About id theater
what is id?
Danette Baker, Mary Portser and Sheila McDevitt in Paper
Dolls by Timothy Braatz, 2006 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference (photo by Sara Jessup)
id also believes that new plays need the time and space to be developed outside of the pressures of a full production. Working chiefly in McCall, Idaho and New York City, id provides a safe place for artists (professional, emerging, amateur & student) to develop work, take risks and introduce audiences to adventurous new works that reflect, challenge and celebrate them.
id is theater that doesn’t produce plays?
Sounds a bit counter-intuitive? But the fact that we aren’t doing full productions doesn’t mean that we’re not presenting work. In 2008 id presented 21 plays! We did it by forgoing elaborate production values, theater rental or ticket sales (we don’t sell tickets for anything), so we can stay focused on the process rather than the product; offering writers the time and space they need to take their work to the next level.
who's who
- Jeni Mahoney co-Artistic Director id Theater & Artistic Director of Seven Devils Playwrights Conference
- Sheila McDevitt co-Artistic Director id Theater & Artistic Director of Playwrights Intensive and NYC Sit In!
- Paula A. Marchiel Managing Director & Company Management
- Ed Baker Production Manager & Actor
Jeni's
first serious foray into play development was when her play The
Feast of the Flying Cow…And Other Stories of War was selected
for the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Theater Center.
It has since been seen at InterAct Theater (Philadelphia –World Premiere),
Lark Theater's Playwrights Week (NY), The MidWestern New Play Festival
(Chicago), And Toto Too (Denver), The State Theater (State College, PA)
and London's Greenwich Theater as a part of Grey Light Production's American
Voice series. Her other plays, including The Martyrdom of Washington
Booth, Light, American Eyes, Throw
of the Moon & Mercy Falls have been presented
from Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in NY to the L.A. Theater Center and
as far off as Wagga Wagga, Australia. You will find her work in Plays
and Playwrights 2001, Best Stage Monologues for Men 1999, Best
Stage Monologues for Women 1999, Best Stage Scenes 1999 & Smith & Kraus' Audition
Arsenal series of books. Come Rain for Come Shine was
selected as one of the Best Short Plays of 2005-2006 by Applause
Books, and Running in Circles Screaming will be presented
as part of the 2008 Source Theater Festival in Washington , DC . Jeni teaches
playwriting in the BFA program at Playwrights Horizons Theater School/NYU
Tisch School of the Arts.
A
native Idahoan, is co-founder and co-Artistic Director of id theater. She
has produced, directed and acted in three seasons for id both in McCall
and New York City, and produced, directed and acted in the Seven Devils
Playwrights Conference for the past five years. She produced and acted
in id's inaugural NYC reading series this past summer in conjunction with
the Midtown International Theater Festival. Sheila was co-producer
and star performer for Qwirk Productions in NYC for 8 years. She received
her MFA from University of Washington's prestigious Professional Actor
Training Program. Directing credits include Manhattan Class Company's "Summer
Play Party," featuring plays written by New York City high school
students. She also runs workshops in Stage Combat for High School and College
students as well as Story Book theater and improvisation workshops for
younger children. Acting credits: Off-Broadway - Understudy to Miss Carol
Kane in In-Betweens . Regional: New England tour - Dancing
at Lughnasa ; Jupiter theater, Jupiter FL - Rumours co-starring
Bernie Koppell, Bill Christopher, and Gary Burghoff.
Paula
is happy to be back for her sixth season of Seven Devils and McCall. She
is an active company member of Synaesthetic theater and Secretary of the
Board. She is currently the Marketing Associate for theaterworks/USA. Past
work includes the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill
Theater Center, New York University, Playwrights Horizons theater School,
the Really Useful Management Company and Stage Management jobs too numerous
to mention. She ia graduate of Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.
Ed
earned his MFA Degree in Acting from Ohio University's Professional Actor
Training Program in 1991. He worked regionally at The Cleveland Playhouse,
Cleveland Actors' theater, The Monomoy theater on Cape Cod, as well as
6 insane years performing in New York with the Cut And Paste Company and
Others. In 1998 Ed returned to Wichita with his lovely wife, Danette Baker.
Since then he has had the honor of performing in a special benefit production
of Last Train To Nibroc for Wichita Summer theater with the most
special Guest Star of his life, Danette. Ed recently joined the faculty
of Wichita State University School of Performing Arts as an Assistant Professor
of Technical theater.how did id happen?
id started out in 1997 as an actor-driven company. In its first seasons, id produced plays in McCall, Idaho and then moved them to New York - so the idea of bridging communities (rural/urban, mountain/coastal) has been a part of id from the beginning. And id has always had an active interest in and commitment to new works.
In 2000, id was struggling to figure out where to find great new plays. Enter Jeni Mahoney of Quickly Bones Artists Collective who, like id’s Sheila McDevitt, lived in New York and had a summer home near McCall, Idaho. Jeni, approached Sheila with the idea of a co-production: a Conference of new works in McCall. They reached out to Paula Marchiel, whose work at the National Playwrights Conference provided the organizational and managerial skills such an ambitious project would need; and Judy Anderson, an Alpine Playhouse board member and playwriting teacher at the local High School... and in June 2001, the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference was born.
The first year of the Conference was a co-production of Quickly Bones and id, with the Alpine Playhouse donating theater space. From the very beginning, we all knew it worked and we wanted the Conference to continue, but as time passed the exact nature of the id/Seven Devils/Alpine Playhouse relationship remained somewhat fluid (hey, we’re all about process). Eventually, Jeni joined Sheila as co-Artistic Director of id, and the Alpine Playhouse became the “sponsor” of the Conference.
This simplified things for the Conference which had become id’s central, and in some years, only project, but the question remained: what was id without the Conference? And what was the Conference without id?
With the 2007 launch of Bridgeworks and Sit In! we finally discovered what, at heart, we had already become: an organization committed to developing and nurturing new plays. Our projects: Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, with it’s Playwrights Intensive program of sit-down readings and annual playwriting workshop in McCall; Bridgeworks which supports member artists (who have come to us through Seven Devils) as they take their plays out into the world and Sit In!, which provides a venue in NYC for our artists to hear post-Conference re-writes, reach out to producers or share new works, offer us the opportunity to make connections and create bridges between and amongst playwrights & other artists (professional, student and amateur); communities; theater companies and audiences from the rural mountains of Idaho to the hustling, bustling shores of New York.
For more information on the plays we’ve developed visit our development history page.
our donors
id theater, the seven devils playwrights conference, bridgeworks and sit in! are all made possible thanks to the generous support of:
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| The Richard K. and Shirley S. Hemingway Foundation |