Women & Theatre Program, ATHE

Women and Theatre Program

JANE CHAMBERS PLAYWRITING CONTEST 2007

2007 JANE CHAMBERS PLAYWRITING AWARD RECIPIENTS
Sponsored by the Women and Theatre Program of ATHE

CHRISTINE EVANS for TROJAN BARBIE: A Car-Crash Encounter with Euripides' Trojan
Women. F 8, M 5, 90 mins. Past and present violently collide as the dreams of women and their
fierce hunger for life and creativity are played out in the context of war. With wit, theatricality, and
profound poetry, Evans re-envisions Euripides’ classic as a post-modern pastiche across cultures
that resonates deeply with our own war times. Script available through the Australian Script Center
(http://ozscript.org/author.php?id=211) or Peregrine Whittlesey Agency (PWWAGY@aol.com).

Synopsis: Lotte, a modern-day English tourist who repairs dolls, is enjoying her Cultural Tour for
Singles in Troy when she encounters Andromache, fleeing the rape of her city. When an
American soldier captures Andromache and flings her back into the ancient camp of the Trojan
Women, Lotte tries to intervene, only to be captured herself. Meanwhile, two American soldiers
kidnap Hecuba’s daughter, Polly X, for ritual sacrifice, but dally at the Baghdad Zoo to drink and
party with the tigers. When the camp is torched and the Trojan women enslaved, the British
Embassy rescues Lotte. Her life returns to normal — until Hecuba claws her way up through the
centuries in search of her murdered children's bodies. Lotte’s shattered dolls, the women's
experience as chattel, and the final suggestion that un-mourned histories return in terrible
disguises, as Cassandra prophecies, inventively suggest some of the complex ways that war, gender,
violence and even creativity bind together.

Christine Evans’ plays have been commissioned and widely produced in her native Australia,
including by the Adelaide International Festival of Arts, Belvoir St. Theatre, Vitalstatistix, Deck
Chair Theatre, and Spare Parts Theatre. Her play My Vicious Angel was nominated for five
national literary awards and the Summer Locke Elliot Exchange with New Dramatists, NY, in
1999. In the U.S., her plays have been developed and produced in San Francisco, Atlanta, New
York, Providence, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. Her award-winning Slow Falling Bird
showcased at the 2003 Bay Area Playwrights Festival (premiered with Crowded Fire) and she is
resident playwright for Perishable Theatre (Providence, RI) where three of her plays have received
world premieres. Honors include the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, the Monash National
Playwrights Award, the Rella Lossy Award, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, aFulbright, the
Weston Award, and two first place awards from Perishable Theatre’s Women’s Playwriting
Competition. Evans, who holds an MFA and Ph.D. from Brown University, fills the Briggs-
Copeland Lectureship in Playwriting at Harvard University.

First Runner-Up
AISLE 7 by Kendall Lynch. F3, M1; 90 minutes. Among the pristine aisles of Greenway Grocery,
Camille finds comfort at the checkout counter, transgression in the frozen foods, danger in the
bakery and even redemption for sale. If she can pay the price… This unusual, experiential play
stages a tug-of-war between Camille and the Store. Audience members are invited to experience
this very visceral world and feel implicated in its creation. Is the store real or in Camille’s head? Is
it about capitalism, consumerism, feminism, the effects of a Prozac nation? How do power
structures operate and what are their racial implications?

Kendall Lynch received her MFA at University of Texas-Austin in 2006. For more information
about Aisle 7, contact kenmlyn@gmail.com.

Finalists
Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen by Kathryn Walat. 1F, 4M. 90 minutes. Smart and
funny, this play centers on Victoria Martin, third most popular sophomore girl at Longwood High,
who unexpectedly becomes a member of the super-nerdy high school Math Team. As Vickie
discovers her hidden passion for math and love of math league competition, the geeks must adjust
to having a girl (a popular girl—a smart popular girl) in their midst. On a winning streak headed
towards State Competitions, the boy mathletes worship Victoria. But can the Math Team’s newest
star split her high school life between totally popular Vickie Martin and Victoria Martin, queen of
the math team?

Kathryn Walat’s Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen premiered Off-Broadway at the Women
Project’s and is being published both by Samuel French and in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of
2007. For more information, contact Val Day at William Morris Agency (VDay@wma.com).
Walat’s other plays have been produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Hangar Theatre, Salvage
Theater, & Perishable Theatre, and developed at Playwright’s Horizon & Manhattan Theatre Club
as well as New Georges, where she is an affiliated playwright. She holds an M.F.A. from Yale U.

The Woman Who Was Captured by Ghosts by Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. 3F,
3M, 2 unspecified gender. 60 minutes. This powerful play follow’s a native woman’s journey
through diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer, interweaving realism and expressionistic
storytelling. Set in a mixed culture, it adapts the Cheyenne story of the origins of the Contrarian
Society, liberally adapted, so that the home life and mythic life of the protagonist intersect. In the
traditional warrior’s story, the Contrarian Society was started by a girl captured by ghosts; when she
finally escapes into the sacred mountain, an Old Man and Woman instruct her, giving her a
Thunder Bow which helps her to escape death—and return to her people.

Julie Pearson-Little Thunder, Artistic Director of Thunder Road Theater, has worked in Native
Theater for 13 years and received her Ph.D. from University of Kansas. For more information on
The Woman Who Was Captured by Ghosts, contact 918-831-6468.

Passing Through by Vynnie Meli. F3, M2. Two acts. In the shoddy dressing room of an
Alabama juke joint, an “all-girl” band, the International Rhythm Darlings, is getting ready. It’s 1943
and they’re the “Rosie the Riveters” of the big bands—hired to play their music and jazz because
most male musicians are fighting the war abroad. Inspired by historic events, sexism isn’t the only
prejudice this multicultural women’s band faces. Touring the Jim Crow South with the first
Caucasian and Jewish member put them all in danger.

Vynnie Meli is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Working Title Playwrights and Atlanta Women
Playwrights. For more information on Passing Through, contact <Vm3000@comcast.net>.

STUDENT JANE CHAMBERS WINNER

Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver by Merri Biechler (M.F.A., Ohio University). This moving play chronicles the writer’s experience as caregiver to her mother and father before their deaths due to cancer. Selected as a Kendeda Finalist, Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver has received readings in New York and Atlanta, and will participate in the
WordBRIDGE Playwrights Lab. Biechler, whose The Bathtub Play won the 2005 Jane Chambers
Student Playwriting Award, brings a professional background in acting and was a founding member
of the Edge Theater, together with Peter Hedges, Mary-Louise Parker and Joe Mantello. For more
information on Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver, contact <merri.biechler@gmail.com>.

Jane Chambers 2007 Selection Committee

Maya Roth, Georgetown University, Chair

Priscilla Page, New WORLD Theater, Univ. Mass-Amherst, Co- Chair

Jen-Scott Mobley, CUNY, Student Contest Chair

Maria Beach, Freelance Dramaturg, Austin-TX

Kimberly Dark, Touring Artist & Teacher, San Diego

Sara Chambers, Bowling Green State University

Sara Freeman, Illinois Wesleyan University

Marietta Hedges, Catholic University

Erith Jaffe-Berg, University of California-Riverside

Frazer Lively, Wesleyan College

Janice Perry, Touring Artist & Independent Scholar, Vermont

Erika Rundle, Mount Holyoke College

Sarah Sexton, Actors Theatre of Louisville

Sophia Skiles, Mount Holyoke College

Gretchen Smith, Southern Methodist University

Arden Thomas, Stanford University

Michele Volansky, Washington College

Chris Woodworth, Lock Haven University