COMMONWEALTH CLUB NEW PLAY READINGS
Magic Theatre and Commonwealth Club present three script-in-hand readings of new plays exploring different social and political issues. Plays are chosen around a particular theme that playwrights are giving a lot of attention to. Join us as these plays take the next step in their development in front of an audience.
Sponsored by the Martha Heasley Cox Raw Play Series

NEW PLAY READINGS 2008

Monday December 8th, 2008 at 6pm
Sick by Zayd Dohrn
director Rob Melrose

Maxine and her children don’t leave their hermetically sealed house: They’re allergic to oil, asbestos, bug spray, cheez whiz, perfume, panty hose, nail polish, city air and other people’s sweat. They survive on home-schooling, internet chat rooms and the groceries Maxine’s husband carries home. Zayd Dohrn’s new play, Sick, is a comic piece about a not-so-normal family sequestered from all that is smelly and ugly in the real world. What happens when Maxine’s husband, the professor, brings home a charming, athletic poet and the family’s protective routines spin out of control?

Zayd Dohrn received his MFA from NYU and is currently a Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow at Juilliard. His plays have been produced and developed at The Public Theater, Woolly Mammoth, South Coast Rep, The Alliance, Marin Theatre Company, Kitchen Dog Theater, Southern Rep, Boston Playwrights’, New Jersey Rep, Aurora Theatre, and Alchemy Theatre of Manhattan. He is a recipient of Lincoln Center’s Lecomte du Nouy Prize, the Sky Cooper Prize, the Jean Kennedy Smith Award, an IRNE for Best New Play, and residencies with America-in-Play, 24Seven, Chautauqua, and the Royal Court Theatre of London.

Monday December 15th, 2008 at 6pm
Whisper from the Book of Etiquette by Claire Chafee
director Jayne Wenger

What happens when a pregnant mermaid from Weekie Watchie Springs and a confused mother-to-be share their hopes and dreams about family? In the awkward moments when a stranger is listening, we may reveal what we really, most fervently want—and often, it’s not what we asked for. In Claire Chaffee's new play, Whispers from the Book of Etiquette, an unborn baby changes the lives of everyone, including the neighbor next-door. Chaffee tells a fresh, funny, irreverent love story that exposes our vulnerabilities with warmth and compassion.

Claire Chafee’s play, “Why We Have a Body” opened at The Magic Theatre in San Francisco where it ran for 6 months, winning her the Dramalogue Award, the Bay Area Critic’s Circle Award and  New York Newsday’s  Oppenheimer Award after  it’s run Off-Broadway produced by The Women’s Project. It has been produced in many cities, including Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and Seattle. “Even Among These Rocks” premiered at The Magic Theatre, SF and was published in NuMuse (Brown University) . She was commissioned by Berkeley Rep to collaborate with composer Beth Custer to create an original musical “A Practical Guide to the Night Sky” and her play “5 Women on a Hill in Spain” was produced in the Lesbian Playwright’s Conference in S.F. and received a production in the Minneapolis Fringe Festival last summer. “Darwin’s Finches” premiered at The Thick House, produced by Encore Theare and received a nomination for the Bay Area Critics Circle for Best Original Script in March 2004. She received a Special Projects grant from the Princess Grace Foundation and wrote “Whisper from the Book of Etiquette” which was given readings this past summer at both New York Stage and Film and the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival.

Tickets: Open to the general public with a $12 suggested donation.
All performances are at the Commonwealth Club.
595 Market St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco
Please call (415) 597-6705 or visit www.commonwealth.org to reserve your tickets.