AMERICAN THEATRE | Los Angeles New Play Challenge Names 2nd Annual Grant Recipients

LOS ANGELES: The second annual Los Angeles New Play Challenge (LANPP) has named three new playwrights and 4 theatres as their 2022 grant recipients. The playwrights are David Johann Kim, Rosie Narasaki, and Marlow Wyatt. Every playwright will obtain $20,000, and the grant additionally awards 4 Los Angeles County theatres $20,000 for producing the playwrights’ work throughout the subsequent 18 months. Chalk Repertory Theatre will premiere Kim’s Pang Spa, whereas Ensemble Studio Theatre LA will stage Kim’s Two Cease. Playwright’s Area will produce Narasaki’s Unequalled and Antaeus Theatre Firm will produce Wyatt’s SHE.

The LANPP grant is designed to contribute to authentic work on the phases of Los Angeles County. The grants are meant to assist appeal to excellence in playwriting to the Los Angeles theatre neighborhood and to encourage the manufacturing of thrilling, untried performs.

“We launched Los Angeles New Play Challenge with a purpose to help among the finest writers who’re working to develop new performs,” defined LANPP director and producer Paula Holt in an announcement. “Moreover, by serving to to help small theatres that work so exhausting to current new performs to the native audiences, we’re providing a spark for L.A. theatres coming again to life after these difficult years.” 

Kim’s performs are each set in L.A.’s Korean neighborhood following the Rodney King verdict. Two Cease is about in a Korean-owned comfort retailer on the evening of the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion, and Pang Spa is an immersive manufacturing that tells the story of a previously affluent grocery retailer on the outskirts of L.A.’s Koreatown that was destroyed within the aftermath of the decision. 

Narasaki’s Unequalled tells the story of two renounced Japanese feminine writers of the eleventh century, exploring gender politics, sexuality, and sophistication construction in a interval that attracts parallels to modern Western tradition.

Wyatt’s SHE is about in Clark County, Miss., and examines the story of 13-year-old Sojourner Freeman, who battles her single mom and navigates a rocky summer season attempting to piece collectively the cash to fund tuition at a prestigious Academy of Arts and Science.  

The Los Angeles New Play Challenge grant was based by producers Paula Holt and Nathan Birnbaum. The challenge is run in cooperation with the UCLA Basis, UCLA’s College of Theater, Movie and Tv, and is funded by a beneficiant benefactor who has requested to stay nameless. 

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