The Tent Theater presents Playwright Readings – New York, NY

P&T Knitwear is pleased to welcome seven of the Tent Theater Company‘s generous and passionate cohort of writers for an eclectic evening of material read by the authors and a few friends. Selections will be 5-7 minute scenes and excerpts from new works and old favorites. Get interactive with a playwright and be part of the process with a dramatist! Writers include: Migdalia Cruz, Richard Dresser, Kermit Frazier, Diane Glancy, Len Jenkin, Quincy Long, Jacqueline Reingold.

• This is a ticketed in-store event with limited amphitheater-style seating. Doors open at 6:30pm.
• Cost of a $10 general admission ticket entitles each ticket holder to a $5 gift card which can be applied towards purchases in the bookstore or at the café.
• The readings will be followed by a book signing. Books will be available for sale by The Tent.
• We encourage all guests to wear masks.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Migdalia Cruz, the 2023 DGF Legacy Playwright, is a Bronx-born playwright, lyricist, translator, and librettist with over 60 works performed in 150 venues across 40 cities in 12 countries. Her awards include the NEA, McKnight, NYSCA, and TCG/Pew, and she was named the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright. Cruz’s mentor María Irene Fornés and her residency at Latino Chicago shaped her career. She co-chaired the DGF Playwriting Fellows, mentors for the Latinx Playwrights’ Circle, and is an alumna of New Dramatists. Her new collection, The Impossible Plays, is now available.

Richard Dresser‘s plays have been produced in New York, regional theater, and throughout Europe. They include Rounding Third and Below the Belt, both of which were made into films. His novel It Happened Here was released before the 2020 election and tragically predicted everything that happened up until Tuesday. He updated it for the podcast It Happened Here 2024 starring John Turturro, Edie Falco, and Tony Shalhoub. He recently produced a documentary, Devout and Dangerous, about Daniel and Philip Berrigan, anti-war priests prominent in the 1960s and 70s. He teaches screenwriting in the Columbia University graduate film school and is President and a founding member of the Writers Guild Initiative, which does writing workshops all over the country with a mission of giving a voice to populations not being heard.

Kermit Frazier has been a writer — especially a playwright and television writer — as well as a teacher of writing, literature, and theater for nearly forty years. His play, Modern Minstrelsy, a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, was presented online in July 2021 by the Road Theatre Company in their Summer Playwrights Festival 12. In June, 2020, his career as a playwright was featured in a New York Times arts section article about his very first play, Kernel of Sanity, appearing online in Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate series presenting “overlooked plays.” Else was presented online as a part of the Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble’s Pandemic Plays series.

Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles has produced four of her plays: The Bird House (2013), Salvage (2009), Stone Heart (2006), and Jump Kiss (2002). The Origin of Law won the 2013 Native Voices at the Autry Short Play Festival. Glancy also has been a facilitator with Native Voices in workshops for Native playwrights at the Alaska Native Heritage Museum in Anchorage. Currently, she teaches a cohort on experimental poetry at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

Len Jenkin‘s work for the stage has been produced throughout the United States, as well as in England, France, China and Japan. His recent plays include How Is It That We Live Or Shakey Jake + Alice, Port Twilight, Time In Kafka, and Abraham Zobell’s Home Movie: Final Reel. He is also a novelist, a poet, and a painter. He lives and works in upstate New York.

Quincy Long is a playwright and librettist. Productions include: The Joy of Going Somewhere Definite (Atlantic Theatre Company), directed by William H. Macy and starring Felicity Huffman. The play was also produced by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and was optioned by Mel Gibson’s Icon Films.

Jackie Reingold is a Brooklyn born, playwright, TV writer, and advocate for older women playwrights. Her plays — which include String Fever, Acapulco, I Know, A Story About a Girl, Girl Gone, 2B (Or Not 2B), and Freeze Tag — have been seen in New York at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Naked Angels, The Working Theater, MCC Theatre, Actors Theatre Louisville, Portland Center Stage, Theater J in DC, PlayLabs Minneapolis, and in London, Dublin, Hong Kong, Belgrade, and Lima. Honors include: 2023 Lilly Award, Kennedy Center‘s Fund for New American Plays, EST/Sloan Foundation, a Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, NYFA grant, Oscar Reubhausen commission, plus MacDowell and Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellowships.

ABOUT THE TENT THEATER
The Tent Theater nurtures, supports, and advocates for established Elder American playwrights and cross-disciplinary theater makers, fostering connections among them and promoting their artistry and wellness to the larger community. The Tent rests upon the three pillars of Artistic Support, Service, and Advocacy to celebrate and attend to writers in the totality of their artistic journeys.