More good news! My ten-minute play Understanding, which you can read here, won one of the Reader’s Awards at the Region 2 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival! This means it is now a semi-finalist for the National KCACTF. If it rates well against all the other semi-finalists from across the country, it will be a finalist and be performed in DC in April.
Good news! Two ten minute plays I wrote, 1, 2, 3 and Understanding, are finalists at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival! This means they’ll be performed at Festival 44, the Region 2 conference in Pennsylvania, and have a chance of moving on to the finals in Washington, D.C. You can read the plays here.
This is particularly exciting because from the whole of Region 2 only six plays were selected as finalists, and two were mine. So cross your fingers and hope the odds keep working in my favor!
More new short plays, analysis, and the continuation of my thoughts about U.S. and East European theatre will continue on my blog, Riposte to the World, though the holidays seem to have brought a short hiatus while I work on my new full-length play, tentatively titled Classes.
My play, Code Name: Astrea, will be part of the Aphra Behn Coffeehouse Cabaret!
Saturday, November 5, 2011, 1pm
Newberry Library, 60 E. Walton, Chicago
Sunday, November 6, 2011, 4:30pm
Collaboraction Theatre, 1575 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE 3PM PERFORMANCE OF OR,
BOTH EVENTS ARE FREE
Caffeine Theatre brings together local and international performers, writers, composers and choreographers to celebrate and respond to Aphra Behn’s work. Winning entries of our poetry contest, Golden-Pointed Darts, Or, a Contest in Poesy to Honour the Incomparable Astraea and other Adventuresses, Spies, Writers, and Thespians will also be performed.
Check out my new blog for short plays and a discussion of theatre focusing on understanding how East European and U.S. theatre function in such disparate ways: Riposte to the World.
In early September, I will begin Ohio University’s Professional Program in Playwriting. Starting soon, I’ll be posting short plays every Monday morning on my new blog Riposte to the World — subscribe now!
And, in other major news, I now live on a horse farm. This is what I see when I walk outside my house:
Indeed, it’s true! See the WBEZ blog article.
Watch the trailer for Mortar Theatre’s world premiere of Under America
Photo lapse courtesy of Ryan Flynn from Cabrini-Green.com a world premiere by Jacob Juntunen opens Friday, September 3rd.“[Jacob Juntunen] is bringing a striking new voice to theatre in Chicago. I got a chance to chat with him after the show, and he is direct, political only in the sense of history, and does not wish to bring confrontation, but release from our American landscape, our nightmares, our misery. This is solemn theatre; not for those who wish to leave the venue singing a song. This is theatre for those who want to leave the theatre changed and moved,” from Chicago Theatre Blog, June 12, 2010.
“Source Festival: Group B” from D.C. Theatre Scene June 17, 2010
(review of “Saddam’s Lions,” a 10-minute play, performed as part of the Source Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C.)
A World Premiere Work
by Jacob Juntunen
directed by Rachel Edwards Harvith
Produced by Mortar Theatre
The Athenaeum Theatre
September 3rd to 26th, 2010
Her job threatened, a reporter from Chicago’s Gold Coast must write a series on public housing, gentrification, and the prison industry. But when she moves into the infamous Cabrini Green projects, she tries to help with the legal problems of a young man willing to get out by any means necessary. In the end, they both find themselves lost in the tunnels that seem to connect everything Under America.
Jacob is the co-founder and Managing Director of Mortar Theatre.
Mortar Theatre will produce Jacob’s latest play, Under America in September 2010. Set just prior to the demolition of the Cabrini Green housing project, it began with a scholarship from Lee Blessing, was selected by the Driehaus Foundation for the Sundance Chicago Roundtable, and helped Jacob win a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to attend the Sewannee Writers’ Conference. Read more!
