ATCA Mini-Meeting Held in Denver, February 11-13, 2010 at the Colorado New Play Summit
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 3:08PM 
Read ATCA’s CNPS Blog.
This was the packed schedule:
Thursday, February 11
3:00pm ATCA/FATCA ExCom Meetings (Board Room)
5:00pm Summit Registration (Bonfils Theatre Complex lobby)
6:30pm World Premiere: “When Tang Met Laika” (Space Theatre)
9:00pm Opening Reception (Seawell Ballroom)
Friday, February 12
10:00am Coffee and Tea (Ricketson Theatre lobby)
11:00am Reading “Map of Heaven” (Ricketson Theatre)
1:30pm Lunch (Bonfils lobby)
3:00pm Reading “The Catch” (Ricketson Theatre)
5:30pm Reception and Dinner (Seawell Ballroom)
7:30pm Reading “The House of the Spirits” (Ricketson Theatre)
10:00pm Playwright’s Slam (Jones Theatre)
Saturday, February 13
8:30am ATCA Membership Meeting, with breakfast (Seawell Ballroom)
9:30am Coffee and Tea (Ricketson Theatre lobby)
10:30am Reading “Civilization (all You Can Eat)” (Jones Theatre)
1:00pm Lunch (Bonfils lobby)
2:00pm Panel Discussion of Critics and New Plays (Seawell Ballroom)
3:30pm ATCA Excom meeting continues
5:30pm Dine Out at Downtown Denver Restaurants
7:30pm World Premiere Performance: ³Eventide² (Stage Theatre)
10:30pm Farewell Reception (Seawell Ballroom)
WORLD PREMIERES, FULL PRODUCTIONS
See press release or website for fuller information and participating artists.
“When Tang Met Laika”
by Rogelio Martinez, directed by Terrence J. Nolen
Commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company and Magic Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation New Science & Technology Plays Initiative.
Playwright Rogelio Martinez looked to his love of the space program for inspiration when he was commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company to write a new play. His resulting love story is set on planet Earth andthe International Space Station and involves Laika, a Soviet dog sent into space with no hope of recovery; Tang, the astronaut’s breakfast drink loved by an entire generation of American children; and the ghost of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. “When Tang Met Laika,” described by Director Terrence J. Nolen (Denver Center debut, Artistic Director of Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre) as “unique and audacious,” explores how a Soviet Cosmonaut and an American Astronaut thawed the Cold War.
“Eventide”
by Eric Schmiedl, from the novel by Kent Haruf
Directed by Kent Thompson
Commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company.
The epic story of Holt, Colorado began with Kent Haruf’s bestselling novel
and Eric Schmiedl’s critically-acclaimed play, “Plainsong,” commissioned
and premiered by the Denver Center Theatre Company in 2008. The McPheron
brothers, Harold and Raymond, captured the hearts of audiences from across
the Rocky Mountain West and a national Colorado New Play Summit audience
of theatre professionals. The small town story continues in Schmiedl’s
commissioned adaptation of Haruf’s companion novel Eventide. Haruf’s
plainspoken and endearing characters — the aging McPheron brothers and
Victoria Roubideaux, the pregnant young girl they took into their home —
are joined in Eventide by a lonely young boy who generously cares for his
grandfather, and a mentally challenged couple trying to hold their family
together.
READINGS
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS
by Caridad Svich based on the novel by Isabel Allende
From the confines of her prison cell in an unnamed Latin American country, Alba thinks back over the past 50 years of her family’s history. Her grandfather made his fortune working in the mines, but her father became a field hand and revolutionary. While the tensions between the haves and the have-nots escalate, the Communist party takes power. Caridad Svich’s haunting and lyrical adaptation of Isabel’s critically-acclaimed bestseller, The House of the Spirits, looks at four generations of political and social upheavals through the powerful lens of memory.
Caridad Svich is a US Latina playwright, translator, lyricist and editor whose works have been presented across the US and abroad at diverse venues including Repertorio Espanol, The Women’s Project, INTAR, 59East59, Cincinnati Playhouse, McCarren Park Pool, 7 Stages, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, ARTheater Cologne, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK.
MAP OF HEAVEN
by Michele Lowe
Lena’s painting career is on the rise; her beautiful abstracted maps of places real and imaginary are poised to take downtown New York by storm. But her husband Ian, a radiologist, makes a fatal error that upends Lena’s relationship with her agent and threatens to take down her first show. A contemporary drama with tragic undertones, Map of Heaven explores the devastating consequences of a single lapse in judgment.
Michele Lowe is the author of Inana, which premiered at the Denver Center Theatre Company and was a finalist for the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her play Victoria Musica recently premiered at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. New York productions include The Smell of the Kill (Broadway debut) and String of Pearls (Outer Critics Circle nomination for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play).
THE CATCH
by Ken Weitzman
America’s national pastime meets America’s financial meltdown. A failed dot-commer plots to regain his fortune by catching a star slugger’s record-breaking home run ball - through a mix of willpower, determination and sheer optimism. Playwright Ken Weitzman’s baseball drama The Catch knocks the cover off our national obsession with sports, stardom, money and positive thinking.
Ken Weitzman’s previous plays include The As If Body Loop (Humana Festival ‘07), Arrangements (Atlantic Theatre Company, Pavement Group), Spin Moves (Summer Play Festival), Hominid (Theatre Emory), Firein the Garden (Castillo Theatre), Stadium 360 (Out of Hand Theater), Memorabilia (Alliance Theatre). Ken’s plays also have been developed and presented at, among others, New York Stage and Film, Steppenwolf Theatre.
CIVILIZATION (ALL YOU CAN EAT)
by Jason Grote
The filming of a post-racial TV commercial kicks off Jason Grote’s fierce burlesque of America’s love/hate obsession with food. A giant pig on the rampage, mass choreography, Washington and Jefferson selling snacks to the inner city, the search for love and meaning — all are braided together to devastating effect through the inspired vision of the author of “1001” —DCTC’s acclaimed 2007 premiere, commissioned by Clubbed Thumb.
Jason Grote’s “1001” was developed in The Denver Center’s first Colorado New Play Summit in 2006 an received its world premiere here the following year. That production received an Ovation Award from The Denver Post, was named best new non-local play by Westword, and was listed in the year-end top ten lists of The Boulder Daily Camera and The Rocky Mountain News.
Visit the new DCTC website at:
www.denvercenter.org<http://www.denvercenter.org>
Go behind the scenes with our new video series “10 Minutes to Curtain.”
Questions? Contact DCTC publicist Chris Wiger at 303-446-4848 or cwiger@dcpa.org.
Go to the site, http://www.denvercenter.org/shows-and-events/Shows/ColoradoNewPlaySummit/About.aspx.