Melinda, Bevin, and the Huntington's Becoming Cuba team!

"There's nothing else more 'home' than...the place where people understand you"

Melinda Lopez and Huntington Theatre Artistic Director Peter DuBois chat about Melinda's three-year residency with the company, which begins this summer.

Alumni news, in brief:

One-act plays by Michael Parsons (The Lighthouse) and Jaclyn Villano (The Rain Fell Up), and ten-minute plays by MJ Halberstadt (w4m) and Jaclyn Villano (Ratings Worthy) will be presented at the KCACTF Region 1 Festival. The event will be held in Hyannis in January...

Walt McGough has been announced as one of the Huntington Theatre Company’s 2012-14 cohort of Huntington Playwriting Fellows. Catch a reading of his play The Haberdasher tonight at 7 p.m. at BPT, part of Boston Actors Theater’s Beantown Reading Series…

A very nice review of Fresh Ink’s production of Ginger Lazarus’ The Embryos, which starts its final weekend of performances on Thursday...

Our town as Our Town

Can you find Melinda? Photo: Paul Marotta

Opening in previews tonight: The Huntington’s production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, directed by David Cromer. Looking forward to seeing our town perform this classic, one of my favorite plays ever.

Alumni news, in brief:

Melinda Lopez’s Becoming Cuba is one of four plays to be read as part of this weekend’s Summer Workshop at the Huntington. BTM vet Patrick Gabridge’s Flight also gets the workshop treatment in this artist-driven event. Read all about it here…

MJ Halberstadt’s w4m opens this week, part of Boston Actors’ Theatre’s Summer Play Festival 2012. The fest – which this year carries the theme “what locals are up to” – also includes shorts by BTM playwrights Patrick Gabridge, Jan Velco Soolman, Ellen Davis Sullivan…and R.D. Murphy (the man, the myth, the legend that is Bob Murphy)…

But back to MJ for a sec: His short play Peggy’s Properties is part of the first annual Sweet Tea Summer Reading Series (Tea in a Big Mug Productions) in NYC, which continues this weekend…

BPT alum playwright (and narrative designer!) Jonathon Myers will sit on a number of writing-related panels at next week’s IGDA Summit, the annual conference of the International Game Developers Association…

Friends and fans

Melinda Lopez

Friends and fans. After a wonderful and satisfying twenty-five years in the theatre, I have decided it's time to spread my wings! The success of my last musical Dante in Abu Ghraib has allowed me the financial stability to finally pursue my lifelong dream of investment banking.

I know you are all thinking this is a crazy whim. But the truth is, I’ve been dabbling in finance my whole life. Sometimes, during rehearsals in the back of the theatre, when I knew I was supposed to be feeling the magic, instead, I’d fiddle with adjustable rate mortgage numbers, just for fun. And I found it (secretly) thrilling to read The Wall Street Journal. It started from loneliness -- I was in production in Berlin, and I found the familiarity of the numbers comforting. I thought, I’ll stop as soon as I'm home. I never wanted my kids to know. But lately, with a smart phone, and down time between acts…well you see where this is going.

An interview with a local playwright and an update on the DG Conference

Local playwright and Huntington Fellow, Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, who has a production in the forthcoming Huntington season, recently garnered some recognition when she was interviewed by Adam Szymkowicz. Read more about Rosanna, her upcoming projects, and her experience as a Huntington Fellow.

Also, an update on the Dramatists' Guild Conference: In

addition to watching it life, 2AM Theatre will be live-blogging during the conference. If you don't know about this online community already, learn more about 2AM Theatre and follow #2AMt on twitter.

Thanks to Ilana Brownstein for the updates. Get more updates like these by joining the Facebook group, Boston & New English Playwrights.

Award-winning play by Obolensky to be featured in Samuel French's OOB fest

Alum Masha Obolensky’s ten-minute 'Girls Play,' sponsored by the Huntington Theatre Company, has been selected to participate in Samuel French’s Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival.

Chosen from more than 1,000 submissions from producing companies, playwriting workshops, and university theatre programs, 40 plays will be presented at the 36th annual festival at The Lion Theatre on Theatre Row July 19-24. The week-long event features a full program of plays performed each night.

'Girls Play' was the winner of the 2010 KCACTF National Ten-Minute Play Award, and was also featured in Boston Theater Marathon 12 and at The Source Festival in D.C.

Congratulations, Masha!

Diamond receives Wimberly Award

Lydia Diamond received this year’s Wimberly Award from the Huntington Theatre Company at the theatre's annual Spotlight Spectacular! gala benefit last night. The Wimberly Award is the highest honor given by the Huntington. See Boston.com's blurb and a photo here.

Lydia recently won the IRNE Award for Best New Play (Large Theatre) for the Huntington’s production of Stick Fly.

Congratulations, Lydia! You are on a roll!

Watch Lydia Diamond's fabulous IRNE acceptance speech!

Critic Ed Siegel says BPT's Volcano production "is a great tribute to Lipsky"

On WBUR 90.9fm, theatre critic Ed Siegel reviewed both the late Jon Lipsky's Walking the Volcano here at BPT and Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet at The Huntington. Below is an excerpt, but you can read the rest or listen to the broadcast.

"Boston Playwrights’ Theatre is currently staging 'Walking the Volcano' by Jon Lipsky, who passed away last month.

"'Walking the Volcano' is a very smart stitching together of eight 10-minute plays he wrote for the Boston Theater Marathon (which is coming up next month, also at Boston Playwrights’ Theater). Four actors play a variety of lovers, or in one case a father and daughter, who are debating whether to be stuck in the middle or live life in the fast lane. The play’s title refers to living along the edge, literally walking along a narrow ridge where one has to balance ecstasy versus security.

"The production is a great tribute to Lipsky, who was an old editor of mine and also gave me a painful lesson or two at the poker table before I became a theater critic. As the older couple, Paula Langton and Gabriel Kuttner are particularly moving, maybe because their life choices mirror those of a geezer like me a little closer. And the last playlet, with a woman dying of cancer, hits really close to home because of the playwright’s death.

"Lipsky would have been proud of the support that both the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and the Huntington Theatre Company continue to give to his craft."

Opps so great I wanna keep 'em to myself

The Huntington Theatre Company is now accepting applications for its Playwriting Fellows program. Huntington Playwriting Fellows are awarded two-year residencies during which they receive a modest stipend from the theatre, participate in a writers’ collective with the artistic staff, attend Huntington productions and events, and are eligible for readings and support through the Breaking Ground reading series. The Fellows program is supported by the Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays. Read more about the program, and apply here. 

Also, help Playwrights’ Commons get going with a bang by applying for its Freedom Art Theatre Retreat. This exciting group -- founded by BU professor Ilana Brownstein, who also created the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program -- just launched its Web site, which features information about this opportunity. Art in the woods! Check it out.

Masha, Masha, Masha!

BPT alum Masha Obolensky has been selected by the Huntington Theatre Company as a member of its 2010 class of Playwriting Fellows.

This honor caps off an exciting year for Masha: Her 10-minute ‘Girls Play’ won the 2010 KCACTF National Ten-Minute Play Award, and was performed in the Boston Theater Marathon and at The Source Festival in D.C. The full-length version of the script, The Girl Problem, was awarded a 2010 WordBRIDGE fellowship. Earlier this year, Masha received the 2010 PEN New England Discovery Award, and her play Not Enough Air was produced by the Nora Theatre in Cambridge.

Masha joins the long list of BPT alums selected to participate in this prestigious program: Lydia Diamond, John Kuntz, Melinda Lopez, Ronan Noone, John Shea, Kate Snodgrass, Sinan Unel, and Joyce Van Dyke.

Through the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program, the Huntington fosters relationships with talented local playwrights at all stages of their careers, from emerging talents to established professionals, and encourages and facilitates conversations among Boston's playwriting community. Fellows are awarded two-year residencies during which they are provided a modest honorarium, participate in a bi-weekly writers' collective, and benefit from access to the artistic staff and to the resources of the Huntington. The 2010 class of Huntington Fellows was selected from among 65 applicants; the group also includes playwrights Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, Miranda Craigwell, and Lawrence Goodman.

Congratulations, Masha – we’ll be watching to see what amazing things await you in 2011!