2017

2017 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference

All photos on this page by Sarah Jessup

Download the 2017 Program

Meet the 2017
Frances Starr Todd Fellow!

The Staged Readings
The Playwrights Intensive
Playwrights-in-Residence
The Student Plays

Modern Slave
by Featured Playwright Elaine Romero

When Andrea finds a hand-scrawled note from a Chinese sweatshop worker in the lining of her designer coat, she sets off on a passionate journey to free him. Little does she know that this journey to freedom will take her away from those she loves and down a rabbit hole of globalization and into the complicated world of modern slavery hidden in plain sight.

Sarah Nina Hayon and Manuel Zarate in Modern Slave by Elaine Romero

ELAINE ROMERO has had her plays presented at the Alley Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Kennedy Center, across the U.S. and abroad. Recent commissions include Modern Slave (Ford's Theatre), Title IX (Arizona Theatre Company), and A Work of Art (Goodman Theatre). Publishers: Samuel French, Playscripts, and Vintage Books. Graveyard of Empires (Blue Ink Playwriting Award) premiered at 16th Street Theater alongside A Work of Art which premiered at Chicago Dramatists in conjunction with the Goodman Theatre. The upcoming Rain of Ruin will complete her war trilogy. Her Arizona/Mexican border trilogy includes Wetback, Mother of Exiles, and Title IX. Modern Slave was given staged readings at Victory Gardens Theater and at the Road Theatre in LA in 2016. Title IX, which looks at the insidious nature of sexual inequality, will be featured at the 2017 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. Romero is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists. She holds her MFA from UC Davis. She is an Assistant Professor in School of Theatre, Film & Television at the University of Arizona.

Drift
by Patrick Gabridge

In the aftermath of a deadly pesticide drift, two very different families on very different farms struggle to overcome overwhelming loss of life, land, and love. Can they find a way to move forward, or will the force of their grief shatter them completely?

Sheila McDevitt in Drift by Patrick Gabridge

PATRICK GABRIDGE writes plays, novels, screenplays, and radio plays. His stage plays include Lab Rats, Distant Neighbors, Blood on the Snow, and Reading the Mind of God, and dozens of short plays which have been staged in theaters around the world. His novels are Steering to Freedom, Moving (a life in boxes) and Tornado Siren. He co-founded Boston's Rhombus playwright’s group, the publication Market InSight... for Playwrights, and the on-line Playwrights' Submission Binge. His plays are published by Playscripts, Brooklyn Publishers, Heuer, Smith & Kraus, Original Works Publishers, and YouthPlays. He’s been a fellow with New Rep and with the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston and is the co-founder and coordinator of the New England New Play Alliance. In his spare time, he likes to farm and fix up old houses. Drift was inspired by the two years he spent running a small organic farm in Massachusetts.

Flee
by Steph Del Rosso

Delia is running. But running from what? Or toward what? Her soon-to-be-born child? Shadows of her past? Anxieties about her future? Holed up in a remote, lakeside inn, she seems to have finally found some solace. But things aren't always as they first appear, and there's something in the lake that won't stop talking.

Danielle Sacks and Jonathan Bangs in Flee by Steph Del Rosso

STEPH DEL ROSSO is a playwright and educator currently pursuing her MFA at UC-San Diego, where she studies with Naomi Iizuka. Her work has been developed or presented with Soho Rep, Clubbed Thumb, New York Stage and Film, Colt Coeur, Judson Memorial Church, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Caldera Arts, the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and others. She is an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group, a two-time semi-finalist for both the National Playwrights’ Conference and Clubbed Thumb’s Biennial Commission, and a New Georges Affiliated Artist. Her play Are You There? will premiere at UCSD’s Wagner New Play Festival and Machinalia, her adaptation of Sophie Treadwell's Machinal, will be produced by the Ubuntu Theater Project in Oakland, CA (May/June 2017).

The Secretary
by Kyle John Schmidt

The Bridesmaid, The Babysitter, The Mallwalker. Ruby’s small-town gun company names each of its products after a gal who used a gun and saved a life--usually her own. But as production begins on the company’s newest model, The Secretary, the guns start going off—and no one’s pulling the trigger. Ruby knows there’s nothing wrong with the Secretary. But if the gun isn’t the problem… what is?

Sarah Nina Hayon and Mirirai Sithole in The Secretary by Kyle John Schmidt

KYLE JOHN SCHMIDT is a writer from Montezuma, Iowa. His plays have been produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville (Take 10 Apprentice Showcase and the Humana Festival), Crashbox Theatre, the Kid Magicians, Play-in-a-Bar, the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, University of Texas New Theatre, and the David Mark Cohen New Works Festival. His full-length plays have received readings at Capital Stage, Stage West, and Nashville Repertory Theatre, and have been finalists for the Humana Festival, PlayPenn, the Lark’s Playwrights’ Week, and the Princess Grace Award. Furthermore, Kyle was co-winner of the 2010 Heideman Award and is a former member of the Ingram New Play Lab. He received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers.

Horizon Three
by Isabella D'Esposito

Commander Georgia Lawson is orbiting Neptune in complete isolation- except for her robot Andy. But when Andy's capabilities begin to exceed its own design, Georgia's mission hurtles dangerously off course, putting them directly in the path of an alien on the run. Can Georgia set aside her mission and set them all on a course to survival? Or will they be lost in space forever?

Danielle Sacks and Ann Catharine Zarate in Horizon Three by Isabella D'Esposito

Isabella D’Esposito is a New York based playwright, composer and lyricist. As a playwright, her works have been produced and read by Carnegie Mellon University, Red Theater Purchase, The FIVE Collective, ARTS Tristate and the Horizon Theater. She was a semi-finalist for the Downstage Left residency with her play People for the Ethical Treatment of the Undead, and was selected for an apprenticeship with New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater, a residency at SUNY Stonybrook’s International Theater Festival, and was accepted into the New South Young Playwright’s Festival at the Horizon Theater. She recently completed her MFA at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was the recipient of the Jean and Samuel Elgart Legacy Fellowship.

Stroke
by Manuel Zarate

When you’re a blank canvas, where do you start? When you are not who you were, then who are you now? After a paralyzing stroke, Jose, a famous painter, struggles to return to the canvas. Obsessed with keeping his condition a secret, he hires a string of artist models all of whom must follow his strict and uncompromising rules of non-engagement. That is until Elizabeth. It’s not that she can’t follow the rules, she just doesn’t want to. Right or wrong, her stroke is anything but gentle. Over the course of a year, they slowly re-paint their lives.

Jamil Mangan in Stroke by Manuel Zarate

Manuel Zarate is a playwright, director, photographer, poet, and entrepreneur who has bridged the gap between the arts and the business world. He founded the non-profit HBMG Foundation which integrates theater, technology and business, and currently serves as Artistic Director for the Foundation’s National Winter Playwrights Retreat in Colorado. With over 20 years experience in theater, Manuel has served as Artist-in-Education for the State of Oregon and Director of Arts for the Washington Institute for Leadership. He has served as a National Juror for the American Multicultural Festival and as Artistic Director for several theaters. He’s honored to be a member of Actors Equity, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and Dramatists Guild.

The Burnouts
by Dayna Smith

Teetering on the edge of adulthood, Kate, Tim and Marco's futures are blank slates. But when a prank goes terribly wrong and leaves a classmate dead, their options begin to unravel. Can they push past their demons to live lives they can be proud of, or are they destined to be burnouts forever

Hawken Paul in The Burnouts by Dayna Smith

Dayna Smith is a graduate of Boise State University, holding a BA in Theatre Arts, Dramatic Writing, and currently works as an Artistic and Membership Intern for The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dayna recently worked with The Kennedy Center as a selected finalist for their inaugural Undergraduate Playwrights Conference and the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference as an intern. Her work has been seen at Boise State University Theatre Majors' Association; HomeGrown Theater; and Boise Contemporary Theater. Additionally, she is the Artistic Director of Boise's Campfire Theatre Festival, which will take place in September 2017.

Rabbit/Moon
by Dwayne Blackaller and Matthew Cameron Clark

As the sun sets on the moon, NASA Commander Rebecca Stuart loses contact with Earth just as one of her crew members, Will Lundon, becomes stranded miles from the spacecraft that was supposed to carry them all safely home. Plunged into a surreal lunar night, Stuart and her crew begin to realize that going back home is never guaranteed — and that their collective stories may be their only shot at survival.

Simon Brooking, Carie Kawa, and Jacob Foerg in Rabbit/Moon by Matthew Cameron Clark and Dwayne Blackaller

Matthew Cameron Clark is the Founding Artistic Director of Boise Contemporary Theater and a seventh generation Idahoan. He has co-written three plays with Dwayne Blackaller: A Nighttime Survival Guide, The Uncanny Valley, and Narwhal! Unicorn of the Sea, all of which premiered at BCT. He has worked as an actor or director on more than fifty professional productions since his career began in 1995, including World Premieres by Dwayne Blackaller, Eric Coble, Maria Dahvana Headley, Michael Rohd, Samuel D. Hunter, Lynn Allison, Brian Quirk, and Jeni Mahoney. Matthew is a recipient of the Boise Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and an Idaho Commission on the Arts Fellowship. The Seven Devils Playwrights Conference is one of his favorite things in the whole wide world.

Dwayne Blackaller is the writer of the plays The Acheri, The Science of Fiction, Air Heart, and r e / f r a c t i o n. Since his first collaboration as a play devisor with Boise Contemporary Theater in The Physics of Regret, he has had a passion for co-creation. His work as a co-writer with Matthew Cameron Clark includes, A Nighttime Survival Guide, The Uncanny Valley and Narwhal! Unicorn of the Sea, and the upcoming plays, Rabbit/Moon and Winnemucca. He's co-written two plays with Tracy Sunderland: Maggie Lumiere and the Ghost Train and S.A.D. (Spooky Action at a Distance). Dwayne has worked as a puppeteer, sword-fighter and stilt-walker in Las Vegas, trained with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company in New York and specializes in teaching Viewpoints and Suzuki for actors. He earned his MFA in acting at the Ohio State University with a focus on movement and devising new work and is now the Education Director and Associate Artist at BCT. He'd like to thank Seven Devils for the opportunity to share great stories with amazing people and to sniff the lilacs in June.

The Student Plays

Mr. Happy
By Kyanne McLaughlin

The Couple
By Kobi Windmiller

Rose Tinted- Glasses
By Hannah Baker

Three Blind and Mice
By Kailey Linden

Dirty Work
By Nic Morin

Trust Me
By Rylie Speirs

The Bro Code
By Sierra Lewis

Obsessed
By Chloe Hansen