New Dramatists: Anne Washburn

	Anne Washburn c/o Val Day William Morris Agency 1325 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10019 (212) 903-1192 Email: vday@wma.com Website: www.newdramatists.org

Anne Washburn is from the West and Northwest and as a result prefers her foliage and landscapes a little on the drastic side. Her work has been produced by 13P, A.R.T., Cherry Lane Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dixon Place, E.S.T., London‘s Gate Theatre, NYC’s Soho Rep., DC's Studio Theater, and NYC’s Vineyard Theatre, among others. Her plays have been published or are about to be published in American Theater (April 2007), Yale Theatre, Playscripts.com, and she is included in the anthologies New Downtown Now (Edited by Young Jean Lee and Mac Wellman; Univ. of Minnesota Press) and in New York Theater Review 2007 (Edited Brook Stowe). She has been commissioned by The Civilians, Soho Rep, the Williamstown Theater Festival, and Yale. She is a member of 13P and The Civilians, and an associated artist with New Georges.

THE INTERNATIONALIST APPARITION THE COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT THE LADIES ORESTES OCTOBER/NOVEMBER EVERYTHING NOT PERMITTED IS FORBIDDEN (AND VICE VERSA)
_{anne washburn} THE INTERNATIONALIST Full Length, 90 minutes, A Foreign Play. Comic, Dark 4M, 2W Lowell, an American on a business trip, disembarks in a foreign country, and is met at the airport by a beautiful colleague. He thinks he’s in one of those great American movies where you go places and people are exotic and there is romance and adventure and your sense of what is possible is expanded and you become a worldly and sophisticated person. Instead he discovers that he isn't in that kind of movie at all, he’s in a different one, one of those foreign ones with no clear hero or moral and, most importantly, no subtitles. Premiere: 13P, NYC (2004). Additional productions: Fairfield Theatre Company, Connecticut (2004); Practical Theatre Company, Sydney Australia; Red Eye, Minneapolis (2006); Vineyard Theatre, NYC (2006); Boulevard Ensemble Theatre, Milwaukee (2007); Gate, London (2008); Studio Theatre, DC (2008). Written in the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab 2002/03. "A sad, beautiful play" -- Variety "A clever comedy for the age of globalization" -- Washington Post "An unsettling, almost Kafka-esque examination of who we are and where we come from" -- The Guardian "This fiercely imaginative dramatist has her English and eats it too" -- Time Out New York
_{anne washburn} APPARITION an uneasy play of the underknown Brief Full Length. Dark, Comic. 5 charismatic actors of any sort whatsoever Modern ghost stories alternate with bouts of fake Latin. The story of Macbeth is told and retold; waiting to go on, the actors playing the witches hold a head count and discover they are one too many. Demons appear in suburban back yards and reappear elsewhere in another narrative. A couple, in an attic, can’t decide if they are alive or dead. Apparition uses stories, fragmented voices, challenged language, stage superstitions, discontinuous narratives, and the guileless pleasure of the supernatural to create a world which is intelligible, but not fully comprehensible. Premiere: Chashama, NYC (2003). Also produced at the Connolly, NYC (2005). Workshopped: Soho Rep R&D. Written in the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab 2001/2002. "Irresistible" -- New York Times "Her situations are ineluctably theatrical"—The Village Voice "An extraordinarily creepy meditation on fear"–TimeOut New York
_{anne washburn} THE COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT Full-length Surreal Satire 8M, 1W (many of these roles can be played by women) Comic, Dark. By Americans, for Americas, a play about the Romanian Revolution of 1989. The Romanian revolution was a coup disguised as a revolution, a bloody piece of theater in which thousands of Romanians lost their lives. THE COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT is a piece of theater about Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, about lies, about confusion, about images, and about freedom—the food which makes you hungrier. Features Vlad Tepes, the historical Dracula. Premiere: A.R.T., Cambridge (Fall 2008). Workshop productions: Soho Rep, NYC (2001); Defunkt Theater, Portland OR (2008). Workshopped in the Soho Rep Writer/Director lab 1999/2000.
_{anne washburn} THE LADIES Full-length, 90 minutes; Comedy, for the most part 6W Writer Anne Washburn and director Anne Kauffman set out to explore the lives of infamous first ladies Elena Ceausescu, Imelda Marcos, Eva Peron, and Jiang Qing (a.k.a. Madame Mao). They met over gin and coffee to discuss their research and, to make up for inscrutable handwriting, left the tape recorder running. A play about women and power as told through gossip, torch songs, historical analysis, spectacle, and damning transcriptions. Produced by: Cherry Lane Theater, The Civilians, and Dixon Place at Chashama; NYC (2004). Reading at New Works Now at The Public Theater (2003), Workshop at New York Theater Workshop (2003). "Brashly entertaining...full of moments of quirky insight"—The New York Times
_{anne washburn} ORESTES by Euripides Full-length, 90 minutes A loose translation, or, close adaptation 2M, 1W - plus Chorus of 4 to 10 Orestes killed his mother and is going mad. Elektra is trying to hold it all together. The whole town wants them dead. Their best friend has a plan. This translation seeks to deliver the original play in a text that retains the dash and wit and weirdness of the original. Readings at Red Bull Theater Company and New York Theater Workshop (2005), Two Rivers Theater NJ, (2007).
_{anne washburn} OCTOBER/NOVEMBER Short Play; 20 minutes 1M; Young man, just 14 1W; Young Woman, almost 16 Set in 1982 on the edge of the East Village. David falls under the tutelage of Nikkie, a young woman who seems to know quite a bit. A short play about experience and how it creates you and how it destroys you. Presented as part of Ensemble Studio Theater's Marathon Series 2008. "Washburn makes the nerve wracking seriousness of childhood very funny" - Variety "Oscillates winningly between suspense and anticipation." -- Village Voice
_{anne washburn} EVERYTHING NOT PERMITTED IS FORBIDDEN (AND VICE VERSA) Short Plays; 10 to 15 minutes each. Dark. Comic. 3M, 3W A Frenchman, kidnapping permits, corporate murder pre-dawn, condoms, a miniature of the tour d’eiffel, the threat of a lawsuit, hospital gowns, and the Alien Perspective. Includes: Everything Not Permitted Is Forbidden (and Vice Versa), , Surgery Patients, In The Night Office, Pearl.



This page was last updated 11/25/2008 . For comments and/or questions please contact newdramatists@newdramatists.org