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2007 Conference

June 11 - 23, 2007 at the Alpine Playhouse in McCall Idaho (map)

Featuring 2007 Guest Playwright Richard Dresser!

The 2007 Plays

Informed Consent by Richard Brockman: Every heart needs a second chance, sometimes life gives you that chance sometimes it doesn't. A pediatric transplant surgeon, facing his own limitations and failings for the first time in his life, discovers what it means to love and what it means to give when everything is in the balance.

Neighborhood #3: Requisition of Doom by Jennifer Haley: Take a virtual tour of an American suburb where prescription drug abuse, video game addiction, and cultish social programming have given way to something far more sinister: a deadly game from which escape is the only unreality.

I Am Montana by Samuel D. Hunter: Home in Montana after a stint in the Israeli Army, Eben finds himself on a cross-country road trip to give a presentation at the national headquarters of his mega-store employer, Valumart. Trapped between his concerned best friend, Tommy, and the ardent admiration of meth-addicted co-worker Dirk, Eben carries a flower, a suitcase and a secret.

Girl by Jonathan Yukich: What would it take for you to chase someone around the world? An elusive young lady and her mysterious yellow pencil radically alter the lives of three individuals, leaving them desperate to find her again. Come along for their wildly funny journey as they seek to answer the question: Who is that girl?

And in the Playwrights Intensive Program...

Red State Blues by John Grabow: In the reddest of red states, a former lefty returns to her family's organic vineyard after a five year absence. Born-again and ready to confront her father about his radical past, only to learn that he may not be what he always seemed… but then again, neither is she.

The Last of the Texas Dollies by Dan Moyer: The only thing standing in the way of Billy's dream of playing in the World Series of Poker is the fact that he doesn't have ten thousand dollars to buy a seat. The only thing keeping his brother Kip from reconciling with Claire, his estranged wife, is Billy. The hilarious and heartbreaking story of two brothers who put their relationships on the table in the riskiest gamble of their lives.

And a special reading of with Guest Artist Richard Dresser...

A View of the Harbor by Richard Dresser: On the run from a heritage of wealth and privilege, a young idealist attempts to find happiness as a factory worker. The third in Richard's Dressers trilogy about happiness in America. \

2007 Schedule of Events

(all events at the Alpine Playhouse in downtown McCall, unless otherwise noted)

Wednesday, June 13 at 7:30pm - A reading of A View of the Harbor by Richard Dresser

Thursday, June 14 at 7:30pm - Staged readings of two plays by McCall-Donnelly High School Students

Friday, June 15 at 7:30pm - Staged reading of Informed Consent by Richard Brockman

Saturday, June 16 at 11:00am - Free Playwriting Workshop with Richard Dresser (Place: TBA)

Saturday, June 16 at 7:30pm - Staged reading Neighborhood #3: Requisition of Doom by Jennifer Haley

Wednesday, June 20 at 7:30pm - A reading of The Last of the Texas Dollies by Dan Moyer (Place: TBA)

Thursday, June 21 at 7:30pm - Staged readings of two plays by McCall-Donnelly High School Students

Friday, June 22 at 7:30pm - Staged reading of Girl by Jonathan Yukich

Saturday, June 23 at 2:00pm - A reading of Red State Blues by John Grabow (Place: TBA)

Saturday, June 23 at 7:30pm - Staged reading of I Am Montana by Samuel D. Hunter

The Playwrights

Richard Dresser's (Guest Playwright - A View of the Harbor) plays are widely produced regionally, in New York , and in Europe . Off-Broadway plays include Rounding Third , Below the Belt , Gun-Shy and Better Days. Other plays: Alone at the Beach, The Downside, Something in the Air and Wonderful World . Short plays: At Home, Bed & Breakfast, Splittsville, The Road to Ruin and What Are You Afraid Of? (which was staged in the front seat of a car at Actors theater of Louisville's Humana Festival and ran in Germany for four years). He is currently writing a trilogy about happiness in America , with each play set in a different social class. Augusta (the working class play) premiered last summer at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in West Virginia and has since been produced at Portland Stage, Merrimack Rep, and Actors theater of Phoenix. The Pursuit of Happiness (the middle class play) premiered in January at the Laguna Playhouse and will appear at CATF this summer and Merrimack Rep in the fall. He is just completing the upper class play, A View of the Harbor . He also wrote the book for the Broadway musical Good Vibrations and the screenplay for Human Error , which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He twice attended the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and is a former member of New Dramatists. He is also active in film and television.

Richard Brockman  ( Informed Consent ) is a Doctor and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons.  He teaches in the medical school and in the residency program at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center - courses on brain biology and the interaction of psychotherapy and neurobiology. Richard's screenplay Good Behavior won recognition from The New York Foundation for the Arts, Cynosure, The Texas Film Institute, The South by SouthWest Film Festival, and is scheduled to begin filming in May '08 with director Mirra Bank and produced by Becker Entertainment.  His other  plays include Angels Don't Dance, Five o'clock, The interrogation of a well dressed  lady, Change of Heart, The Black Devil, Unprotected Sex, Little Caesar, A soldier's diary, Voice of America and Good People . They have been produced in New York , London , Chicago , Off-Broadway, Off-off Broadway and Fringe, as well as at other venues nationally and internationally.  Richard has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts as well as inclusion in the Samuel French Best Short Play Festivals of 2001 and 2005.  Other writings include A Map of the Mind (International Universities Press) and over 40 articles which have appeared in profess ional journals as well as in The Atlantic Monthly, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and The Reader's Digest.  Richard is a member of the Algonquin Theater Company, the Actors Studio Playwright-Directors Unit, the WorkShop Theater Company, the Dramatist Guild as well as the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, the New York Academy of Sciences.

John Grabow ( Red State Blues) has, among other things, been a professor at Georgetown University and is the author of a book published by Prentice Hall. He studied theater at the University of Michigan and for many years worked for the New York-based Nederlander Theatrical Corporation. He now lives in the mountains of Idaho . His play, Kate , was produced in 2001 by the Attic theater Ensemble in Los Angeles; Idaho Bound was presented in 2003 by the New theater Company in Sun Valley, Idaho; Tulips and Teton Views , was a finalist in the 2004 Trustus Playwrights Festival; Base Camp Blues was given a staged reading in 2005 by the Blank Theater Company in Los Angeles; Red State Blues was a semi-finalist in the 2006 Next Generation Playwriting Contest and is a semifinalist in this year's Trustus Playwrights Festival.

Jennifer Haley (Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom) hails from Austin , Texas , where she developed her work with Refraction Arts Company. Her plays include The Butcher's Daughter , Edmundo , S _Man , Dreampuffs of War , and Gingerbreadhouse . Her work has been seen at The Blue theater in Austin , Texas , the Vancouver and Seattle Fringe Festivals, The Empty Space theater in Seattle , Women's theater Initiative in Cincinnati , Stark Raving theater in Portland , Oregon , Perishable theater in Providence , and Abingdon theater Company, NYU's hotINK Festival and The Public Theater in New York . Jennifer earned an MFA in playwriting at Brown University , where she was awarded the Weston Award for Drama and the Joelson Prize in Creative Writing. She recently relocated to Los Angeles , where she's working on an original sci-fi pilot titled The Red Shift. You can find out more about her at www.jenniferhaley.com.

Samuel D. Hunter (I Am Montana) : Originally from Moscow , Idaho , Samuel D. Hunter received his BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2004 and will receive his MFA in Playwriting from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop in May 2007, where he is the recipient of an Iowa Arts Fellowship. His plays include: I Am Montana at the 2007 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2007 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Norman Rockwell Killed My Father at the 2005 O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Abraham (A Shot In The Head) at Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Abraham (I Am An Island) in Studio 42's Scattered Festival at Collective: Unconscious, Pigheart at the 2006 Iowa Playwrights' Workshop New Play Festival and a 2007 PlayLabs semi-finalist, Radioplay and American Triptych at the HomoGenius Festival at Manhattan Theater Source. He has taught playwriting courses at the University of Iowa and, over the last two summers, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at Ayyam al-Musrah in Hebron and Ashtar Theater in Ramallah. At Ashtar, he co-wrote The Era of Whales , which was produced in the West Bank and at the International Istanbul Theater Festival.

Dan Moyer (The Last of the West Texas Dollies) is originally from Palo Alto , California . Currently he is studying Dramatic Writing at NYU. Recent productions of his plays include The Last of the Texas Dollies ( 13 th Street Rep.), Alligator ( Tisch School of the Arts – NYU), A Diner A Shiner (New York Fifteen Minute Play Festival), Houdini Got it Bad in the Gut (TSOA - NYU), Them Pilots (USC), Gusev (Carnegie Mellon) and The Housetaurant (Kennedy Center Regional theater Festival). His one-act play Here I Go, Boys. Wish Me Luck… was produced and published as part of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Other past work has been seen at The Impact theater, The Ashland Ten Minute play Festival, The Short Leaps Festival, and The University of Minnesota, Duluth . Dan enjoys drinking tea. He once spent 24 consecutive hours in a donut shop.

Jonathan Yukich (Girl: A Play) Jonathan's plays have been seen in Canada , Australia , and England ; as well as in several U.S. cities ranging from Anchorage , Alaska to Buffalo , New York .  He has received multiple awards, including the Kennedy Center 's 2003 Paula Vogel Award for Playwriting. In April of this year, his play American Midget premiered at the Met theater in Los Angeles . Two of his one-acts, Boiling People in My Coffee and Thank You, Twenty Thousand Pound Man , are published with Playscripts, Inc. His work can also be seen in The Best Women's Stage Monologues of 2003 , published by Smith & Kraus, and More Scenes and Monologues from the Best New Plays II , published by Meriwether Press. He currently lives and teaches in New York .