Our "Ten Years - Ten Plays" season continues with readings of seven plays — one of Shakespeare's greatest, and six Shakespeare-inspired plays by local playwrights. Join us for this fun, festive, informal, interactive celebration of the Bard's continuing influence in our world!
All readings will feature talkbacks and discussions with the playwrights (except for the first one, of course...)
All readings in the series are FREE! A $5 donation is encouraged, but come join us anyway even if you can't manage that.
We kick off our festival with a reading of Shakespeare's most popular history play, featuring one of his most gleefully entertaining villains. Come celebrate Shakespeare's birthday with us, and we'll sort out the history behind this play for you.
And that will set us up for the next reading...
A modern playwright re-imagines the story of Richard III in a very different way, based on extensive historical research. A great companion piece to Shakespeare's version — see both and compare!
Five interconnected short plays take us on a metatheatrical romp behind the scenes of the Bard's works, in the company of Hamlet, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Yorick, and a number of other characters who can't seem to help making trouble for their creator.
"Will And The Ghost" by Aoise Stratford and Conal Condren
Ever wonder why there are so many ghosts in Shakespeare's plays? Perhaps he didn't have much of a choice...
"The De-scepter" by William Cordeiro
A modern verse play in which a king dreams about the heroic glory of war — then finds that he can't get rid of his crown fast enough when the war comes to him.
"Cat Will Mew" by Dave Dietrich
What happens when characters hate their actors, distrust their author, and totally ignore the guy in the title role?
"Toil And..." by David Guaspari
Murder most foul strikes during auditions for a new musical that gives a whole new meaning to the term "The Scottish Play."
The readings will be followed by a panel discussion with all the playwrights represented in our series.
George Sapio is an award-winning playwright, director, dramaturg and actor. His latest play is Fault Lines; his play Oatmeal and a Cigarette was awarded Critics' Pick at the 2008 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. He is thrilled to be working with the ISC again, and especially honored to have his favoritest-ever historical play about the wholly misunderstood Richard III performed by them. Thanks to mi reina for all her support once again!
Aoise Stratford's work has been produced in Canada, Austria, Italy, Australia, Belgium, England, and throughout the USA. She is the recipient of several awards including the Alan Minieri Award, A Pinter Review Prize for Drama Silver Medal, the Yukon Pacific Playwright Award, the Hudson River Classics New Play Award, and The Last Frontier Theatre Conference Audience Choice Award. Her short plays have also won her "best playwright" awards at Looking Glass Theatre NY, Turtle Shell Theatre, NY, American Globe Theatre, NY, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, and others. She has been a finalist for the Actors' Theatre of Louisville's coveted Heideman Award and been nominated for an American Theatre Critics' Association New Play Award for her full-length play "Somewhere In Between." She is a member of the Dramatists Guild. She has taught writing workshops around the country including at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Curious Theatre (Denver), the Last Frontier Theatre Festival, and at Cornell University. Her work has been published by Smith and Kraus, JAC, United Stages and Merriweather Press.
Will Cordeiro has previously worked as NYC Teaching Fellow and a staff reviewer at the theater magazine offoffonline. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate studying 18th century British literature at Cornell and teaches college-level composition classes at Auburn Maximum Security Prison. Several of his plays have been produced in local and off-off-Broadway venues. His creative writing has been published in journals such as Fourteen Hills, Sentence, Harpur Palate, Baltimore Review, Essays & Fictions, and elsewhere. He is grateful for artist residencies from Risley Residential College, the Provincetown Community Compact, Ora Lerman Trust, Petrified Forest National Park, and Blue Mountain Center.
Dave Dietrich is an émigré from Baltimore, Md. to Ithaca. He received his first experience with acting while getting his bachelor's degree from Towson University, taking two introductory courses. He now lives in the rural Town of Enfield, near Ithaca, in an old farmhouse. Dave loves animals, singing, reading, daydreaming about great square-rigged sailing ships, wondering if he shouldn't have been born in 1604, but, more than anything, his wife, Joan. He is an owner and cook at Moosewood Restaurant.
David Guaspari was trained as a pure mathematician and considers himself to be, among all post-19th century mathematical logicians, the funniest. His plays have appeared at the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, SUNY Brockport Festival of Ten, Play by Play, 10 by 10 in the Triangle, Fresh Fish Festival, Makor Festival, Theatre Limina Summer Shorts, North Park Playwrights Festival, Bloomington Playwrights Project, Love Creek Productions Brief Acts festival, several Wolf's Mouth 10-minute Play Festivals, the Ithaca Literary Festival, the Kitchen Theatre, Gallery Players, and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference Play Slam. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Wolf's Mouth Theatre Collective.
