Dramatic Writing Kicks Off Play Exchange with Concert Reading of “Lightning from Heaven”

This fall, the Department of Dramatic Writing teamed up with the WorkShop Theater in New York to create an international play exchange between the Off-Off-Broadway theatre company and NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia.  As part of this exchange, playwriting students will receive concert readings of their thesis plays in New York in summer 2012.

In early September, playwrights from the WorkShop submitted scripts to be considered for concert readings at Tisch School of the Arts Asia.  Current playwriting thesis students acted as a selection committee, reading all of the scripts and choosing their top three for production at the school.  Each play will receive up to ten hours of rehearsal, followed by a public reading.

The first play in the series, Scott C. Sickles’ Lightning from Heaven, received its Singapore premiere on 11 November, in the Tisch School of the Arts Asia Black Box Theatre.  The play is a historical drama and romance, charting the writing of Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago against a backdrop of political and personal oppression.  Centering around the interrogation and trial of his mistress and muse, Lightning from Heaven examines the high price of creating art… as well as being in love with (and believing in) an artist.

For the reading, director Drayton Hiers ’11 (MFA, Kanbar, Dramatic Writing) brought together a cast of talented local actors to breathe life into this bold, passionate play.  Chio Su-Ping took on the leading role of Olga Ivinskaya, with William Ledbetter portraying the iconic poet and author, Boris Pasternak.  They were joined by Carla Dunareanu, Tim Garner, Tushar Ismail, Steven Koernig, Bright Ong, Pavan J. Singh, and Jamie Shawn Tan, as well as current student Tori Keenan-Zelt ’13 (MFA, Kanbar, Dramatic Writing), and the Chair of Dramatic Writing, William C. Kovacsik.

The evening was a rousing start to the play exchange, with an enthusiastic audience filling the Black Box, and hanging around after the show to discuss the issues brought up by the play.

The WorkShop Theater was founded in 1994, and provides a home base for a large company of writers, directors and actors.  They present fully staged productions of new plays, and have a weekly series in which new work is read and discussed by company members.  They have developed hundreds of plays which have gone on to have professional productions around the world, including Allan Knee’s The Man Who Was Peter Pan, which was the basis for the Oscar winning film Finding Neverland.

The play exchange will continue in February and March with new plays by Dana Leslie Goldstein and Rich Orloff.