May 23 @ 4:30 pm
Guest of honor Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon from Sweet Honey in the Rock
Moore Theater
Free Admission
1) Dartmouth undergraduates are invited to submit original, previously unproduced, one-act plays for the Eleanor Frost Playwriting Contest and the Ruth and Loring Dodd Playwriting Contest. Submitted one-act plays will be considered for both the Frost and Dodd Awards. Playing time of the one-act plays may not exceed one hour. Play adaptations will be accepted only on the condition that the playwright submits a copy of the original work from which the competing script was adapted. (Please note that the 'original work' must be in the public domain or the submitting playwright must have the rights to do an adaptation.)
2) In summer 2013, the three winning plays from these two playwriting contests will be combined into several evenings of theater called the Frost & Dodd Playwriting Festival. The Festival will be produced July 26, 27 and 28 in the Bentley Theater.
3) Two plays will be selected as the Frost Award winners and will be produced and directed as readings during two evenings of the Frost & Dodd Playwriting Festival. (A reading means that no design elements will be employed.)
4) One play will be selected as the Dodd Award winner and will be fully produced and directed by a faculty member during two evenings of the Frost & Dodd Playwriting Festival.
5) Playwrights must be available to work on their plays via email and phone during the summer term. In addition, playwrights will be required to be on campus for initial readings of their plays and also the beginning of the rehearsal process - exact dates TBA - and for the week of tech and dress rehearsals. If a playwright is not enrolled or on campus in the summer term, the department will provide the playwright with transportation to/from Hanover and housing during these required periods.
6) Winning playwrights may obtain academic credit by enrolling in Theater 80: Independent Study during the summer term. Playwrights may not act in their own plays, so that they may work with the director of their play during the rehearsal process.
7) Three (3) copies of the script must be submitted to the Department of Theater, 111 Hopkins Center by Monday, March 25 at 4 PM. (Please do not submit your play electronically.) Number the pages of the script and include a cover page with your name, Hinman Box and title of play. Your name should not appear anywhere else in the script.
8) The Director of Theater and/or the Department Chair will organize a reading panel of three individuals who will read all the submitted plays (with authors' names removed by the Theater Office). This panel of judges will choose the two Frost Contest winners and the one Dodd Contest winner. The panel may also choose to award "Honorable Mention" status to additional plays. The Frost and Dodd winners will receive cash awards, which will be presented at the Arts Award Ceremony in May.
9) Neither the Theater Department nor Dartmouth College will retain any rights to any play submitted to the Frost & Dodd Festival other than the right to produce the play in the Festival.
10) Plays submitted to the Frost & Dodd Festival, but not chosen for production in the Festival, may (with the permission of the author) be submitted for consideration for a YOUR SPACE or student production slot in a later term.
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Maia Matsushita '13 is a member of the class of 2013 from White Plains, New York. She is a Cultural Anthropology major, and a Theater minor. At Dartmouth, she appeared in the Theater Department's 2011 production of RENT and was involved in the 2012 PRIDE Week Theater Festival. She discovered her love of playwriting through Playwriting 1 and Advanced Playwriting with Professor Sutton during her junior year, and will be taking Dramatic Storytelling this coming fall. Beyond theater, Maia also participates in the arts at Dartmouth through her involvement with the Dartmouth Rockapellas, an all-female a cappella group that spreads messages of social justice through song. Maia is pursuing her love for the performing arts as an intern at Rosie's Theater Kids in NYC this summer, as well as as a volunteer at the Weathervane Theater's summer theater camp. She hopes to continue writing plays in the future. SAT | JUL 28 | 8 PM A fast-paced romantic comedy about what happens when you say those three magical word—and then take them back.SUN | JUL 29 | 7 PM Individual tickets $4 |
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Laura Neill '13 is a rising senior at Dartmouth College. She is an English major and Theater minor as well as a member of the Dartmouth Rude Mechanicals, a student Shakespeare company. Laura's first two-act play, "Faking It," was produced at Dartmouth in Summer 2011, and her one-act and ten-minute plays have been featured in Triple Play, the 10-Minute Play Festival, and WiRED. Laura is excited to be part of the Frost and Dodd Playwriting Festival and would like to thank her family and friends for their support. FRI | JUL 27 | 8 PM A darkly emotive drama about the things that test unconditional love.CONDITIONS by Laura Neill '13 A satirical comedy about college, unexpected attraction, and what happens when the world turns upside downFALL by Laura Neill '13 Post-performance discussionSUN | JUL 29 | 7 PM Individual tickets $4 |
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Ariela Anhalt grew up in Guilford, Connecticut. At Dartmouth, she majored in English with a concentration in creative writing, and her first novel, Freefall, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in January of 2010. Her play "For You" was performed in a staged reading during the 2010 Frost & Dodd Play Festival. This past year, Ariela worked with a group of students to create a play called "The Girl in the Mirror" based on folklore collected from Burkina Faso. She also collaborated with the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble on "Undue Influence," a performance piece focusing on the issue of sexual assault at Dartmouth. Ariela plans to spend the next year writing and will begin Yale Law School in the fall of 2012. |
The Goode Brother
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From A to Zombie
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Winner of the 2011 Eleanor Frost Playwriting Competition Award for his play From A to Zombie, Kenny Baclawski grew up in Waltham, Massachusetts. He is currently double-majoring in Linguistics and English with a concentration in Creative Writing. At the 2009 Dartmouth Arts Award Ceremony, his screenplay The Adventures of Blinkman received the Alexander Laing Memorial Writing Award for a short film script (comedy). Blinkman was also selected as a winner of the 2009 Bulldog Productions screenwriting competition at Yale. Baclawski is also a humorist, as co-editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Jack-o'-Lantern Humor Magazine and president of the Sit-Down Tragedy stand-up comedy group. Outside of Dartmouth, he has performed stand-up at clubs in Boston and New York, and he hopes someday to become a linguist and a struggling semi-professional comedy writer. |
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Erin is Typing....
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The deadline for submissions for the 2011 contest has passed.
Rules for the contest:
2011 FROST & DODD PLAYWRITING FESTIVAL:
(84th ANNUAL ELEANOR FROST CONTEST and the 36th ANNUAL RUTH & LORING DODD CONTEST)
[Note: Both of these contests are open to DARTMOUTH undergraduate students only.]
DEADLINE: 4 PM on Friday, January 28, 2011
1) Dartmouth undergraduates are invited to submit original, previously unproduced, one-act plays for the Eleanor Frost Playwriting Contest and the Ruth and Loring Dodd Playwriting Contest. Submitted one-act plays will be considered for both the Frost and Dodd Awards. Playing time of the one-act plays may not exceed one hour. Play adaptations will be accepted only on the condition that the playwright submits a copy of the original work from which the competing script was adapted. (Please note that the 'original work' must be in the public domain or the submitting playwright must have the rights to do an adaptation.)
2) In summer 2011, the three winning plays from these two playwriting contests will be combined into several evenings of theater called the Frost & Dodd Playwriting Festival. The Festival will be produced in the last weeks of July (exact dates TBA) in the Bentley Theater.
3) Two plays will be selected as the Frost Award winners and will be produced and directed as readings during two evenings of the Frost & Dodd Playwriting Festival. (A reading means that no design elements will be employed.)
4) One play will be selected as the Dodd Award winner and will be fully produced and directed by a faculty member during two evenings of the Frost & Dodd Playwriting Festival.
5) Playwrights must be available to work on their plays via email and phone during the summer term. In addition, playwrights will be required to be on campus for initial readings of their plays and also the beginning of the rehearsal process - exact dates TBA - and for the week of tech and dress rehearsals. If a playwright is not enrolled or on campus in the summer term, the department will provide the playwright with transportation to/from Hanover and housing during these required periods.
6) Winning playwrights may obtain academic credit by enrolling in Theater 80: Independent Study during the summer term. Playwrights may not act in their own plays, so that they may work with the director of their play during the rehearsal process.
7) Three (3) copies of the script must be submitted to the Department of Theater, 111 Hopkins Center by Friday, January 28 at 4 PM. (Please do not submit your play electronically.) Number the pages of the script and include a cover page with your name, Hinman Box and title of play. Your name should not appear anywhere else in the script.
8) The Director of Theater and/or the Department Chair will organize a reading panel of three individuals who will read all the submitted plays (with authors' names removed by the Theater Office). This panel of judges will choose the two Frost Contest winners and the one Dodd Contest winner. The panel may also choose to award "Honorable Mention" status to additional plays. The Frost and Dodd winners will receive cash awards, which will be presented at the Arts Award Ceremony in May.
9) Neither the Theater Department nor Dartmouth College will retain any rights to any play submitted to the Frost & Dodd Festival other than the right to produce the play in the Festival.
10) Plays submitted to the Frost & Dodd Festival, but not chosen for production in the Festival, may (with the permission of the author) be submitted for consideration for a bench reading in one of the Student Production Slots.
2010 PLAYWRITING FESTIVAL
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| Stew Towle '12 as Jasper in Ariela Anhalt's "For You". |
Bill Calder '12 as Travis, Emma Fidel '12 as Adele, |
The Ruth and Loring Dodd Drama Prize was established in 1969 by a bequest in the will of Clark University Professor Loring Dodd for the best play by an undergraduate. The winning play is fully produced by the Theater department and is directed by a faculty member. A cash prize is also awarded.
The Eleanor Frost Play Festival was established in 1950 by a gift from Eleanor Louise Frost, which has been supplemented by gifts from Professor Henry B. Williams. Mrs. Frost was a member of the Dartmouth community who enjoyed and wished to encourage the Dartmouth Players Experimental Theatre. The competition is open annually to original, previously unproduced one-act plays written by currently enrolled Dartmouth undergraduates. The winning playwrights receive cash awards and their plays are produced as staged readings by the department.
HANOVER, NH — For three evenings, from Friday, July 30 through Sunday, August 1, the Dartmouth Theater Department presents compelling original plays by three undergraduate students in the 2010 Eleanor Frost and Ruth & Loring Dodd Annual Playwriting Festival. Professionally directed by Theater Department faculty members, these one-act plays are the winners of two competitions which were first combined in 2005 to form this annual Festival: the Eleanor Frost Competition, now in its 60th year, and the Ruth & Loring Dodd Contest, now in its 41st year. The Frost and Dodd prizes include a public presentation, cash award, and an opportunity to receive feedback from members of the New York Theatre Workshop, who are in residence at Dartmouth for three weeks in August.
This year’s Frost Award-winning plays, directed by Prof. Peter Hackett, are For You by Ariela Anhalt ’11 and The Rose Garden by Sarah Laeuchli ’11. They will be presented as staged readings in The Warner Bentley Theater at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth on Friday, July 30, at 8 pm and on Sunday, August 1, at 7 pm. There will be a discussion with the playwrights, actors and director following the performance on the 30th. The 2010 Dodd Award-winner, Sit-In by Tabetha Xavier ’10, is directed by Prof. Jamie Horton, and will be presented as a fully produced play in the Bentley Theater, on Saturday, July 31, at 8 pm and again on Sunday, August 1, following the Frost readings at 7 pm. A discussion with the playwright, actors and director will follow the production on the 31st.
The actors are Bill Calder '12 (playing Travis) and Emma Fidel '12 (playing Adele.) Adele comforts her heartbroken son Travis in Ariela Anhalt's "For You."
THE WINNING PLAYS
Dramatic, intense and emotional, all three of these award-winning plays weave stories with common threads: exploring family relationships, moral choices, and personal breakthroughs or transformation.
For You, by Ariela Anhalt ‘11, follows a family over the course of a couple of days. The 20-something-year-old children have gathered at the family home to say goodbye to their middle-aged father who is dying of cancer. The gay son, seeking the acceptance he never had from his devout Catholic father, wants to reveal his engagement to a longtime boyfriend. But his determination wavers when his sister and mother, who want to protect their father/husband from this potentially painful news, try to thwart him. With visceral immediacy, For You is a drama that propels the family members to confront difficult realities, navigate challenging relationships, and make judgments when both love and truth are at stake.
The Rose Garden by Sarah Laeuchli ’11 is set in a small town in West Virginia. Juliet, a troubled young painter, decides to drop out of art school, return home, and move back in with her grandmother Nancy. Their already fragile relationship—frayed by the mental illness and subsequent suicide of Juliet’s mother (Nancy’s daughter)—is further strained by Juliet’s own dangerously dark emotions and Nancy’s self-righteousness. But when for the first time they unveil and openly face previously hidden facts and feelings, they reach a new higher ground concerning each other’s anger, sorrow, and guilt.
The fully staged Dodd Award winner, Sit-In by Tabetha Xavier ’10, is a seriocomedy: absurd and satirical, sad yet hopeful. A middleclass businessman has a midlife crisis when his wife leaves him. Barricading himself in his house and refusing to stand up, change clothes, or go to work until his wife comes back, he essentially stages a “sit-in.” He is crippled by heartbreak, descending into an infantile state in order to finally ascend to new levels of love and appreciation for his wife. But to win her back, he must come to terms with and atone for his adult indiscretions.
THE WINNING PLAYWRIGHTS
With a long history and a forward-looking approach, the Frost and Dodd playwriting competitions have often launched the careers of participants, including such major figures in theater, film, and TV as Tony- and Pulitzer-winning playwright/producer/director Frank D. Gilroy '50; multiple-Tony Award-winning stage and TV director/actor Jerry Zaks '67; noted playwright Peter Parnell '74, who wrote Cider House Rules, among many other plays; and writer/actress Mindy Kaling '01, who writes, produces and acts in the TV sitcom The Office and was named in 2009 by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 10 Funniest Actresses in Hollywood.
The 2010 winners of the Frost and Dodd Awards are poised to follow in the footsteps of these Dartmouth alums and take the stage by storm:
Winner of the 2010 Ruth and Loring Dodd Drama Prize for Sit-In, Tabetha Xavier grew up in the small factory town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and is a Premed/Theater major modified with Government. The focus of her Theater writing is socially conscious plays, addressing such topics as child abuse and sexual violence. Xavier was also the winner of the prestigious Dodd Award in 2009, for her play Fold the Close. Her senior culminating project, presented as a staged reading in the Bentley Theater this past spring, is a full-length, surrealist/expressionist play entitled Pluck Sticky Stuck. She has received academic citations in both Acting I and Screenwriting I. She is the 2010 recipient of the Alexander Laing Memorial Writing Award (first prize) for her short film Wedlocked, as well as this year's recipient of the Warner Bentley and Henry B. Williams Fellowship Endowment—both awarded at the 2010 Dartmouth Arts Award Ceremony. This summer, she is an intern with the New York Theatre Workshop during its three-week residency at Dartmouth. Tabetha Xavier intends to pursue a career as a playwright; her first play to be produced by a professional theater is scheduled to open in New Rochelle, New York, in September, 2010.Tabetha Xavier '10 speaks about her writing and her play Sit-In. Click here to listen to her interview.
Winner of a 2010 Eleanor Frost Playwriting Competition Award for her play For You, Ariela Anhalt grew up in Guilford, Connecticut. She is majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Her first novel Freefall, “that combines suspense and astute character study,” according to The Valley News, was published in January, 2010, by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her play For You was written in Joseph Sutton's Playwriting II class during her first year at Dartmouth. At the 2010 Dartmouth Arts Award Ceremony, Anhalt also received the Alexander Laing Memorial Writing Award (second prize) for a short film script. The Dartmouth reported in 2009 that “Creative Writing professor Ernest Hebert praised Anhalt’s writing abilities as…‘clear’ and ‘unadorned’. He said that Anhalt is ‘very much a realist’…[and] was struck by her insights into human nature.” Ariela Anhalt '10 speaks about her writing and her play For You. Click here to listen to her interview.
Also a winner of the Eleanor Frost Playwriting Competition for The Rose Garden, Sarah Laeuchli hails from Arivaca, Arizona, and is a Theater major with a concentration in Directing. She has directed several shows, both for the Dartmouth Theater Department and for the Displaced Theater Company, of which she is President. Her directorial projects at Dartmouth have included the plays Almost, Maine, The Women of Troy, Antigone, and Wonder of the World. In winter 2010, Laeuchli was the recipient of grants from Dartmouth’s John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and the Center of Undergraduate Research to study African folklore and performance in Burkina Faso. This past spring, at the Dartmouth Arts Award Ceremony, she was presented with two Theater Department awards: the David Birney Award for Excellence in the Theatre Arts and the Clifford S. Gurdin 1964 Memorial Award for directing. This summer, Laeuchli is the artistic intern at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. In her senior year at the College, she will be working with groups of Dartmouth students to develop her Burkina Faso research into a performance piece.
- Written by Marcy Menitove
Freelance Writer/Editor/PR Consultant
