A son wants some answers from his mother and father. Why are you moving out? Why can’t you be more dishonest? Why is your grammar so bad? Watch this small family travel through time, dark humor and musical interludes to find out more about one another and the desperate relationship between parents and children.

The 2012 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival features thesis productions of Plant Life by Mike Williams, Directed by Geoffrey Hoffman and Nothing Funny by Jarod Witkowsk, directed by Clyde Simon, at The Liminis. Plant Life will run Thursday, February 2 – Saturday, February 4 and Nothing Funny will run Thursday, February 9 – Saturday, February 11. All shows are at 8:00pm.

“These plays are the culminating experience of three years of intensive study,” says playwright and professor Mike Geither; the plays are co-produced by Convergence Continuum, NEOMFA and Cleveland State University.

The Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (NEOMFA) is a consortium of Cleveland State University, Kent State University, The University of Akron, and Youngstown State University that allows students to take classes on four different campuses and earn a degree from a single unified writing program. Emerging writers may study in four genres – creative non-fiction, fiction, playwriting and poetry – and take advantage of the resources offered on all four campuses. Since its inception in 2005, the NEOMFA has offered small-group workshops, open readings, summer travel fellowships, and high-profile visiting writers, in addition to career-preparing internships, competitive graduate funding, and a diverse Midwestern landscape that tempts the creative eye.

Plant Life

Leslie is waiting for a liver transplant when science provides her husband with an extraordinary decision. When a beautiful and genetically-identical woman grows from a seed in his garden, Alan must choose between what he knows and intriguing possibility.

The 2012 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival features thesis productions of Plant Life by Mike Williams, Directed by Geoffrey Hoffman and Nothing Funny by Jarod Witkowsk, directed by Clyde Simon, at The Liminis. Plant Life will run Thursday, February 2 – Saturday, February 4 and Nothing Funny will run Thursday, February 9 – Saturday, February 11. All shows are at 8:00pm.

“These plays are the culminating experience of three years of intensive study,” says playwright and professor Mike Geither; the plays are co-produced by Convergence Continuum, NEOMFA and Cleveland State University.

The Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (NEOMFA) is a consortium of Cleveland State University, Kent State University, The University of Akron, and Youngstown State University that allows students to take classes on four different campuses and earn a degree from a single unified writing program. Emerging writers may study in four genres – creative non-fiction, fiction, playwriting and poetry – and take advantage of the resources offered on all four campuses. Since its inception in 2005, the NEOMFA has offered small-group workshops, open readings, summer travel fellowships, and high-profile visiting writers, in addition to career-preparing internships, competitive graduate funding, and a diverse Midwestern landscape that tempts the creative eye.

NEOMFA Playwright Festival

The 2012 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival features thesis productions of Plant Life by Mike Williams, Directed by Geoffrey Hoffman and Nothing Funny by Jarod Witkowsk, directed by Clyde Simon, at The Liminis. Plant Life will run Thursday, February 2 – Saturday, February 4 and Nothing Funny will run Thursday, February 9 – Saturday, February 11. All shows are at 8:00pm.

“These plays are the culminating experience of three years of intensive study,” says playwright and professor Mike Geither; the plays are co-produced by Convergence Continuum, NEOMFA and Cleveland State University.

The Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (NEOMFA) is a consortium of Cleveland State University, Kent State University, The University of Akron, and Youngstown State University that allows students to take classes on four different campuses and earn a degree from a single unified writing program. Emerging writers may study in four genres – creative non-fiction, fiction, playwriting and poetry – and take advantage of the resources offered on all four campuses. Since its inception in 2005, the NEOMFA has offered small-group workshops, open readings, summer travel fellowships, and high-profile visiting writers, in addition to career-preparing internships, competitive graduate funding, and a diverse Midwestern landscape that tempts the creative eye.

You Got Nerve

You Got Nerve! is a head spinning, pop-locking, foot-stomping comedy/drama with music that chronicles the adventures of a group of unruly teens who vandalize a retirement home and are sentenced to do community service. Get ready to dance to some original beats and more as the teens are challenged to experience life, dance and learn that old school , (the orderlies) also have some moves. SEPTEMBER 16 – OCTOBER 9, 2011; Jelliffe Theatre (For the Entire Family)

Springboard at CPT

Claire Robinson-May’s Standardized Child takes on the under-rated reality of achievement tests. Directed by Rose Sengenberger. Meet Robert, nine years old and pre-programmed for lifelong success on state achievement tests. Just remember to read his manual. Welcome to a new kind of adoption agency: Standardized Child^TM. Thursday, October 13 and Saturday, October 15 in James Levin Theatre at 7:00pm.

NEOMFA fiction writer Cari Gornik’s play Based on Actual Events is also in Springboard. After dying in his cubicle, Jim sticks around the offices of FindLaw, for some haunting shenanigans that lead to his coworkers trying to contact him in the afterlife. This is a very funny script! Directed by Renee Schilling, Friday, October 14 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, October 16 at 3 p.m.

In Andrew Jackson ate my Homework: a Racial Farce, Tom Hayes takes aim at the strange relationship our society has with race, both now and historically. Directed by Cassie Neumann. Race- it’s all around us. It’s in our families, in our history books, in our pop music, and even in overheard bus ride banters. In Andrew Jackson Ate My Homework, a young man attempts to synthesize the strangeness of race as he passes through a collage of scenes that reveal and explore the issue of race in daily life and throughout (some of) history. Weebelly.com. Thursday, October 20 and Saturday, October 22 in James Levin Theatre at 7:00pm.

Michael Oatman

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com, the Cleveland Arts Prize, “celebrates the contributions of architects, administrators, dancers, musicians, playwrights, teachers, visual artists and writers.”

For more information please refer to the article at Cleveland.com.

Location: Student Center 315, Cleveland State University

The Pole

By Jennifer A. Willoh
Directed by Nina Domingue
March 25, 26, 27

Big Bob, who would prefer to be called Robert, once dreamed of becoming an actor.  Instead, life handed him a massive hamburger.  The former mascot of a now defunct restaurant chain, Robert is learning how to live in the shadow of his former persona.  He’s also learning how to navigate through his relationship with former iconic mascot, Santa Nick.  Once his mentor and friend, Nick has turned toxic.  Centered in a bar called The Pole, this small community of former mascots gather to explore the relationships that exist within.

Featuring: Joshua D. Brown, Jeffery Glover and Doug Kusak

Production Manager: Lindsay Carter
Costume Designer: Alison Garrigan

For information and tickets, please visit http://www.cptonline.org/

Fire

Fire Dance
By Michael Parsons
Directed by Jeremy Paul
March 18, 19, 20
Nicky McManus is a New York firefighter. His brother Sean is a stock broker in Chicago who returns to the Big Apple after the death of their mother. Sean decides to stay in New York and move in with Nicky in an effort to reconnect with his brother – and to pursue his old flame, Janice. When Janice moves into the apartment, however, long-dormant passions are aroused in cold-hearted Nicky, and old rivalries between the brothers come to the surface with consequences that will change them both forever.

Featuring: Val Kozlenko and Brian McNally

March 2011, American Theatre

MFA Spotlight

CLEVELAND: It’s never too early to cultivate new local playwrights. This month, Cleveland Public Theatre inaugurates a three-week festival of new works written by graduating students from a consortium of four Ohio universities, with each workshop production staged by professional Cleveland actors, designers and directors. CPT’s academy-rooted collaboration, NEOMFA Playwrights Festival (the acronym stands for Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts), enlists creative writing grad students from Cleveland State University, Kent State University, University of Akron and Youngstown State University. “The main playwriting professor, Mike Geither, has had a long relationship with CPT,” notes executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan. “Many students had applied to our Little Box series, a traditional reading festival, and our Big Box series, which falls shy of full production but includes choreographers, performance artists, composers and music groups. But only a few of them had been selected.” NEOMFA focuses squarely on these student writers, premiering such works as Tom Hayes’s Patterns, about a young woman’s life as explored through myth, personal history, dressmaking and playmaking, staged by Brian Zoldessy; Michael Parsons’s Fire Dance, about two brother pursuing the same woman, directed by Jeremy Paul; and Jen Willoh’s The Pole, staged by Nina Dorrungue. See www.cptonline.org.

Re-printed with permission. From the March 2011 issue of American Theatre magazine, published by Theatre Communications Group: www.tcg.org/americantheatre