NNPN ANNOUNCS FIVE NEW ROLLING WORLD PREMIERES FOR 2011

WASHINGTON, DC, February 8 - The NATIONAL NEW PLAY NETWORK (NNPN), the country's alliance of non-profit theaters that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays, announces five new Rolling World Premieres for 2011, produced with support from its Continued Life of New Plays Fund. The five plays – by Jack Canfora, Aditi Brennan Kapil, Allison Moore, Theresa Rebeck and Stephen Sachs – will collectively receive eighteen separate productions between February 2011 and April 2012.

The lineup kicked off over the weekend with the opening of NNPN's 25th Rolling World Premiere: Allison Moore's Ii>Collapse, a provocative comedy about the 2007 Minneapolis bridge disaster. The play opened at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley on February 4, and will be followed by subsequent productions at Denver's Curious Theatre Company and Dallas' Kitchen Dog Theater in the coming year. And opening this week at San Francisco's Magic Theatre is the Rolling World Premiere of Theresa Rebeck's What We're Up Against. Rebeck's workplace comedy set in an architecture firm will be produced subsequently by the Alley Theatre in Houston and one additional NNPN theater to be named shortly.

Two plays recently read at NNPN's National Showcase of New Plays – Jack Canfora’s Jericho and Stephen Sachs Bakersfield Mist – will also receive Rolling World Premieres starting in 2011. Bakersfield – a comic two-hander about an ex-bartender in a trailer park who believes she bought a priceless Jackson Pollock painting at a thrift store – has its first production at The Fountain Theatre (Los Angeles) in April, followed by productions at New Jersey Rep (Long Branch), Florida Stage (West Palm Beach), Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis) and PROP Thtr Group (Chicago). Canfora's play, about the effects of 9/11 on a Jewish family on Long Island, starts its Rolling World Premiere at New Jersey Rep in October, followed by productions at Florida Stage, Phoenix, and Florida Studio Theatre (Sarasota).

And Aditi Brennan Kapil – whose award-winning play Love Person received an NNPN Rolling World Premiere two years ago – will go through the NNPN process again with her new play, Agnes Under the Big Top: A Tall Tale. Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis kicks off the NNPN Rolling World Premiere on February 18, followed shortly thereafter by Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, and Borderlands Theater in Tucson in early 2012.

ABOUT THE CONTINUED LIFE OF NEW PLAYS FUND
NNPN’s flagship program, the Continued Life of New Plays Fund supports three or more theaters which choose to mount the same new play within a twelve-month period. The result is a Rolling World Premiere through which the playwright develops a new work with three different creative teams, for three different communities of patrons, ensuring the resulting play is of the highest possible quality. And with a minimum of three productions in a single year, the play attains the momentum it needs to join the repertoire of frequently-produced new American works. NNPN provides grants of $7,000 to the first three participating theaters in each Rolling World Premiere; to date, NNPN has championed the continued life of 25 new plays in more than 80 productions, with over a quarter-million dollars in grants.

ABOUT NNPN
The National New Play Network (NNPN) is the country’s alliance of non-profit professional theaters that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays. Since its founding in 1998, NNPN has commissioned over a dozen playwrights, provided thirteen MFA graduates with paid residencies, and supported over 80 productions nationwide through its innovative Continued Life of New Plays Fund, which creates "rolling world premieres" of new plays. Through these activities and others, NNPN has granted over a half million dollars to theaters and artists in the past ten years. Hundreds of artists have gained employment through these efforts in the 24 regions of the country where NNPN member theaters are located. NNPN receives substantial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Boeing Company, the Shubert Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.