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Link to company quotes from WordBRIDGE '01

WORDBRIDGE ‘01 included seven playwrights this year; six collegiate playwrights (Amherst, Smith, Catholic U., Washington U., University of Utah and University of Texas-Austin (2) and a one-woman script being developed by a Kentucky playwright/actor). Dan Nemteanu, a Resource Artist/sceneographer, described WORDBRIDGE ‘01 as a script lab about mothers and kitchens. Indeed, three of the seven plays featured mothers and kitchens, a fourth was set in a diner with dialogue about an absent mother and a fifth had a mother on the phone. The Tribute to Playwrights featuring Bob Devin Jones in "Uncle Bends: a Home-cooked Negro Narrative" played to an audience of over 250 who enjoyed a stage-cooked serving of beans and rice and a reception sponsored by SunTrust. The company expanded to 52 to accommodate seven scripts with an additional director, dramaturg and nine new and returning Resource Artists who brought ritual, dance, psychology and improvisation to enrich the workshop, the company and the scripts. This year’s lab also included a former lab playwright, Barbara Goldman (’96,’98) returning as a dramaturg/actor and two Eckerd College and WORDBRIDGE alums returned as co-lab managers. We housed twenty people in the local community and six playwrights were housed in the Continuing Education Center. Marisa Wegrzyn’s script Polar Bears On US 41 was selected as the Eckerd College theatre Spring production, April 11-15.

WordBRIDGE Company 2001
(click on photo to enlarge)

2001 Plays & Playwrights
Jeremy Basescu Survival Amherst College
Liz Fentress Liz's Circus Story Alumna of University of Wisconsin
Jeff Hoffman Pellingham Bridge University of Texas-Austin
Meg Peterson The Mother Play Smith College
Justin Warner Impostors Catholic University of America
Verne Erickson Tumbleweed University of Utah
Marisa Wegrzyn Polar Bears on US 41 Washington University-St. Louis

Survival
Survival combines myth, fantasy, greed, and deception to give us a glimpse into the minds of three extraordinary women. Along with the harshness of the advertising trade, this play explores the dark side of private relationships between professional women.

Jeremy Basescu was born and raised in Manhattan, where he still resides. He has written two fulllength plays and several one-acts, and has received productions in New York and Massachusetts. He has worked for Gorilla Rep, NYC, and the Powerhouse Theater Festival in Vassar College, where he apprenticed under playwright Christopher Shinn. Currently, he attends Amherst College, where he studies with Constance Congdon and Leonard Berkman. Jeremy is a proud graduate of the Calhoun School in New York, where he received his first full production.

Liz's Circus Story
Liz's Circus Story is about possibility and selfactualization. In this one character play, a 21 year-old woman joins a brand new, one-ring circus. The temporary summer job turns into a 23-year adventure. The experience culminates in the woman's learning a final lesson from the circus owner that changes her life

Liz Fentress is a playwright, director and actor. Her play THE FIRST GREAT PAUL BUNYAN STORY-TELLING CONTEST and her adaptation of THE DEVIL AND HIS THREE GOLDEN HAIRS were produced by the Green Mountain Guild in White River Junction, VT. Her plays WALKING TO SHANAGOLDEN and LITS CIRCUS STORY received staged readings through Horse Cave Theatre's Kentucky Voices program in Horse Cave, KY. Liz began her career at the Guthrie in Minneapolis, where she also was a member of The Playwrights' Center acting ensemble. Later she moved to New York where she was a founding member of the Irondale Ensemble Project, and worked at New Dramatists. Liz was Horse Cave Theatre's Associate Producer for eight years. During that period she directed ALL MY SONS, THE MIRACLE WORKER, SHADOWLANDS, THE TEMPEST, THE VOICE OF THE PRAIRIE, WAITING FOR GODOT, and the premiere of JUST TAKING UP SPACE, among others. Prior to Horse Cave, Liz was the Executive Director of the Playhouse in the Park in Murray, KY, where she founded the West Kentucky Playwrights. Liz attended the University of Wisconsin Madison, and the WebberDouglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. In New York she studied with Michael Howard and Kristin Linklater.

Pellingham Bridge
Pellingham Bridge explores the aftermath of a school shooting. In the midst of such extreme violence, how do Americans now understand forgiveness, revenge, anger?

Jeff Hoffman's plays have been performed in Charleston, S.C., Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Pittsburgh, and Tucson. FRANCIS BRICK NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION, a short play, appears in Festival Plays #23 (Samuel French, 1999). He is a playwrighting fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin.

Impostors
Following a car accident, a young man suffers neural damage causing him to believe that his parents are look-alikes who are pretending to be his parents. Based on an actual medical condition, this play questions the basis of family relationships, scientific reasoning, and faith.

Justin Warner is a second-year graduate student in playwriting at Catholic University, Washington, DC. His work has been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and many other locations around the country, and appears in several scene and monologue books. IMPOSTORS, his first full, length play, was a finalist for the Princess Grace Award. Justin studied neuropsychology at Haverford College and Oxford University and has worked as a science writer for several years.

The Mother Play
The Mother Play is a darkly comic look at the dependence of children and the extremes of motherly love. When their mother decides to venture out into the world, grown siblings Hoyt, Hodge, and Gorgie, resolve to take matters into their own hands.

Meg Peterson is a senior English major at Smith College. Raised in Minnesota, she was active at the Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis and in local youth theatre. Through one such organizationYouth Performance Company-Meg received her first production, at age fourteen, as winner of the Young Artists' Council's Playwriting Competition. THE MOTHER PLAY, was completed and read at Powerhouse Theatre, where Meg spent the summer of 2000 as a Playwriting Apprentice

Polar Bears on U.S. 41
Polar Bears on US 41 is a tale of a troubled young woman with a unique relationship and addiction to alphabet soup, and the man who returns to her on the prospect of a "maybe".

Marisa Wegrzyn is a Sophomore attending Washington University in St Louis, MO, but calls Wilmette, IL home. She is an editor for Cadenza, a weekly arts & entertainment newspaper. In addition, Marisa writes and performs with the Kaktabulz, Wash U's premiere sketch comedy troupe. POLAR BEARS ON US 41 is her first play.

Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed started out as a short story in 1982, had a brief life as a novel and is on the way to telling the stories of the characters in a full-length play. If you try to find out more about someone you love, without asking, what are the possible consequences?

Verne Erickson graduated from University of Utah in 1989 with a BA in English and a BS in Political Science. His first writing interest was in fiction and short stories and has expanded to writing poetry and plays. In 1997 Verne returned to the University of Utah to study Psychology as well as drama and playwriting with playwright, professor and novelist, David Kranes. Verne has been working on TUMBLEWEED for two years, a play that began 18 years ago as a nine or ten page short story and grew to 30 pages in the fourth draft and had a brief, but unsuccessful, life as a novel. He has decided to tell the story in the language of a play and hopes the first act will become a full length play and tell the stories of the characters that haven't left him alone for the past 13 years.