Monthly Archives: June 2015

THE ONE-MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL (#1MPF), KNOW THEATRE OF CINCINNATI
PRESENT
THE 1st CINCINNATI ONE-MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL

THREE PERFORMANCES ONLY
SATURDAY, JULY 11th at 8pm
SUNDAY, JULY 12th at 2pm & 8pm 

AT KNOW THEATRE OF CINCINNATI 

1120 Jackson St
Cincinnati, OH 45202

The One-Minute Play Festival (Dominic D’Andrea, Producing Artistic Director & Caitlin Wees, Associate Producer) and Know Theatre Company (Andrew Hungerford, Producing Artistic Director & Tamara Winters, Associate Artistic Director) have created a dynamic partnership for The 1st Cincinnati One-minute Play Festival with part of the proceeds to benefit new play development at Know Theatre.

“I’m thrilled for the opportunity to bring our process and the work to the Cincinnati community for the first time”, says 1MPF founder and producing artistic director, Dominic D’Andrea. “Know Theatre is the perfect partner for the work that we do, as they are growing to become a national hub for new work and ideas in the region.”

Known as being a social barometer project, 1MPF invited writers living and working in the Cincinnati  region to submit moments via their specific playmaking process. The writers were given a prompt that asked them to consider the world around them, their community, and all the ways in which they view and engage with the world, and to write and submit moments that could only happen at this time and in this place. Once the moments were submitted, the 1MPF team identified the themes, ideas, styles, trends, and connections that bubbled up to the surface in the zeitgeist, highlighted those things, and reflected them back in “clumps” of several plays. “We are survey artists”, said D’Andrea. “This is our version of performing a community mind-map, or kind of like sticking a core sample into the earth and examining a cross-section of themes and ideas that exist in the dirt.”

Part community-convening, part social action, and part play festival, 1MPF aims to investigate the questions who are we? What is our relationship to each other? To our community? To our work? To our activism? Through a series of 60 pulses of storytelling, 60 heartbeats that say something about who we are, where we are, and where we might be going as a community.

The 1st Cincinnati One-Minute Play Festival will be presented on Saturday, July 11th at 8pm, and Sunday, July 12th at 8pm at Know Theatre (1120 Jackson St.).  Tickets are $20 and available for purchase at knowtheatre.com or by calling 513.300.5669.

One-minute plays by established and emerging Cincinnati playwrights were commissioned for this special event, prompted by #1MPF’s unique playmaking process.

The First Cincinnati One-Minute Play Festival will feature work by Linnea Bond, John Brommels, Michael Burnham, Nick Carmine, Kevin Crowley, Bekka Eaton, Kate Fine, Brian Griffin, Mike Hall, Becca Howell, Alan Jozwiak, David Loehr, Robert Macke, Erica MacDonald, Joe McDonagh, Eric Pfeffinger, Maggie Lou Rader, Alison Rampa, Brant Russell, Paul Shortt, Stacy Sims, Andy Simpson, Nathan Singer, Jim Stark, Paul Strickland, Trey Tatum, Eileen Tull, Chris Wesselman, Torie Wiggins, & Alison Vodnoy Wolf.

Directed by Michael Burnham, Ed Cohen, Katie Lupica, Regina Pugh, Brant Russell, Carrington Rowe, Ben Raanan, & Torie Wiggins.

The One-­Minute Play Festival (#1MPF) America’s largest and longest running short form theatre company in the country, founded by Producing Artistic Director, Dominic D’Andrea . #1MPF is barometer project, which investigates the zeitgeist of different communities through dialogue and consensus building sessions and a performance of many moments. #1MPF works in partnership with theatres sharing playwright or community-specific missions across the country. #1MPF creates locally sourced playwright-focused community events, with the goal of promoting the spirit of radical inclusion by representing local cultures of playwrights of different age, gender, race, cultures, and points of career. The work attempts to reflect the theatrical landscape of local artistic communities by creating a dialogue between the collective conscious and the individual voice.

In each city, #1MPF works with partnering organizations to identify programs or initiatives in each community to support with the proceeds from the work. The goal is to find ways give directly back to the artists in each community. Supported programs have ranged from educational programming, youth poetry projects, teaching artists working in prisons, playwright residencies and memberships, and community arts workshops.

Annual partnerships have been created with theaters in close to 20 cities including: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Trenton, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Boston, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Seattle, Dallas, Austin, Indianapolis, Anchorage, and more, with partnering institutions like Primary Stages, Victory Gardens Theatre, Cornerstone Theatre Company, The Playwrights Foundation, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Actor’s Express, InterAct Theatre, Mixed Blood, Passage Theatre, Phoenix Theatre, Kitchen Dog, Salvage Vanguard, ScriptWorks,  ACT, Perseverance Theatre, and others.

Notable #1MPF contributors have included: David Henry Hwang, Neil LaBute, Tina Howe, Donald Margulies, Nilaja Sun, Lydia Diamond, Phillip Kan Gotanda, Kristoffer Diaz, Rajiv Joseph, Sam Hunter, Karen Hartman, José Rivera, Craig Lucas, Mike Daisey, Greg Kotis, Michael John Garcés, & close to 600 famous, emerging, and midcareer playwrights.  For more information visit: www.oneminuteplayfestival.com.

KNOW THEATRE OF CINCINNATI, now in its 18th season, is Cincinnati’s Theatrical Playground. The Know showcases unexpected voices, new works, and plays that embrace the inherent theatricality of the live experience. Know Theatre seeks to be a place where artists and audiences feel welcome to take artistic risks, creating work that is cutting edge and accessible.