Annual Women Playwrights Series launches with “Futurama”

HACKETTSTOWN — The 23nd annual Women Playwrights Series at the Centenary Stage Company will launch on April 8 with “Futurama”, by Samantha Charlip, presented at 7:30 p.m. in the Lackland Center.

FuturamaIn this funny and perceptive play, a 1950s-era amusement park in southern Florida claims to see into the future, which has in fact turned out quite differently from the original vision. When the self-help guru Brian Gold brings his “Greatness Weekend” to the park, the young employees April and Otis, who have been adrift in their lives and their jobs, begin to have revelations about their own futures. The presentation will be directed by Tara Downs, a Brooklyn based artist and member of Lincoln Center Directors Lab program.

Samantha CharlipPlaywright Samantha Charlip is a New York based playwright and Writer/Producer for television networks including A&E, Turner and Viacom. Her plays include: Futurama, which was a Finalist in the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, won the Award of Excellence in Playwriting at the Tennessee Repertory NewWorks Lab, and was nominated for the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Comedy Award; Below, Love in the Time of Gonorrhea, Youtube Superstars, and One Universal You (Know Theatre, The Piney Fork Theatre).

Charlip’s television original pilots were selected as semi-finalists in Storyboard TV’s 2011 and 2012 pilot competition and were cited at the Austin Film Festival. She is recent graduate of NYU's Tisch Dramatic Writing MFA program where she studied playwriting under Pulitzer Prize winner, Annie Baker (The Aliens, The Flick, Circle Mirror Transformation), Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/Underdog), Eduardo Machado (The Cook, Broken Eggs, Hung) and Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director of The Public Theater.

Charlip was awarded the Tisch School of the Arts Full Tuition Departmental Fellowship.

Women Playwrights Series Now in its 23nd year, the Centenary Stage Company Women Playwrights Series (WPS) presents three to four new plays each year in rehearsed staged readings throughout the month of April.

Led by Program Director Catherine Rust, the WPS is dedicated to providing a working forum for the unique and underserved voice of women writing for the theater today. The Series offers emerging playwrights a chance to work with professional directors and actors in a short rehearsal period, followed by a staged reading of the work in front of a live audience, with audience feedback and discussion.

Each presentation is followed by lively “talk-backs” with the playwright and cast following the performance. The Series features the finalists in the Susan Glaspell contest, which offers the winner further development support worth $45,000 in a full production in the CSC professional Equity main-stage season, as well as a cash award to the author.

Admission to the “Futurama” is by donation and reservations are requested. For reservations and information contact the Centenary Stage Company Box Office at 908-979-0900, or visit online at www.centenarystageco.org.

Coming UpAlso featured in this year’s WPS will be “Start Down” by Eleanor Burgess, on Wednesday, April 15 at 7:30 p.m., “True Love ” by Tracy Thorne on Wednesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m.

The CSC Women Playwrights Series is made possible in part through the support of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, Zonta International organization for empowering women, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, the NJ State Council on the Arts, Heath Village Retirement Community, and the many CSC members and sponsors.