Berkshire Playwrights Lab July 1: Sam Marks
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Berkshire Playwrights Lab announces that Daniel Winerman will direct a staged reading workshop production of The Old Masters by Sam Marks on Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 8pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center (14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, Mass.). Admission is free.This new play concerns Ben, an unsatisfied artist-turned-teacher with a pregnant wife and a new house who receives an unexpected visit from a missing friend's lover, with a box of paintings in tow, which stirs up old dreams and desires. It is about creativity, growing up, and choosing between the life you have versus the life you've always wanted.
A recent graduate of Brown’s Graduate Playwriting Program, Sam Marks was named one of “50 to Watch” by The Dramatist Magazine in 2007. He received his NYC Off-Broadway debut last fall when his play, The Joke, was produced at Studio Dante. Other NYC productions include Nelson (Theater Row), Craft (The Flea Theater), and The Bigger Man (Center Stage). His plays have also been produced by Circle X Theatre Co. in Los Angeles and Perishable Theatre in Providence and have been read and developed at Atlantic Theater Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Public Theater, Rattlestick Theater, Vineyard Theatre, Arena Stage, and Portland Center Stage. He is currently developing a screenplay with This American Life. His television and film scripts have been optioned and developed by HBO, Greenstreet Films, MTV, Epoch Films, and Fugitive Films. He has taught playwriting and screenwriting at Harvard, Brown, and Providence College. The Joke and Nelson are published by Samuel French Inc.
Director Daniel Winerman is the Literary Associate for the Berkshire Playwrights Lab. He has directed and developed new plays at New Dramatists, Primary Stages, Flea Theater, Young Playwrights, Inc., The New York Int’l Fringe Festival, The Samuel French Short Play Festival, Brooklyn Playwrights Collective, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Fordham University, NYU’s Dept. of Musical Theatre Writing, NYU’s Dept. of Dramatic Writing (Rajiv Joseph’s Huck and Holden), Berkshire Playwrights Lab (Anna Ziegler’s Variations on a Theme), and the Summer Shorts Festival at 59E59 Theater (John Augustine’s Father’s Day). He recently directed Paul Rudnick’s I Hate Hamlet (Geva Theatre Center Directing Fellowship). BFA: NYU, MFA: Boston University. He is a recipient of the Drama League Assistant Director Fellowship and a member of the Directors Lab West.
The staged reading of The Old Masters will feature Jocelyn Greene, who read for Berkshire Playwrights Lab last year in Edgar Lyall’s Ashes, Ean Sheehy, who is currently appearing in the Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon production of Sundance (directed by Matt Penn), and Miriam Silverman, who performed with Berkshire Playwrights Lab last season in Anna Ziegler's Variations on a Theme.
Founded in 2006 by theater professionals Joe Cacaci, Bob Jaffe, Jim Frangione, and Matthew Penn, Berkshire Playwrights Lab is dedicated to encouraging, developing, and presenting new plays. Through readings, workshops, and fully-staged productions, the Lab provides emerging and established writers with a professional and creative environment, while offering audiences the unique and provocative opportunity to share in the dramatic evolution of premiere works. For more information about this new organization, see www.berkshireplaywrightslab.org.
