Benjamin Benne and Mallory Jane Weiss.
PORTLAND, ME.: Portland Stage has introduced the winners of the 2022 Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights. Benjamin Benne’s Manning has received the Grand Prize, and Mallory Jane Weiss’s The Page Turners has received the Gold Prize.
“Both of these plays are fascinating and hold a hint of magic,” stated Todd Brian Backus, Portland Stage’s literary supervisor, in a press release. “They offer exciting lenses into the modern American moment: asking
questions about grief, masculinity, and what it means to be a woman. One of the most exciting parts of my job is adjudicating the Clauder Competition. We give feedback to each and every writer who submits to the competition and then we workshop our favorite plays. In the following season we go on to a full production of the grand prize winner. Getting to work with a playwright as they nurture their work through readings, to workshops, to a world premiere production is really why I’m in this business to begin with—getting to be a part of that journey.”
Created in 1981 by Jeb Brooks, who continues to underwrite this system, the Clauder Competition celebrates the distinctive voices of the area’s playwrights and brings their work to the eye of the better theatrical neighborhood each different 12 months.
Selected from greater than 170 performs penned by playwrights from throughout New England, the Clauder Grand Prize comes with a $3,000 money award, and a workshop at Portland Stage, adopted by a full-scale manufacturing on the mainstage or within the studio theatre the next season. The Gold Prize features a $1,500 money award plus a workshop at Portland Stage. Additional recognition is given to the most effective play from every of the six New England states. The 2022 state winners embrace: In The End We All Go to Providence by Julia Jennings (Maine), I Love You Elizabeth Warren by Laura Neill (Mass.), Quietus by Richard Manley (N.H.), The Handless King by Elias Harley (R.I.), and Provenance by Todd Cerveris (Vt.). a.okay. payne’s love i awethu additional has additionally obtained a money prize and a particular commendation. (Benne’s Manning was the winner from Connecticut.)
As a part of the 2023 Little Festival of the Unexpected, a staged studying of The Page Turners will likely be offered on Friday, April 21 at 7 p.m. on the Portland Stage Studio Theatre, and a staged studying of Manning will likely be offered on Friday, April 28 at 7 p.m. at Portland Stage Storefront Theater. Following every efficiency will likely be a talkback with the author, director, and solid of the present. Manning may also be mounted as Mainstage Season Production in 2024.
Set in a fictitious, kind-of-1844-or-so, The Page Turners is about 4 somewhat-Victorian ladies, Kipper, Mary, Sadie, and Alice, whose guide membership is decided to redeem themselves after their disgraceful displaying eventually 12 months’s Book Club Conference. The Page Turners questions learn how to form our identities as ladies not by society’s guidelines however relatively by the ladies we encompass ourselves with, the alternatives that we make, and the books that we learn. Mallory Jane Weiss’s performs embrace Big Black Sunhats, Lights Out And Away We Go, The Page Turners, Pony Up, and Dave and Julia are caught in a tree. Mallory is an alumna of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group (2021-2022), The COOP’s Clusterf**okay (2021), Gingold Theatrical Group’s Speakers Corner (2018-2019), and Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB Retreat (2019).
Manning follows Freddy and his father, Julio, after the loss of life of Julio’s mom and Freddy’s grandmother, as they unfold her ashes within the backyard and an enormous zucchini sprouts in a single day. Freddy’s older brother, Sebastian, quickly arrives to witness the miraculous vegetable. Can these three males develop a communal vocabulary to specific their grief with one another? Benjamin Benne is a Playwrights’ Center Affiliated Writer, American Blues Theater Blue Ink Playwriting Award winner, Arizona Theatre Company National Latinx Playwriting Award winner, and KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award winner. His performs embrace Alma, In His Hands, and What / Washed Ashore / Astray.
Portland Stage is one in all Maine’s largest absolutely skilled, non-profit theatres and strives to supply skilled productions for audiences in a broad area of northern New England.