THE PROFANE cast featured in the New York Times
“Works & Process” with Aasif Mandvi at the Guggenheim
The Profane by Zayd Dohrn February 27, 2017, 7:30 pm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Safe in the liberal fortress of Manhattan, Raif Almedin is a first-generation immigrant who prides himself on his modern, enlightened views. But when his daughter falls for the son of a conservative Muslim family, two households are forced to confront each other’s religious beliefs and cultural traditions, and to face their own deep-seated prejudice. Aasif Mandvi moderates a discussion with playwright Zayd Dohrn and director Kip Fagan illuminating the creation of The Profane. Members of the cast perform excerpts from this sharp and timely tale.$40, $35 members and Friends of Works & Process. BUY TICKETS A PART OF THE WORKS & PROCESS SERIES
THE PROFANE wins 2016 Horton Foote American Play Prize
Horton Foote Prize Goes to 2 Playwrights By ANDREW R. CHOW, SEPT. 13, 2016 The playwrights Jordan Harrison and Zayd Dohrn have won the 2016 Horton Foote Prize, which honors excellence in American theater every two years. Mr. Harrison won the outstanding new play award for “Marjorie Prime,” which was a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times Critics’ Pick when it arrived at Playwrights Horizons last fall. The play centers on an 85-year-old woman, portrayed by Lois Smith in last year’s production, who confronts memory loss through storytelling and artificial intelligence. In his review for The Times, Ben Brantley called it “elegant, thoughtful and quietly unsettling,” adding, “this production keeps developing in your head, like a photographic negative, long after you’ve seen it.” Mr. Dohrn received the promising new play prize for “The Profane,” which will have its premiere at Playwrights Horizons in March. The play follows a romance that develops amid differing cultural and familial values. The prize comes with $20,000 for each playwright and is named after the Pulitzer-winning playwright who died in 2009. (A production of Foote’s play “The Roads to Home” starts previews at Primary Stages on Wednesday.) The judges were the actress Stockard Channing; [...]
New television series in development at BBC America
BBC AMERICA, May 31, 2016 BBC AMERICA ANNOUNCES ORIGINAL SCRIPTED DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS AND UPCOMING SUMMER AND FALL PREMIERE SLATE New development projects come to BBCA from high-profile talent including Amy Poehler, Natasha Lyonne, Neal Baer, and See-Saw Films, the producers of Top of the Lake, among others. Projects include: Foreign Babes in Beijing Rachel DeWoskin and Zayd Dohrn are developing a series set in Beijing based on DeWoskin’s memoir of the same name, which chronicles her personal experiences as a soap opera actress on Chinese television. Manage-ment’s Dan Halsted is producing along with Andre and Maria Jacquemetton (Mad Men). Junk Junk is a satirical look inside the world of the soda and junk food industry. Dean Craig (Death at a Funeral) is set to write, and Neal Baer (Under the Dome, Law & Order: SVU, ER) will executive produce. Memoria Adam Barken (Killjoys, Flashpoint) is set to write Memoria, an emotionally driven sci-fi drama about a man who begins to unravel after his memories conflict with technology. Temple Street, the company behind BBCA’s Orphan Black is producing. Quatermass Nicola Shindler’s RED Production Company (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax, Queer as Folk) and Simon Oakes’ Hammer Films (The Woman in Black, The Resident) [...]
THE PROFANE in Playwrights Horizons’ 2016/2017 Season
Playwrights Horizons Announces a Season of Premieres for 2016–17 The slate includes new works from Julia Cho, Adam Bock, the Debate Society, Dan LeFranc, Zayd Dohrn, and Kirsten Childs. BY AMERICAN THEATRE EDITORS NEW YORK CITY: Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of artistic director Tim Sanford and managing director Leslie Marcus, has announce the six productions of its 2016–17 Season, all but one a world premiere. The season kicks off in August with the New York premiere of Julia Cho’s Aubergine, about the links between food and family. It will be directed by Kate Whoriskey. The world premiere of Adam Bock’s A Life follows in September. This tale of a lonely young man who turns to astrology for answers will be directed by Anne Kauffman. Dan LeFranc’s Rancho Viejo, another world premiere, follows in November. Daniel Aukin will direct this play about the parents of a young couple going through a breakup, set against the backdrop of an affluent Southwestern suburb. The Debate Society’s newest offering, The Light Years, will have its world premiere in February 2017. This new play by company members Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen, and Oliver Butler retells the true story of Steele MacKaye, a now forgotten impresario behind an audacious invention at the [...]
REBORNING opens in Florida and Panama
Increíble 'Reborning' 16/1/16 - 12:00 AM Malky Zebede es hija de tigre y está mostrando sus rayas.Por años estuvo acompañando a su padre, el actor, director y productor teatral Aaron Zebede, ... Keitha Kushner, Valerie Troncoso y Rob Getman darán vida a los personajes de esta producción de Nikki de Roy y Diana Abouganem. / Malky Zebede. Valerie Troncoso y Keitha Kushner, en la obra de Zayd Dohrn. Rob Getman y Valerie Troncoso se lucen en esta comedia. Rosalina Orocú Mojica (rosalina.orocu@epasa.com) | @PanamaAmerica Malky Zebede es hija de tigre y está mostrando sus rayas. Por años estuvo acompañando a su padre, el actor, director y productor teatral Aaron Zebede, en los proyectos que él emprendía. Para ella ir al teatro y verlo ensayar era un gozo indescriptible. Momentos mágicos. Así, casi sin darse cuenta, quedó Malky también prendada del teatro. Eso sí, la mayor parte de las veces su trabajo, de asistente, tenía lugar tras bastidores. Aduce que es asunto de personalidad. Es tímida. Pero eso no fue barrera. Dio los pasos necesarios, hizo lo que tenía que hacer para llegar a esta fase: estrenarse como directora. El gran día llegó. Fue este jueves cuando se corrió el telón [...]
Theatre for One is “Critic’s Pick” in the New York Times
Review: ‘I’m Not the Stranger You Think I Am,’ Where Theater Meets Confessional By BEN BRANTLEY MAY 22, 2015 There’s no hiding in the dark this time, and none of the usual safety in numbers. It’s just you and her — or him — eyeball to eyeball, in a closed, red space the size of a confessional. If you blush or yawn or wipe tears from your eyes, she sees it; that means, of course, that she feels it, too. The responsibilities of being an audience rarely weigh as heavily as they do in “I’m Not the Stranger You Think I Am,” the series of short (roughly five-minute) plays that opened this week at Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan. The self-contained, tiny (4 feet by 8 feet), mobile structure in which these solo dramas take place resembles a confessional in more ways than one. As this mini-theater has been created, by the inspired designer Christine Jones and the architectural firm Lot-ek, you find yourself in immediate proximity to someone who has every intention of confiding in you. He or she materializes when a screen slides away, revealing a person seated, as you are, and as close as the image in your [...]
LOVE SONG at Theatre for One in New York, May 18 – June 6
See the Time Out New York feature article here. New plays by Craig Lucas, Will Eno, Lynn Nottage, Jose Rivera, Thomas Bradshaw, Zayd Dohrn, and Emily Schwend will have their world premiere on May 18th inside a mobile 4-by-8-foot theatre where one actor will perform one short play for just one audience member at a time. The original plays comprise I’m Not the Stranger You Think I Am, the latest production from Theatre for One, the acclaimed one-on-one theatre company founded by its Artistic Director Christine Jones, the director of the hit immersive extravaganza Queen of the Night and the Tony Award-winning set designer of American Idiot and Spring Awakening. Rooted in the belief that emotional intimacy is possible at any moment, at any time, and with any person, each short play in I’m Not the Stranger You Think I Am was specially commissioned for production in Theatre for One’s custom-designed, state-of-the-art performance space. FULL SCHEDULE: Winter Garden at Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey Street, New York, NY 10821 May 18 – 24, 2015, 12:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Zuccotti Park, Broadway & Liberty Street New York, NY 10006 May 27 –31, 2015, 12:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Grace Building [...]
THE PROFANE workshop at New York Stage & Film, June 26 – 28
Vassar and New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater has announced a slate of new works to receive developmental stagings this summer in Poughkeepsie, NY. New musicals from the creators of Hedwig, Giant and Spring Awakening will be presented alongside plays by Nicky Silver and Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar. Reading Festival June 26-28 Junk by Ayad Akhtar, directed by Doug Hughes a boy put this girl in a cage with a dog and the dog killed the girl by Clare Barron The Dizzy Little Dance Of Russell DiFinaldi by Stephen Belber The Profane by Zayd Dohrn 15 Minutes Book by Rick Elice, Music and Lyrics by Stephen Trask & Peter Yanowitz, directed by Trip Cullman
REBORNING is “Critic’s Choice” in the LA Times
'Reborning': Creepy, yes, but undeniably powerful Extraordinary cast propels Zayd Dohrn's superb comedy-drama 'Reborning' at Fountain Theatre From left, Kristin Carey and Joanna Strapp in Zayd Dohrn's "Reborning" at the Fountain Theatre. By F. Kathleen Foley “Reborning” is the phenomenon in which customers purchase extravagantly expensive infant dolls – sometimes facsimiles of lost loved ones – that are amazingly lifelike in every particular. Fascinated by this “beautiful, grotesque and odd” fetish/fad, playwright Zayd Dohrn was inspired to write “Reborning,” his superb comedy-drama, now in its Los Angeles premiere at the Fountain Theatre. The action centers around Kelly (Joanna Strapp), a prickly young woman who lives with her goofily “normal” boyfriend, Daizy (Ryan Doucette). The much in-demand creator of “reborn” babies, Kelly encounters a particularly exacting customer in Emily (Kristin Carey), a successful older woman who has ordered an exact replica of her dead baby girl. But when Kelly begins to suspect that Emily is the woman who gruesomely abandoned her at birth, she arrives at the brink of madness. It's an admittedly creepy concept, but there's nothing cheap about Dohrn's play, which builds to a shattering denouement. Director Simon Levy has assembled an extraordinary cast in his exquisitely well-realized [...]