in a word is a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. The participating theaters are San Francisco Playhouse (Bill English, Artistic Director; Susi Damilano, Producing Director; San Francisco, CA), Cleveland Public Theatre (Raymond Bobgan, Executive Artistic Director; Cleveland, OH), Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company (Lydia Fort, Executive Artistic Director; San Diego, CA), and Strawdog Theatre Company (Hank Boland, Artistic Director; Chicago, IL). For more information please visit nnpn.org.

Click here to read an interview
with Beth Wood, Director of in a word
and Associate Artistic Director.

in a word features

Meet the Playwright

Lauren Yee is a playwright born and raised in San Francisco. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University, and her MFA in playwriting from UCSD, where she studied under Naomi Iizuka.

She was a Dramatists Guild fellow, a MacDowell fellow, a MAP Fund grantee and a member of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. She has been a finalist for the Jerome Fellowship, the PONY Fellowship, the Princess Grace Award, the Sundance Theatre Lab and the Wasserstein Prize. Her play Samsara has been a nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. Her work has been published by Samuel French.

Her full-length work has been produced at AlterTheater, Artists at Play, City Lights Theatre Company, Company One, fu-GEN, the Hub Theatre, Impact Theatre, Moxie Theatre, Mu Performing Arts, Pan Asian Rep, SIS Productions and others.

Lauren’s work has also been developed at Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3, the Goodman Theatre, The Public Theater, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Playwrights Realm, Second Stage Theatre, Centerstage, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Aurora Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, East West Players, the Hangar Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theatre, the Magic Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, PlayPenn and the Playwrights’ Center.

Her play The Hatmaker’s Wife was an Outer Critics Circle nominee for the John Gassner Award for best play by a new American playwright. Ching Chong Chinaman was picked as a top 10 play of the year by City Pages and the East Bay Express, and Crevice was a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle nominee for Best Play. Other honors include three Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival playwriting awards, Kumu Kahua Theatre’s Pacific Rim Prize and writing fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the El Gouna Writers’ Residency, the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers and the New York Mills Cultural Center. She has also received funding from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Theatre Bay Area and UCSD’s Institute for International, Comparative and Area Studies, as well as an award from PlayGround’s New Play Production Fund.

Lauren is a Time Warner Fellow at the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab and a member of the Ma-Yi Theatre Writers Lab, as well as the Shank playwright-in-residence at Second Stage Theatre and the Page One resident playwright at Playwrights Realm. She is currently under commission from the Goodman Theatre, Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3, Mixed Blood Theatre, Encore Theatre Company (with support from the Gerbode Foundation) and TheatreworksUSA, a theater for young audiences.

About the National New Play Network

The National New Play Network is the Country’s alliance of nonprofit theaters that champions the development, production and continued life of new plays. NNPN Strives to pioneer, implement and disseminate ideas and programs that revolutionize the way theaters collaborate to support new plays and playwrights.

Since its founding in 1998, the National New Play Network has supported nearly 150 productions nationwide through its innovative Continued Life of New Plays Fund, which creates NNPN Rolling World Premieres of new plays; granted more than a million dollars to its Member theaters, their staffs and affiliated artists; and provided hundreds of playwrights and other theater-makers with developmental workshops, commissions and paid residencies. Now, after 17 seasons, hundreds of thousands of audience members around the world have seen plays that were created and honed with support from NNPN.

NNPN’s Four Core Values

• New plays are vital to the cultural health of our communities and our nation.
• Playwrights who speak with unique, essential and influential voices deserve to be championed.
• Diversity across all definitions, throughout our Network and its members, strengthens us and the field.
• Collaboration at all levels and among all parties is indispensable to the creation of new plays.
  

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What is a Rolling World Premiere?