Spark Artistic Team
Author: Caridad Svich is a US Latina playwright, translator, lyricist and editor. She received the 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement, and the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende.
She has been short-listed for the PEN Award in Drama four times, including in the year 2012 for her play Magnificent Waste. Among her key works: 12 Ophelias, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Any Place But Here, Iphigenia...a rave fable, Fugitive Pieces, GUAPA, The Way of Water, In the Time of the Butterflies (based on Julia Alvarez’s novel), Instructions for Breathing, and the multimedia collaboration The Booth Variations. She was recently profiled in The Huffington Post and American Theatre magazine. She has edited several books on theatre including Out of Silence: Censorship in Theatre & Performance (Eyecorner Press), Trans-Global Readings and Theatre in Crisis? (both for Manchester University Press) and Divine Fire (BackStage Books). She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance & press, associate editor of Routledge/UK's Contemporary Theatre Review, Drama Editor of literary journal Asymptote(www.asymptotejournal.com) and contributing editor of TheatreForum. She holds an MFA in Theatre-Playwriting from UCSD. Website: www.caridadsvich.com
Line Producer: Lanie Zipoy’s producing credits include Mac Rogers’ Universal Robots (named ITBA’s Best Off-Off Broadway Play); 7 Sins in 60 Minutes (HERE; Philly Fringe); 23 Feet in 12 Minutes (New Orleans) and Theatre Bridge Memphis (Memphis, TN). She is the co-founder of Voices Inside/Out, a theatre exchange program and playwright residency at a medium security prison in Kentucky. Lanie is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women, the Women’s Project Producers Lab and the New York Innovative Theatre Awards Honorary Awards Committee. She also contributes to the Huffington Post.
Consulting Dramaturg: Heather Helinsky received her MFA in Dramaturgy from the American Repertory Theatre/MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. At the American Repertory Theater, she dramaturged for directors Robert Woodruff, Krystian Lupa, Scott Zigler, Marcus Stern, and Sasha Marin. In season 2008-2009, she worked as Resident Dramaturg at Pittsburgh Public Theater, where she organized events for the celebration of the final play of the August Wilson Cycle. Heather is dedicated to developing new American plays.Nationally, she has been developing new plays with Constance Congdon, Caridad Svich, Elaine Romero, Tom Gibbons, Toni Press-Coffman, Rob Zellers, Ellen Struve, and Matthew Ivan Bennett. She teaches dramaturgy at Carnegie Mellon University. Website: www.helinskydramaturgy.com
Dramaturg: Zac Kline is a playwright, librettist and lyricist. His played Messed Up Here Tonight received a sold-out site-specific production and was featured as the cover story of Our Town, the newspaper of the East Side of Manhattan. His work has been presented and developed by Prospect Theatre Company, Figment Festival on Governors Island, NY International Fringe Festival, Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival, Emerging Artists Theatre, the University of Oklahoma City and The New Group in conjunction with the 24 Hour Play Company. BFA, Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing, Tisch, NYU. MFA, Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, Tisch, NYU.