About New Voices
 
About the Program
New Voices for the Theater is the nationally acclaimed statewide high school playwriting program that celebrates and cultivates young writing talent from across Virginia. One-act plays from around the state are submitted and eight winners are chosen by a Script Evaluation Committee. The New Voices for the Theater playwriting competition provides an exciting opportunity for Virginia students to work closely with professional theater artists during a summer residency in Richmond and bring their original one-act plays to life on the stage. The young playwrights will get to work with this year’s New Voices Playwright-in-Residence, along with other theater professionals and writers. During the residency, students will participate in workshops and revise their winning scripts. The plays will be premiered as staged readings at the Festival of New Works.
 
History
Over the years there have been countless playwrights, directors, actors and teachers who have stood by this program and its mission to nurture budding playwrights in Virginia. Community and SPARC board members have opened their homes to our residents for dinner, and many have donated funds which have helped sustain this program. Former students often come back to serve as actors, workshop teachers or resident advisors. In addition, major contributors have been stalwart benefactors who have kept this work alive even as it has been passed from one organization to another throughout these twenty-one years. The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation has been a faithful supporter, repeatedly backing their belief in this program with generous contributions. We are also very grateful to TheatreVirginia for passing the program to SPARC. NEW VOICES could not be sustained without all of these people.
 
New Voices for the Theater boasts a writing alumni currently working nationally. New Voices for the Theater is a program of the SPARC - School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community, the largest community-based theater training program in Virginia. Since 1981, the non-profit school has trained thousands of young artists, many of whom are currently working nationally. www.sparconline.org

 

 
New Voices Faculty & Staff (Past and Present)
 
Clay McLeod Chapman – 2009 Playwright-in-Residence

Story-teller Clay McLeod Chapman has seen his short fiction transposed to the stage for the last fifteen years; produced in such various venues as Romania, Scotland, Ireland and here in the United States. Originator of the rigorous story-performance group, the Pumpkin Pie Show, Chapman has taken his writing to the 1997 Sibiu International Festival of Theatre, the New York International Fringe Festival (1997 and 1999), the 1998 Edinburgh Fringe Festival Playwright, and Coney Island Fun Park. Clay is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel -- both published by Hyperion books. Educated at North Carolina School of the Arts for Drama, the Burren College of Art, and Sarah Lawrence College, he now divides his time between Richmond, Virginia, and Brooklyn, New York.
 
Caridad Svich – 2008 Playwright-in-Residence

Caridad is a playwright-songwriter-translator-editor of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish and Croatian descent. Her works have been staged across the US and abroad at venues as diverse as Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, INTAR, The Women’s Project, 7 Stages, Cleveland Public Theatre, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Dad’s Garage and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Awards she has received include 2002-2003 Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University/Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, a TCG/Pew National Theatre Artist Residency, an NEA/TCG Playwriting Residency, and Rosenthal New Play Prize. She is editor of Trans-Global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries (Manchester University Press), and Divine Fire: Eight Contemporary Plays Inspired by the Greeks (BackStage Books). She is co-editor of Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes (Smith & Kraus), Theatre in Crisis? (Manchester University Press), and Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/o Theatre andPerformance (TCG). Some of her translations are collected in Federico Garcia Lorca: Impossible Theatre (Smith & Kraus). She holds an MFA from the University of California San Diego and has taught playwriting at Yale School of Drama, Bennington College, and Rutgers University-New Brunswick among others. An alumna playwright of New Dramatists, she is founder of the pan-American theater alliance & press NoPassport, is contributing editor of TheatreForum, and associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review (Routledge/UK). Her website is www.caridadsvich.com.
 
Cassandra Medley – 2007 Playwright-in-Residence

Cassandra Medley’s Ms. Mae, is one of several individual sketches which comprise the Off-Broadway musical, A....My Name is Alice. Alice, first produced at the "Women's Project and Productions", received the 1984 Outer Critics Drama Award, and continues to play in regional theatres across the U.S. Her most recently produced play is Relativity, which won the 2006 Audelco “August Wilson Playwriting” Award and was featured on Science Friday and National Public Radio, is published by Broadway Play Publishing. Other plays include: Dearborn Heights, Waking Women, Noon Day Sun, the 2000 “Best Play of the Season” Award at Theatrefest Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey. Her play Ma Rose has been produced by the "Women's Project and Productions" in 1990 as well as being produced throughout the U.S. and published by Samuel French. Dearborn Heights, Waking Women, and Ma Rose were all produced in the Ensemble Studio Marathons in New York, 1986-95. Dearborn Heights was produced at the ACT ONE Theatre Festival in Los Angeles. Ms. Medley is the 1986 recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant and a New York State Council on the Arts Grant for 1987. She was a 1989 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award in Playwriting, won the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Playwriting, and the 1995 New Professional Theatre Award; in addition, Ms. Medley has received the 1995 Marilyn Simpson Award, the 2001 Theatrefest Regional Playwriting Award for Best Play, the 2002 Ensemble Studio Theatre 25th Anniversary Award for Theatre Excellence, the 2004 “Going to the River Writers” Life Achievement Award, and the 2006 Audelco August Wilson Playwriting Award. She teaches playwriting at Sarah Lawrence College, has taught at New York University, and has also served as guest artist at Columbia University, the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop and Seattle University. Cassandra worked as a staff writer for ABC Television: One Life to Live – 1995-97. She also is a playwright member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre and New River Dramatists.  
 
Dana Yeaton – 2006 Playwright-in-Residence

Dana Yeaton is the recipient of many playwriting awards, including the “New Voice in American Theatre Award" from the William Inge Theatre Festival, the Heideman Award from the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and the Moss Hart Award from the New England Theatre Conference. His stage adaptation of Chris Bohjalian's best-selling novel Midwives premiered at the Flynn Theatre in Burlington, Vermont and has since been produced at the Round House Theatre, the Clarence Brown Theatre in Tennessee and at North Carolina Stage. Mr. Yeaton has received three fellowships in playwriting from the Vermont Arts Council and two from the Shenandoah International Playwrights Retreat. His plays in print include Alice In Love, The Big Random, Helen At Risk, Mad River Rising, Men In Heat, and Midwives. Dana teaches dramatic writing at Middlebury College, the University of Vermont and at the Vermont Governor’s Institute on the Arts. He is Founding Director of the Vermont Young Playwrights Project. .
 
Paul Donnelly - 2005 Playwright-In-Residence

Paul Donnelly is delighted to be back among the New Voices, having participated previously in 1996 and 1998-2001. A DC-based playwright and director, Paul is honored to have had two works nominated for the Helen Hayes Award. His most recent outing as a director was the English language premiere of Desire by the Catalan playwright Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, translated by the University of Richmond's Sharon Feldman. He lives contentedly in Arlington with his partner Frank and their two dogs (large) and two cats (small).
 
Raina Ames, Program Director

Raina is the Director of Theatre Education for the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of New Hampshire. Ames began her career teaching high school Theater, Speech and English for eight years. Prior to UNH, Ames served as Director of Education and Cooperative Learning at TheatreVirginia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre, a Master of Science in Education, gifted education emphasis, and a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Pedagogy. Raina is also a director and an actor who has appeared in a variety of venues. She played Katy Maguire in the U.S. Premiere of Goodbye to the Hill at Indianapolis' Theatre on the Square. She also performed in the Theatre IV/Barksdale production of The Laramie Project. Favorite directing projects include: The Diary of Anne Frank, Guys and Dolls, Spoon River Anthology, And Then They Came For Me—Remembering the World of Anne Frank, My Fair Lady and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Her original children’s musical, The Boy Who Stood Still, will be produced for the 2008-09 UNH Theatre & Dance season. In addition to acting and directing, Ames’ first book, A High School Theatre Teacher’s Survival Guide, is available through Routledge Publishing. 
 
Laine Satterfield, Program Coordinator

Laine is SPARC Resident Faculty for Stages, CORE and Studio and Program Coordinator for Poetry Out Loud and New Voices for the Theater. She has taught at Stella AdlerConservatory, L'Universita dell'Aquila, Linea Trasversale, Teatro Proskenion in Italy, Company of Fools, VA Governor’s School for Arts & Humanities and various physical theatre workshops. A graduate of Tisch School of the Arts, she also trained at Carnegie-Mellon University, University of Eurasian Theatre, University College of London (modern and Shakespearean dramaturgy). Favorite roles include: Eurydice in Eurydice, Ariel in The Tempest, Paulina in Death and the Maiden, Lucy in Mr. Marmalade, Elena in Uncle Vanya, the Public Theatre's production of Book of the Dead, Shelley in Buried Child, Molly Ivors in James Joyce’s The Dead, Marie-Louise in The Constant Wife and Lady MacBeth in MacBeth. She has written and produced two plays: Cave of Dreams (Theatre for the New City, NYC) and a solo piece entitled Morgana (performed in Italy and Denmark). She has directed and written numerous student shows, served as AD/dramaturg for Waiting for Godot, choreographer for James Joyce’s the Dead, The Tempest, and Crazy Head Space. *She is a member of Actor's Equity Association. 
 

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New Voices For The Theater • SPARC • 2106-A North Hamilton Street • Richmond, Virginia 23230 • 804-353-3393 • fax 359-9045