CHICAGO: Goodman Theatre has named four Chicago-based writers to its 2018-19 Playwrights Unit. The new members include Georgette Kelly, Dianne Nora, Marisela Treviño Orta, and Stacey Rose.
In partnership with Chicago Dramatists, the Playwrights Unit offers writers the opportunity to meet bi-monthly to discuss their commissioned plays with the Goodman’s artistic staff. The year-long residency will conclude with public staged readings next summer.
Kelly’s works include North Star, Faith in a Fallen World, In the Belly of the Whale, F*ck la vie d’artiste, How to Hero, an adaptation of Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping, among others. Her play I Carry Your Heart received the inaugural Hope on Stage Playwriting Award, and her play Ballast was featured on the Kilroys List and received the Craig Noel Award for Outstanding New Play. Kelly holds a BA in performance studies from Northwestern University and an MFA in playwriting from Hunter College.
Nora is a playwright, dramaturg, theatre scholar, and comedy writer who works in Chicago, Brooklyn, and Dublin, Ireland. Her plays include Julie (25F), Western Country, In Rooms Such as These, Everybody’s Legs, Wasps, Ye That Dwell in Dust, Prodigal and Monica: This Play Is Not About Monica Lewinsky. She is currently co-writing a parody of the Bible with Scott Dikkers, founding editor of The Onion.
Orta’s plays include Alcira American Triage, Braided Sorrow, Ghost Limb, Heart Shaped Nebula, Shoe, The River Bride, and Woman on Fire. Her play Wolf at the Door will receive a National New Play Network rolling world premiere this season. Her work has been commissioned by American Conservatory Theater, Latino Playwrights Initiative, Marin Theatre Company, Nashville Children’s Theatre, and San Francisco Grants for the Arts. She is an alumna of the Playwrights Foundation’s Resident Playwright Initiative, a founding member of the Bay Area Latino Theatre Artists Network, and a member of the Latinx Theatre Commons’ national steering committee. Orta is a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer and a graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop.
Rose’s work has been presented at UNC Charlotte, On Q Productions, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, the Fire This Time Festival, The Brooklyn Generator, Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Mosaic Theatre, the Amoralists Theatre Compay, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, National Black Theatre, and Pillsbury House Theater. While studying at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Rose was the recipient of an AAUW Career Development Grant, awarded as a Future Screenwriting Fellow, and honored with the Goldberg Prize for her play The Danger: A Homage to Strange Fruit. Rose was a 2015-16 Dramatist Guild Fellow, a 2017-18 Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellow, a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow, and is a 2018-2021 Playwrights’ Center Core Writer.
