PERFORMANCES + SPECIAL EVENTS
Island County Fair – Musical Theatre Showcase
with Susan Vanderwood and Dana Linn
August 14 @ TBA
Island County Fair Grounds
Fair gate admission price TBA
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An Evening with Danai Gurira
Whidbey Island Theatre Festival and Hedgebrook are honored to introduce playwright Danai Gurira to Whidbey Island.
Danai Gurira will be sharing readings from her award-winning play In the Continuum.
In the Continuum takes place over a 48-hour period in which both protagonists, living continents apart, discover that the men in their lives have infected them with HIV. Each goes on a personal journey, encountering various characters and cultural bias, as they try to come to grips with their diagnosis and sense of isolation. The play was performed off-Broadway, won a Global Tolerance Award from the United Nations, and was named one of the Ten Best Plays of the Year (2006) by The New York Times.
Ms. Gurira will also share her newest play, Eclipsed, straight from a ten-day workshop at the Ojai Playwrights Conference.
The evening to be moderated by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Artistic Director of the Hansberry Project at ACT Theatre, and Hedgebrook Board President.
August 16 @ 7.30pm
Whidbey Island Center for the Arts
Admission by donation
About DANAI GURIRA
Danai Gurira (Zainab) was born in the
United States
and raised in
Zimbabwe
. She received her M.F.A. in acting from
New York
University
, where she appeared as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Ruby in King Hedley II. She is a recipient of a 2006 OBIE Award and a 2006 John Gassner Outer Critics Award and has been honored by the Theatre Hall of Fame. In 2007, Ms. Gurira won the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actress in a Play for In the Continuum, which she co-wrote. Her television credits include "Law and Order: Criminal Intent." She also appeared in the films "Ghost Town" and “The Visitor.”
About VALERIE CURTIS-NEWTON
Associate Professor in Acting and Directing and Head of Directing, Valerie is currently an Artistic Associate at A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) where she oversees the Hansberry Project, an African American theatre lab. She has directed projects for professional companies including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Children's Theatre, Northwest Asian American Theatre and Capitol Repertory Theatre. Valerie has participated in new play development for the New York Theatre Workshop, The Children's Theatre Company of
Minneapolis
, The Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory Theatre and at the ACT/Hedgebrook and Seattle Rep/Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festivals working with playwrights including Kia Corthron, Caridad Svich, Gina Gionfriddo, Laurie Carols and Valetta Anderson. In addition, she has served as Artistic Director for The Performing Ensemble of Hartford and the Ethnic Cultural Theatre at the UW, and was a participant in the 1997-98 NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors assisting Tina Landau, Douglas Hughes, Lisa Peterson, Gordon Edelstein and Sharon Ott. Valerie is a recent recipient of both the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation's Sir John Gielgud Directing Fellowship and a UW Presidential Faculty Development Fellowship and is an alumna of
Holy
Cross
College
and the University of Washington (MFA).
About HEDGEBROOK
Hedgebrook is situated on 48-acres of forest and meadow facing
Puget Sound
, the retreat hosts women writers from all over the world for residencies of two weeks to two months, at no cost to the writer. Residents are housed in six handcrafted cottages, where they spend their days in solitude – writing, reading, taking walks in the woods on the property, on nearby Double Bluff beach or trails around the island. In the evenings, they gather in the farmhouse kitchen to share a home-cooked gourmet meal, their work, their process and their stories. The women who come to Hedgebrook are writing in all genres, and are of all ages, ethnicities, backgrounds and levels of writing experience.
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