NIC ASHE, NATALIA DYER, LEAH LEWIS, JUSTIN LINVILLE, DALLAS LIU AND ODEYA RUSH
TO READ
SEVEN MINUTES IN HEAVEN
BY STEVEN LEVENSON
DIRECTED BY ADRIENNE CAMPBELL-HOLT
FOR ONE-NIGHT ONLY CHARITY READING ONLINE
SEPTEMBER 26th, 2020 8pm et
IN HONOR OF THE PLAY’S 10TH ANNIVERSARY
Click here for more information and tickets!
SENDHIL RAMAMURTHY AND KAVI LADNIER REUNITE FOR
HATEF**K
BY REHANA LEW MIRZA
DIRECTED BY ADRIENNE CAMPBELL-HOLT
OCTOBER 24th at 8pm ET
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ORIGINAL WORLD PREMIERE CAST REUNITES FOR
AMERICA v. 2.1
BY STACEY ROSE
DIRECTED BY LOGAN VAUGHN
NOVEMBER 21st, 2020
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HOLIDAY CRAPTACULAR:
A VARIETY SHOW TO CLOSE OUT 2020
CURATED BY SIDIKHA ASHRAF & ADAM HARRINGTON
DECEMBER DATE & TICKET LINK TBA SOON
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As promised, we are thrilled to share our fall season with you virtually! These happenings will occur each month and are an effort to bring you great theater, raise funds for our continued programming, and employ and compensate incredible artists who are unemployed right now. Tickets range from $5-$100, and all readings will be streamed live one-night only.
In honor of the Seven Minutes in Heaven’s 10th anniversary Adrienne Campbell-Holt and Steven Levenson are joined by an all-star cast for a one-night only livestream on Saturday, September 26th at 8pm ET. The cast features Nic Ashe (Queen Sugar), Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things), Leah Lewis (The Half of It), Justin Linville (Crashing), Dallas Liu (PEN15), and Odeya Rush (Lady Bird), with stage directions read by Sidikha Ashraf. Tickets range from $5-$250 and are available here. Services for this reading are being donated by the celebrity cast and all proceeds will benefit Colt Coeur’s Education and Mentorship programs. Click here for more information and tickets!
In October, Sendhil Ramamurthy and Kavi Ladnier will reunite for Hatefuck, by Rehana Lew Mirza, directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt. (The world premiere was co-produced in 2019 by WP Theater and Colt Coeur.) Proceeds from this reading will benefit the artists involved as well as Colt Coeur's Residency Program, of which Rehana is an alumni. Save the date of Saturday, October 17th at 8pm ET. Tickets available here!
Shortly after you cast your very important vote in November, we'll be sharing America V. 2.1, or the Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negro, by Stacey Rose, directed by Logan Vaughn on November 21st at 8pm ET. The entire original cast of the world premiere will return for this live reading. Click here for tickets and additional info.
Finally, in December we'll bring you Holiday Craptacular: A Variety Show to Close Out 2020. The evening will be curated by Sidikha Ashraf and Adam Harrington, and feature stand-up comedy, musical performances, and more. The event will livestream Saturday, December 12th at 8pm ET, and be available until December 31st. Tickets are free however must be reserved online.
Although it's not the same as gathering in person, we feel very lucky to share these powerful plays with as wide an audience as possible - while also supporting artists and our ongoing efforts.
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Seven Minutes in Heaven is a hilarious and emotionally raw play that follows six high school freshman caught in the absurd, aching, terrible ecstasy of being young on a splintered night of dysfunctional party games, fumbling first kisses, ruined reputations, broken promises, and raw, raw fun. Set in 1995, the play is charged with the manic exhilaration and stultifying terror of adolescence and explores familiar territory with a unique, brash sense of theatricality. In his 2010 review Jason Zinoman commented on how “the play is so real that you almost believe it was written by one of the characters.”
This reading is presented by special arrangement with Actor’s Equity through Theater Authority, Inc.
A 2019 world premiere by Richard Rodgers-Award winning playwright Rehana Lew Mirza, Hatef**k was described by The New York Times as “Smart, mouthy and sexy! Kavi Ladnier and Sendhil Ramamurthy are dripping with charisma. Just beneath the couple’s pheromone-spiked banter lurks a feeling discussion about representation and identity.” Passions ignite when Layla, an intense literature professor, accuses Imran, a brashly iconoclastic novelist, of trading in anti-Muslim stereotypes. But as their attraction grows into something more, they discover that good sex doesn’t always make good bedfellows. Conflicting cultural identities collide in this thornily clever antidote to a “meet-cute” romance.
America v. 2.1 is a day in the life of a troupe of historical re-enactors charged with telling the tragic story of what was once was the American Negro, a woeful race once featured prominently in the American landscape, but whose time has been extinguished at own foolish hand. The troupe finds themselves at odds with the state of their own existences while being painfully oblivious to the parallels and intersections their lives draw to that of the very Negroes whose story they are bound to tell. As this oblivion fades and they are faced with their stark reality, this day in the life of actors, becomes a day of reckoning.
About the Artists
Steven Levenson is a Tony Award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and television writer and producer. His plays include If I Forget, Core Values, Seven Minutes In Heaven, and The Language of Trees. He wrote the book for the musical, Dear Evan Hansen, which won six Tony Awards, including Best Book and Best Musical. He co-created and executive produced the FX series “Fosse/Verdon”, which was nominated for seventeen Emmy Awards, including Best Limited Series and Best Writing for a Limited Series, as well as for Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice Association, and Producers Guild Awards, in addition to winning the Writers Guild Award and an AFI Award for Outstanding Series. Other honors include the OBIE Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, and the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award. He served for three seasons as a writer and producer on Showtime’s “Masters Of Sex”. He is a graduate of Brown University and a Founding Company Member of Colt Coeur.
Rehana Lew Mirza’s plays include: Hatef**k (Colt Coeur/WP), A People’s Guide to History in the Time of Here and Now (Primary Stages Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation’s commission; AADA worshop production); Soldier X (Ma-Yi; Brooklyn College; NY-SCA/Lark Commission); Tomorrow, Inshallah (Living Room Theater, Kansas City; Storyworks/Huffpost commission); Neighborhood Watch (NNPN/InterAct commission) and Barries (Desipina, Asian American Theater Company). With her husband Mike Lew, she was awarded the 2020 Kleban for most promising librettist. They also share a Mellon Foundation National Playwright residency administered in partnership with Howlround at Ma-Yi, as well as a commission at La Jolla Playhouse for The Colonialism Project after previously being their 2018 artists-in-residence. They’ve co-written the book, in partnership with Sam Willmott, to the musical Bhangin’ It (2019 Richard Rodgers Award, upcoming at La Jolla Playhouse and McCarter Theater). Additional honors: NYFA Fellow, Colt Coeur Company member, HBO Access Fellow, Lilly Award (Stacey Mindich “Go Write a Play”), Tofte Lake Emrging Writers Residency, EST Sloan Commission, a John Golden Award, Leopold Schepp Fellowship, Ma-Yi Writers Lab Member and Co-Director (2006-2016), Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin Writers Group Member (2014-2017) and a TCG/New Georges Fellowship. MFA: Columbia University; BFA: NYU Tisch.
Stacey Rose hails from Elizabeth, NJ and Charlotte NC respectively. Her work has been presented at: The Fire This Time Festival, The Lark, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, National Black Theatre, Pillsbury House Theater, Barrington Stage Company, and Kansas City Rep. Stacey has held fellowships/residencies with The Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights' Center, Sundance Theatre Lab, The Goodman Theatre, The Civilians, and Tofte Lake Center. She had two plays featured on the 2019 Kilroys list, with a third listed as an honorable mention. Her play Legacy Land was on the 2020 Kilroys list. Stacey is a recipient of a 2019 Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Women's Commissioning Grant in partnership with Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre and a 2020 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation commission in partnership with Manhattan Theatre Club. She is currently a staff writer for 9-1-1 on Fox. Stacey's work celebrates and explores Blackness, Black identity, Black history, body politics, and the dilemma of life as the “other.”
Logan Vaughn is a New York based Artist and Director of new work. In 2008 Logan was awarded the Goodman Theater's prestigious Joyce Arts Fellowship in Casting and subsequently worked as a Casting Director in the Tony Award winning theaters' casting department for five seasons. In addition to the Goodman she has cast for Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory, Cardinal Stage and Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. Logan was Playwrights Horizons Director in Residence 2012-2013. In 2012 Logan was also named a Member of the Director's Lab, Lincoln Center. As a Director she has worked with The Public Theater, MCC Theater, Sundance, Kansas City Rep Theater, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Apollo Theater, Geva Theatre, Playwrights' Center, The Playwrights Realm, Mosaic Theatre, 59E59, National Black Theatre and NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her work in film includes assisting the Academy Award winning producing team behind Precious and Monster's Ball as well as serving as head of casting for several award winning independents. Logan received a 2019 Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Direction of a Play for the New York premiere of Loy A. Webb's The Light at MCC Theater. And most recently directed the World Premiere of Legacy Land (The Kilroys List 2020) by Stacey Rose at Kansas City Repertory Theater. Logan is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Acting at UMKC and the Associate Artistic Director of Ojai Playwrights Conference. In television she has shadowed for HBO, the FOX Network (APB) and the Paramount Network (WACO Mini-Series). Logan trained professionally as a dancer for fifteen years with various companies including Gus Giordano and Visceral Dance. She has a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Film from Columbia College Chicago and has been featured in national and international publications including Glamour, Essence, Lucky and Globetrotter Magazine.
Adrienne Campbell-Holt is the Founding Artistic Director of Colt Coeur. She is the recipient of the 2018 Lucille Lortel Visionary Director Award. Current/Upcoming: world premiere: Other World, by Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen & Ann McNamee, choreography by Karla Puno Garcia (Bucks County Playhouse). Adrienne is currently developing new plays with Oscar Olivo, Lily Padilla, Antoinette Nwandu, and Rick Cleveland. Recent: NY premiere of Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector (Colt Coeur), world premiere of We Are Among Us by Stephen Belber (City Theater, Pittsburgh), world premiere of Hatefuck, by Rehana Lew Mirza (WP/Colt Coeur), world premiere of Joan by Stephen Belber (Colt Coeur, starring Johanna Day), Downstairs by Theresa Rebeck at Primary Stages (November-December 2018; starring Tyne Daly and Tim Daly), Associate Director on Dear Evan Hansen, directed by Michael Greif (Broadway), world premiere of Zürich by Amelia Roper (Colt Coeur @ NYTW), world premiere of Thirst by C. A. Johnson (CATF), Afterwords, a new musical by Zoe Sarnak and Emily Kaczmarek, What We're Up Against by Theresa Rebeck (WP Theater), New York Indie Theater Film Festival screening of Henry + the trains, (January 2017), world premiere of Christopher G. Nuñez's The Surgeon and her Daughters (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), world premiere of Theresa Rebeck’s The Nest (Denver Theatre Company), world premiere of Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spiegel (Colt Coeur), world premiere of Greg Moss’ REUNION (South Coast Rep), world premiere of Eliza Clark's Recall (Colt Coeur), and world premiere of Steven Levenson's Seven Minutes in Heaven (Colt Coeur). Adrienne is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University and the director of #MakeItFair.