The Ojai Playwrights Conference is a new play development program based in
Ojai
Ojai ( ; Chumash: ''’Awhaỳ'') is a city in Ventura County, California. Located in the Ojai Valley, it is northwest of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. The valley is part of the east–west trending Western Transverse Ranges and is ...
, California. The mission of the organization is to develop unproduced plays of artistic excellence that focus on the compelling social, political and cultural issues of our era from diverse playwrights both emerging and established, and to nurture a new generation of playwrights and theatre artists.
Activities
Each summer playwrights, directors,
dramaturge
A dramaturge or dramaturg is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults auth ...
s, and other theatre professionals gather in Ojai for a two-week conference culminating in a New Works Festival, in which new plays are presented in staged readings, and audiences are invited to join in post-play discussions. The readings, performed by professional actors, generally occur at Zalk Theater on the campus of Ojai's
Besant Hill School
Besant Hill School of Happy Valley, formerly the Happy Valley School, is an American private, coeducational boarding school and day school in Ojai, California. The school has approximately 100 students and about 35 faculty and staff, all of wh ...
. In addition to the new play workshops, the Festival also features various performance events and presentations of original works by conference interns and youth workshop program participants.
Founded in 1998, the not-for-profit arts organization was led by artistic director and producer Robert Egan from 2001 until 2022.
Under his leadership, the Ojai Playwrights Conference has grown over the years in the number of artists served, the diversity of its artists and leadership. In 2019, the Ojai Playwrights Conference was awarded the Gordon Davidson Award for distinguished contribution to the Los Angeles theatrical community by the LA Drama Critics Circle.
Plays developed at the Ojai Playwrights Conference have been performed on
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
, in the
West End,
off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
, and at regional theatres. Both "
Fun Home
''Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic'' is a 2006 graphic memoir by the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip ''Dykes to Watch Out For''. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, United States, fo ...
" and "
Other Desert Cities
''Other Desert Cities'' is a play by Jon Robin Baitz. The play premiered Off-Broadway in January 2011 and transferred to Broadway in November 2011, marking the Broadway debut of a Baitz play. The play was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize fo ...
" were workshopped at the Ojai Playwrights Conference and were Pulitzer Finalists;
"Fun Home" won the
Tony Award for Best Musical
The Tony Award for Best Musical is given annually to the best new Broadway musical play, musical, as determined by Tony Award voters. The award is one of the ceremony's longest-standing awards, having been presented each year since 1949. The awa ...
, and ''
Caroline, or Change
''Caroline, or Change'' is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by Tony Kushner. The score combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music.
The show ran both Off-Broadway and on Broad ...
'' won the
Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical
The Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical is an annual award presented by the Society of London Theatre in recognition of achievements in commercial London theatre. The awards were established as the Society of West End Theatre Awards in 1 ...
. "
Eclipsed
In chemistry an eclipsed conformation is a conformation in which two substituents X and Y on adjacent atoms A, B are in closest proximity, implying that the torsion angle X–A–B–Y is 0°. Such a conformation can exist in any open chain, ...
" and ''
The Motherfucker with the Hat
''The Motherfucker with the Hat'' (sometimes censored as ''The Motherf**ker with the Hat'' and ''The Mother with the Hat'') is a 2011 play by Stephen Adly Guirgis. The show is described as "a high-octane verbal cage match about love, fidelity and ...
''
were each nominated for the
Tony Award for Best Play
The Tony Award for Best Play (formally, the Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre) is an annual award given to the best new (non- musical) play on Broadway, as determined by Tony Award voters. There was no award in the Tonys' first year ...
.
Plays
The following plays have been developed through the Ojai Playwrights Conference:
* ''
Other Desert Cities
''Other Desert Cities'' is a play by Jon Robin Baitz. The play premiered Off-Broadway in January 2011 and transferred to Broadway in November 2011, marking the Broadway debut of a Baitz play. The play was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize fo ...
'' by
Jon Robin Baitz
Jon Robin Baitz (born November 4, 1961) is an American playwright, screenwriter and television producer. He is a two time Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as a Guggenheim Museum, Guggenheim, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and NEA fellowshi ...
* ''
The Motherfucker With the Hat
''The Motherfucker with the Hat'' (sometimes censored as ''The Motherf**ker with the Hat'' and ''The Mother with the Hat'') is a 2011 play by Stephen Adly Guirgis. The show is described as "a high-octane verbal cage match about love, fidelity and ...
'' by
Stephen Adly Guirgis
Stephen Adly Guirgis is a Pulitzer Prize Winning American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company.Blake, Leslie (Hoban)"Comin' Uptown" ''Theater ...
* ''
Between Riverside and Crazy
''Between Riverside and Crazy'' is a 2014 play by playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor Stephen Adly Guirgis. The play won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 2015 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, the 2015 Lucille Lo ...
'' by Stephen Adly Guirgis
* ''In the Continuum'' by
Danai Gurira
Danai Jekesai Gurira (; born February 14, 1978) is an American-Zimbabwean actress and playwright. She is best known for her starring roles as Michonne on the AMC horror drama series '' The Walking Dead'' (2012–2020, 2022) and as Okoye in the ...
and
Nikkole Salter
*
Eclipsed
In chemistry an eclipsed conformation is a conformation in which two substituents X and Y on adjacent atoms A, B are in closest proximity, implying that the torsion angle X–A–B–Y is 0°. Such a conformation can exist in any open chain, ...
by Danai Gurira
* ''God Spies'' by
Bill Cain
Bill Cain, SJ (c. 1947–) is an American playwright and Jesuit priest. He founded a Shakespeare company in Boston, and ''The New York Times'' has praised him for his "impish humor".
Works
Cain wrote the play ''Stand Up Tragedy'' and the play ...
* ''Geometry of Fire'' by
Stephen Belber
Stephen Belber (born March 3, 1967) is an American playwright, screenwriter and film director. His plays have been produced on Broadway and in over 50 countries. He directed the film adaptation of his Broadway play, ''Match'', starring Patric ...
* ''The Little Flower of East Orange'' by Stephen Adly Guirgis
* ''
Well
A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...
'' by
Lisa Kron
Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron (born May 20, 1961) is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book to the musical ''Fun Home'' for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for ...
* ''
Caroline, or Change
''Caroline, or Change'' is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by Tony Kushner. The score combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music.
The show ran both Off-Broadway and on Broad ...
'' by
Jeanie Tesori and
Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage he's most known for his seminal work ''Angels in America'' which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. At the turn ...
Further reading
* Margaret Gray (August 22, 2022)
Conversation Starters: How Robert Egan Put Ojai Playwrights on the Map ''
American Theatre
Theater in the United States is part of the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater. The central hub of the American theater scene is Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and ...
''
* Rachel Lee Harris (July 6, 2009). California Samples New York Playwrights. ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' 158 (54728), p. C2
References
External links
Ojai Playwrights ConferenceCity of OjaiOjai FestivalsTheater 150Besant Hill School
{{coord missing, Ventura County, California
Theatre festivals in the United States
Ojai, California
Tourist attractions in Ventura County, California