Aurora Theatre Company Announces 8th Annual Global Age Project Finalists

Berkeley's acclaimed Aurora Theatre Company, along with GAP Producer M. Graham Smith and GAP Associate Producer Deborah Taylor, announces the four plays chosen as finalists by a committee of local directors for the eighth annual Global Age Project (GAP), the company's new works initiative that promotes the creation of forward-looking theater: In From the Cold by Jonathan Spector; The Drinking Problem by Sarah Gubbins; Luce by J.C. Lee; and The Bandaged Place by Harrison David Rivers. The selected GAP plays will be presented as staged readings in a four-week festival at the Aurora Theatre, Mondays, February 4-25, 7:30pm, coinciding with the company's fully-staged World Premiere of Anthony Clarvoe's family drama Our Practical Heaven (January 25-March 3), directed by Allen McKelvey.

Each of the four finalists will receive a $1,000 award and their work will be considered for further development and production during Aurora Theatre Company's regular main stage season; out of town artists will receive travel and accommodation expenses. Each GAP reading will be followed by an audience discussion of the contemporary issues raised in the work. For information on GAP events (free and open to the public) and Our Practical Heaven, call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

The Global Age Project is a discovery and developmental vehicle established to encourage playwrights to address life in the 21st century and beyond. Seeking forward-thinking unproduced work from both established and emerging playwrights, the festival celebrates the diversity of perspectives, styles, voices, concerns, and stories that make up the world today, and provides a development opportunity for plays that directly respond to our complicated present and our possible future. Writers are encouraged to submit works that explore and/or examine the changing state of human relationships in this new century; plays need not be about science or technology. Submissions that transcend traditional forms of theater presentation are encouraged.

The lineup for the 2013 GAP festival is as follows:

Monday, February 4, 2013
In From the Cold
By Jonathan Spector (Berkeley, CA)
Directed by Josh Costello
Presented in partnership with Playwrights Foundation

In "In From the Cold," the past just might be catching up to an ex-Cold War spy. Inspired in part by the true story of super-spy Ryzard Kuklinski, a Polish Colonel in the KGB who defected to the United States in the 1980s and raised his family in an American suburb, this funny and touching play explores what it means when you used to mean a lot, and when you don't mean much anymore.

Jonathan Spector is a director and playwright based in Berkeley. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Just Theater. Original works for the stage include Sandal Weather, Be What You Wish to Seem, and The World To Come; his plays have been developed and produced by Just Theater, PlayGround, Source Theater Festival, and St. Bonaventure College. He is a former Associate Artistic Director of Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco and is currently pursuing his MFA in playwriting at San Francisco State. Spector was a director for Aurora's GAP in 2011.

Monday, February 11, 2013
The Drinking Problem
By Sarah Gubbins (Chicago, IL/Los Angeles, CA)
Directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe

In The Drinking Problem, the discovery of prescription drugs in Chicago's drinking water sends a handful of public officials scrambling to figure out who is ultimately responsible for the contamination. An inventive and imaginative tour through the murky channels between ethics and practical reality, The Drinking Problem explores the secret life of one of the most important substances on earth.

In addition to The Drinking Problem, Sarah Gubbins's plays include Fair Use, In Loco Parentis, The Kid Thing (Jeff Award and Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award), fml: how Carson McCullers saved my life, and I am Bradley Manning. Her plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre, Actor's Express, Next Theatre, About Face Theatre, and Chicago Dramatists. Additionally, her work has been developed at The Public Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Goodman Theatre, and The Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis, among others. She is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists, an Artistic Associate at About Face Theatre, the 2010-2011 Carl J. Djerassi Playwriting Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a 2011-2012 Jerome Fellow.

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