JAW Play Reading: Fires, Ohio
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View Upcoming EventsBy Beth Hyland
Directed by Marissa Wolf
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As a climate crisis threatens a small Ohio college town, the mopey grown children and second wife of a sort-of-mediocre professor must choose: stay and smolder, or leave and burn. When a visiting scholar comes to stay for a few days, love and hatred flare and jeopardize the family’s fragile equilibrium. Chekhovian and totally modern, Fires, Ohio brings an old story into our painfully funny present.
JAW New Play Festival FREE! July 28-30
A week-long assembling of artists and audiences to create new plays! Artistic teams, including playwrights, directors and actors, come together to rehearse — and a lot of times rewrite! — a play. The final piece of the process happens during the weekend, when we share “music stands readings” with audiences so the playwrights can hear their work, often for the very first time!
Beth Hyland is a playwright and screenwriter based in Southern California. Her plays and musicals include SYLVIA SYLVIA SYLVIA, FIRES, OHIO, SEAGULLS, KILLED A MAN (JOKING), GRIPPY SOCK VACATION, ALL-ONE! THE DR. BRONNER’S PLAY, CLEARING, FOR ANNIE, and RED BOWL AT THE JEFFS. Her plays have been produced and developed regionally at the Geffen Playhouse, Steppenwolf’s LookOut Series, Goodman Theatre’s New Stages, Know Theatre, Provincetown Theatre, B Street Theatre, Oak Park Festival Theatre, and Octagon Theatre Bolton; in New York at Manhattan Theatre Club and The Hearth; and around Chicago at Jackalope Theatre, First Floor Theater, The Story Theatre, Bramble Theatre, Broken Nose Theatre, The Sound in collaboration with Joe Swanberg, and others. Her play SYLVIA SYLVIA SYLVIA was the 2024 recipient of Williamstown Theatre Festival's Weissberger Prize and Jay Harris Commission, as well as the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Award for Comic Playwriting. Her play FIRES, OHIO was the 2023 recipient of the Kennedy Center's Paula Vogel Prize and the Mark Twain Award for Comic Playwriting. She co-founded The Sound, an itinerant Chicago storefront theatre, with artistic director Rebeca Willingham. Her short film CLAMBAKE, directed by Sammy Zeisel, was an official selection of the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival and the Santa Monica Film Festival. She is a rising third-year MFA student at UC San Diego under the mentorship of Naomi Iizuka and Deborah Stein. BA: Kenyon College. Representation: Jamie Kaye-Phillips, Paradigm. bethhyland.com
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Donate to the p:ear Giving Tree
Every winter, youth at p:ear are looking for basic needs such as socks, backpacks, bus tickets, gift cards, art supplies, and other items. The Giving Tree helps p:ear fuel their mission to provide mentoring services to Portland’s homeless and parent-less young people.
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