GFTF 2017 Season

2+2+1

By Janine Demaria
Janine DeMaria is a playwright and film/TV writer and a graduate of  NYU's Tisch M.F.A. program in Dramatic Writing. She recently sold her pilot FLYING HIGH to Skydance  Productions with Sam Raimi, Debbie Liebling, and The Arlook Group producing. She's also  currently developing an untitled mystery project with Tribeca Productions and a procedural titled ABOUT FACE with Ellen Pompeo's production company Calamity Jane producing. As a playwright, she received the Manus-Salzman Scholarship for Outstanding Dramatic Achievement and a Google Grant for Excellence in Storytelling using interactive multimedia formats while at NYU. Her written work was an Official Selection for the NYU Tisch Festival of  New Works and her short film, which she wrote and directed, was an Official Selection for the NYU Tisch Open Arts Film Festival. While at NYU, she was mentored by such luminaries as Oskar Eustis, Lisa Kron, Eduardo Machado and Suzan-Lori Parks. She also apprenticed at Aaron Sorkin and Timothy Busfield's B Street Theater and served as Artistic Associate at the Magic Theater in San Francisco. Additionally, she served as a flight attendant for Virgin America  for three years, capitalizing on her experience to write FLYING HIGH. Janine is repped by Gersh and The Arlook Group.

Synopsis
A farce about a group of friends that try to create an unorthodox family for themselves but discover through the interview of their potential surrogate, not everyone in this 'family' wants the same thing. It's about friendship, manipulation, love, growing up, moving on and letting go so that what is meant to be, can happen.
Invited Reading
An Invited Reading is a opportunity for the playwright to learn from an audience. Often this will be the first time the play (or the most recent draft) has been performed before an audience. At GFTF we follow up each of our Invited Readings with a lightly facilitated, audience lead Community Conversation, during which we encourage members of our audience to share their experience of the play. There is no special experience or requirement needed to participate in an Invited Reading - just a willingness to share your open and honest feedback.
To request an Invitation, click here.
Synopsis

Afterlife

By Gary Soto
Gary Soto is the author of many books for young readers as well as adults. His forthcoming books are The Spark and Fire of It, a Shakespeare-themed play for the high school audience, and Meatballs for the People: Proverbs to Chew On. Popular titles include Baseball in April, Living Up the Street, A Summer Life, and Buried Onions. His fall project is a stage adaptation of his young-adult novel The Afterlife, which treats the sobering topics of teen murder and teen suicide. The Gary Soto Literary Museum is located at Fresno City College, where he got his start as a poet in the early 1970s. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Synopsis
A stage adaptation of the book by the same name, also written by Gary Soto.
Staged REading
A book-in-hand staged reading is a chance for the playwright to see their story in motion before introducing it to an audience.  This is a private performance with little to no production elements.
Synopsis

Bam

By Pheobe Farber
Phoebe Farber’s plays have been seen around New York and New Jersey, at Dreamcatcher Repertory Theater (The Messenger), Jersey City Theatre Center (The Messenger) and Luna Stage Short Play Festival (Nina). Most recently, her play Nina was seen in the 2017 Fringe Festival in Columbus, Ohio. In September 2016 her one-act play Tree Houses, a commission from Luna Stage (Orange, N.J.), was performed as part of the 280 Project. Her play Jump It was seen in The International Fringe Festival in NYC in August 2016 (“Best Bet of The Fringe”). Phoebe is a 2016 fellow with the Emerging Women Playwrights program of The Writers Theatre of New Jersey. Her plays have been published in Applause Theatre & Cinema Books and The Best Plays From The Strawberry One-Act Festival.
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Synopsis
BAM is a play about self-deception and the secrets we hide from ourselves. The play centers around Matt, an eager young man who has created an empowerment program for adolescents. The program is designed to build strength, and combat feelings of helplessness and fear. The play follows a group of facilitators-in-training as they learn about adolescent development, engage in trust exercises, share stories, sing songs and dance to Prince. In preparing them to work with the adolescents, Matt pushes the group to reveal their fragile and fearful selves. Not everyone is ready, but Matt is insistent. He prods and pushes and urges them forward. The play builds to a climax when one of the members reveals a secret Matt had hidden from the group.
Table Read
A Table Read is a private event attended by the actors, director, playwright, and other members of the creative team. The purpose of the table read is to give the playwright an opportunity to hear the play read by actors, and to receive constructive feedback. Occasionally, a playwright may allow or even request limited audience participation in a table read. If you wish to attend a closed table read please contact community@groundandfield.com.
Synopsis

Between Dirt and Sky

By Lisa Quoresimo
Lisa Quoresimo is an award-winning director and performer. She can be seen this summer in the West Coast Premiere of An Octoroon at the Berkeley Rep. She was the artistic director of Kairos Theatre in NYC, where she produced and directed more than 30 productions, and continued writing, directing and developing new works at the Marsh Theatre in San Francisco. Her works as a composer and playwright have been commissioned and performed across the country and internationally. Lisa holds an M.A. from Carnegie Mellon and has taught on the faculties of NYU and the Manhattan School of Music.
Synopsis
Staged REading
A book-in-hand staged reading is a chance for the playwright to see their story in motion before introducing it to an audience.  This is a private performance with little to no production elements.
Synopsis

The Briars

By Briandaniel Ogelsby
Briandaniel writes plays for teens and plays for mature audiences. He’s half Latino and queer and originally from Davis, California, where he co-founded Barnyard Theatre. He has an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside. He lives in Austin, Texas.

His play HALFWAY, NEBRASKA was developed at Playwrights Week at the Lark, and went on win the award for Outstanding Playwriting from the New York International Fringe Festival. His play SHE GETS NAKED IN THE ENDwon the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Latinidad Award. His adaptation of THE JUNGLE BOOK was commissioned by Big Idea Theatre and later published by Steele Springs Stage Rights. His short plays have been finalists for KCACTF and the Heideman Award, and have been produced across the country. His play SMALL STEPS was recently developed at the JAW Festival. ​
Synopsis
In a city that was once a town, the townfolk tell the story of the wealthy Buddy Briar, an almost mythical figure whose eccentricities and estate captured their imagination. He was their hero and villain. They tell the story of his rise and fall, and the zoo he hid behind his walls.

​Loosely inspired by Asa Candler, Jr, heir to Coca Cola, and the Briarcliff house in Atlanta, GA, The Briars is a comedic epic told from a chorus of townspeople. The Briars was originally commissioned by the Playwriting Center at Theater Emory, Emory University.
Festival Production
Synopsis

The Dead Kid

By max gutmann
​Max Gutmann's plays have been performed in New York City; Sligo, Ireland; and
throughout the U.S. The Orlando Sentinel
greeted the premiere of his first play with an
above-the-masthead teaser: "The Legacy
thrills with each deft twist." His
What You Will has been called, among many accolades, "a thoroughly unique piece of theatre" (Palo Alto Weekly) and "an absolutely delightful comedy romp" (RegardingArts.com).
www.maxgutmann.com
Synopsis
Another African-American has just been killed by another policeman under another set of questionable circumstances. The repetitiveness of such news echoes through The Dead Kid as it again and again replays the events following the killing, the characters' shallowness turning the tragedy into an absurd comedy in which the dead kid, whose story this is, is rarely mentioned. The first act takes us three times through the same series of events. In the second act, things get wilder.
Invited Reading
An Invited Reading is a opportunity for the playwright to learn from an audience. Often this will be the first time the play (or the most recent draft) has been performed before an audience. At GFTF we follow up each of our Invited Readings with a lightly facilitated, audience lead Community Conversation, during which we encourage members of our audience to share their experience of the play. There is no special experience or requirement needed to participate in an Invited Reading - just a willingness to share your open and honest feedback.
To request an Invitation, click here.
Synopsis

Hysterical

By Elena Stauffer
Elenna Stauffer is a former actress, trained at Yale (BA) and Columbia (MFA) with a side
career in voiceover (400+ commercials/promos/books on tape to date). Her play Second to Last of the Wobbly Tipplers
was in the inaugural Mixed Phoenix reading series and her short play, B-Roll won the 2016 InspiraTO! short play festival and was featured in this year’s Hollywood Short & Sweet Festival.
Hysterical! was previously workshopped at the NY International Fringe Festival and will be presented as part of the Second Act New Works Festival later this year. Elenna was i
nterviewed by playwright Adam Szymkowitz for his Interview Playwrights blog: http://aszym.blogspot.com/2016/07/i-interview-playwrights-part-862-elenna.html
Synopsis
It's the Bandits' best year EVER! Until... one by one, the girls succumb to a mysterious illness. A play for five young women, HYSTERICAL! follows a group of American cheerleaders over the course of an eventful school year. Loosely inspired by the real life events that occurred in upstate NY, the play follows Mia, Madison, Maddie, Shannon and Charlotte as first one, then another, then another girl contracts a mysterious illness. With only some girls afflicted and others seeming immune (at least for now), the traditional high school pecking order is upended and relationships between the girls are tested. Though there are comedic scenes and rah-rah cheerleading sequences throughout, HYSTERICAL! is a drama, concerned with the vulnerabilities of teenage girls and the poignancy of life on the cusp of adulthood.
Festival Production
Synopsis

Near Love Songs

By Ethan Treiman
Ethan Treiman, 18, will be attending Yale University as a freshman in Fall 2017.
He was one of four Los Angeles Philharmonic Composer Fellows (2015-2017). His works have been played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra as part of their Symphonies for Schools concerts. He attended the Young Artists Composition Program at Boston University Tanglewood Institute in 2016. Ethan is a National YoungArts “Honorable Mention” in Classical Composition. Ethan plans
to write music for concert, film, and theater. He also enjoys playing piano, running, and spending time with his dog, Butter.
Synopsis
​Near Love Songs is a 45 minute one act song cycle, with book music and lyrics by Ethan Treiman. Ethan wrote it in the summer before senior year of high school at Crossroads school for the Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, CA. Originally titled Ethan and Julia Sing Love Songs, the song cycle was performed by Ethan and Julia Gutierrez del Barrio in the Crossroads school theater in September of 2016. The theme connecting the nine songs is love: the falling into, the falling out of, and what's left in between. One male and one female actor share all the parts.
Festival Production
Synopsis