LeapFest 5 June 3 - June 21, 2008 |
The LeapFest Interviews What is LeapFest? LeapFest is an annual series of emerging plays with socio-political themes, presented as workshop productions in rotating repertory. The festival is the culmination of Downstage Left, a multi-tiered development program with the goal to cultivate and support new and emerging voices and inspire playwrights to address the political and social issues of our day. The festival name stems from the Downstage Left logo, which features a frog, and encourages playwrights to “take the leap” from development to production. LeapFest’s first four years have seen three of the featured plays receive the Jeff Award for Best New Work, and ten of the plays go on to world premieres in Chicago. Join us again this year to see what's next in Chicago theatre! Performances of the LeapFest plays will take place at our Wrigleyville location: |
Stage Left Theatre |
The LeapFest 5 Plays |
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| If you are a producer and have an interest in any of the LeapFest plays, please contact Director of New Play Development John Sanders at (773) 883-8830 or john@stagelefttheatre.com. None of these plays have yet had full productions, and LeapFest presentations are not considered world premieres. |
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Alice in War |
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Young Alice discovers a bizarre and mysterious war zone and other mysterious surprises on the other side of her basement wall. A curious play about finding hope when war is all you know.
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 Jayme McGhan |
The Fisherman |
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After being forced out of his job and pension, an aging airplane mechanic takes decisive and alarming measures against the top rung of the corporate ladder. His niece, a police officer, is forced to confront her culpable uncle on the bank of the Minnesota River.
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 M.E.H. Lewis |
Here Where It's Safe |
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When Zach and Abbie have fertility problems, they travel to India to hire a surrogate mother. After the embryo is successfully implanted, they return home, planning to wait there for the birth. But after Abbie hears her baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound via long distance phone call, she can't stand it any more. She flies to India and moves in with the surrogate. As the pregnancy progresses, lives and relationships become dangerously tangled and complex.
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 Aaron Carter |
Iowa Akhbar |
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The occupation comes to the heartland. Sheriff Isaiah Tanner protects his isolated Iowa town by collaborating with the enemy. Isaiah's wife is killed, and amid the terror and fear of an occupation, he struggles to be a good father to his step-daughter Ruby. As Ruby is drawn into a local resistance movement, Isaiah must find a way to save both his town and his daughter.
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 Lydia Stryk |
Safe House
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Secrets, lies and illicit rendezvous swirl in a deadly triangle composed of an Intelligence officer, his wife, and a so-called cultural attaché. In the dark underbelly of our political reality, nothing is at it seems, no one is safe, and the survival of the planet hangs in the balance.
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| The LeapFest 5 Playwrights | |
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Steven Bogart (Alice in War) writes and teaches theater in the Boston area. For the past eighteen years he has been teaching and directing at Lexington High School. He holds a BFA in painting from Tufts University, an MA in Theater from Emerson College, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. He has created ensemble driven original works that have performed professionally at the Boston Center for the Arts, The Berkshire Center for Contemporary Art and other nontraditional performance spaces. He is the author of many stage plays and screenplays. His play, Conspiracy of Memory was a Kennedy Center Finalist for New American Plays in 2002, and was premiered in Boston in 2004. He is cofounder of Rouged Ape, his second attempt at a theater company. He has led workshops in collaborative playwriting around the state of Massachusetts. He has created over thirty workshop theater pieces. Many of these plays were developed with High School students and won state and national competitions. This year his play Men and the Moon had its world premiere as part of the Boston Theater Marathon. He will be directing an ensemble driven original theater piece for the Sydney Opera House in the Spring of 2009. He lives with his wife Amory in Maynard, Massachusetts. |
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Jayme McGhan (The Fisherman) is a playwright and theatre generalist from Minneapolis. He is the author of over a dozen full-length plays including Hellfire, The Methuselah Tree, Mother Bear, The Sweet Stuff, Ragtown, and The Fisherman. His plays have been seen across the nation from NYC to California and many places in between. He is the Regional Representative of The Dramatists Guild to the Twin Cities, as well as a columnist for The Dramatist magazine. He currently teaches theatre at Ridgewater College in Minnesota. He holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild and The Playwrights Center.
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M.E.H. Lewis’s (Here Where It’s Safe) play Creole, a semi-finalist for the 2006 O’Neill Playwright’s Conference, premiered in fall 2008 at Chicago’s InFusion Theatre in the Storefront Theatre space. Fellow Travellers premiered at Stage Left Theatre in 2006, winning a Joseph Jefferson award for Best New Work. It also won the Dayton Playhouse’s 2004 FutureFest competition. Stage Left Theatre’s critically acclaimed Chicago production of Lewis’s play Burying the Bones (Spring 2004) received a Joseph Jefferson nomination for Best New Work. Her play Perfect World was produced in December at Chicago’s Infamous Commonwealth Theatre. Lewis’s first play, Charms for Protection, won the 1998 Julie Harris Playwriting Competition, and her second play, Float, opened the 2000 season at Melbourne’s renown New Theatre. Hunger Moon was performed as part of Cherry Lane Theatre’s Alternative 2000 Series in New York. Little Sisters of the Poor has been produced at Theatre Babylon in Seattle and as part of the Seattle Fringe Festival. Lewis is a two-time Illinois Arts Council fellow and a Tremain Foundation grantee. She is a resident dramatist at Chicago Dramatists, an ensemble member of Stage Left Theatre and Infamous Commonwealth, an American Theatre Company Relative, and a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Women’s Theatre Alliance and The Playwrights Collective. |
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Aaron Carter (Iowa Akhbar) is a Chicago playwright, originally from Ohio. His paternal grandfather was a black Baptist preacher, his maternal grandparents were white vaudeville performers. The influence of his ancestors is seen Aaron's work which focuses on race, faith, and obscure performance skills. His play Panther Burn was produced in October 2006 by MPAACT at Victory Gardens Greenhouse, and was nominated for the Black Theater Alliance's "Lorraine Hansberry" Award. Aaron is currently at work on a new commission from Victory Gardens made possible by the Wallace Foundation. Aaron also teaches playwriting and theater literature. He was taught and been a guest artist at Grinnell College, DePaul University, Indiana University Northwest and Roosevelt University. He also teaches at Chicago Dramatists, where he is a resident playwright.
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Lydia Stryk’s (Safe House) plays, including Monte Carlo, The House of Lily, The Glamour House, On Clarion, American Tet and Ghost Mall have been seen in festivals and produced at theatres around the country and in Germany. For more information, please visit www.lydiastryk.com. |
LeapFest 5 Staff Assistant Directors Producer - John Sanders* |
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Tickets |
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The LeapFest Plays - $12 Admission to any single LeapFest play is just $12. The LeapFest plays run in rotating repertory at Stage Left's Wrigleyville home, 3408 N. Sheffield in Chicago. |
Purchase Tickets Online Alice in War |
LeapPASS - $25 By far, the most cost-effective way to experience LeapFest. Includes all five LeapFest plays Call 773-883-8830 |
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Festival Info
The Playwrights
Steven Bogart
Jayme McGhan
M.E.H. Lewis
Aaron Carter
Lydia Stryk
