Icicle Creek Kicks Off the 6th Annual New Play Festival

Posted by CotoBlogzz

Leavenworth, WA – The 6^th Annul New Play Festival kicks off at Icicle Creek Sunday, August 19, 1PM & 7PM featuring two new plays presented will be onstage at Canyon Wren Recital Hall: Seven Spots on the Sun by Martin Zimmerman -1PM and My Before and After, Michael Louis Serafin-Wells -7PM.

Each August in Leavenworth, the Icicle Creek Theatre Festival offers playwrights the space, time and support they need to develop new plays, as they work alongside professional actors and seasoned directors, and present their work to live audiences. After a full week of rewrites and improvements to the new plays, the Leavenworth community and theatre industry from around the country are invited to give feedback, and become part of the birth of new plays during presentations on the Center for the Arts' grounds.

Following the workshops in Leavenworth, all of ICTF's plays have continued on to acclaim, receiving full performances in London, Off-Broadway and regional theatres across the country.  The 2012 selections should follow suit.

In Zimmerman’s Seven Spots on The Sun, a doctor working in a country ravaged by civil war refuses even to look at a patient since the fateful day the army took his wife away from him. But when a mysterious plague ravages the countryside, the doctor faces a moral dilemma when he discovers he has the power to heal.

Mr. Zimmerman, a recipient of the Carl Djerassi Playwriting Fellowship and the National New Play Network's Smith Prize, has had plays produced or developed at venues including The Kennedy Center, Goodman Theatre, The Playwrights' Center, Alliance Theatre, American Theater Company, The Theatre @ Boston Court, Chicago Dramatists, Primary Stages, Seven Devils, Borderlands, and Source Festival. Martín is a member of Goodman Theatre's Playwrights’ Unit, and a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists.

In Mr. Serafin-Wells’ My Before and After, the discovery of the abandoned workshop of an elusive abstract artist brings together Wes, his sister Olivia, and old friend EJ, to catalog the artist’s work and rebuild their own fractured lives, revealing the beauty, melancholy, and wry humor of relationships reborn in the wake of great loss.

Mr. Serafin-Wells is the winner of the London New Play Festival, a New Voices

West honoree, a finalist for the Heideman Award, and a finalist at VBA London’s

Soho Theatre. His plays have seen production, publication, workshops and

readings in NY, London, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, L.A., Washington, DC,

and elsewhere. My Before and After was recently workshopped as part of ACT

Theatre’s The Construction Zone series.

2012 Artistic direc Allen Fitzpatrick founded Icicle Creek Theatre Festival in late 2007, and instituted its collaboration with Seattle's ACT Theatre in 2008.

In 2003, Allen directed the first Off-Broadway (NYC) revival of Sea Marks; in 2007, he directed the first Seattle area production of The Exonerated. In 2008, he produced and directed a critically-acclaimed production of Vesta at CHAC in Seattle, starring Megan Cole. For ICTF, he directed Dov and Ali by Anna Ziegler in 2007, and Him by acclaimed playwright Daisy Foote in 2009. He recently directed Shiny Pair

of Complications for the 2010 Bit Parts Festival at Freehold. Allen founded the People's Theatre of Frankford (PA) in 1984. He teaches acting regularly at the 5th Avenue Theatre, and coaches acting privately.

He brings to ICTF nearly thirty-five years of experience acting on Broadway and in the professional theatre. Working alongside such notables as Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim, he was featured on Broadway in Les Miserables (as Thenardier), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Damn Yankees, The Boys From Syracuse, 42nd Street, and The Sweet Smell of Success (as standby for John Lithgow). Allen shared an Emmy Award for his contribution to Passion: Live From Lincoln Center, in which he appeared opposite Patti Lupone. He starred opposite Petula Clark in Sunset Boulevard, opposite Keith Michell in Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Aspects of Love, and with Marlo Thomas in Six Degrees of Separation. He appears in seven feature films including Kissing Jessica Stein, and on television, five episodes of "Law & Order". He has played over 160 roles in regional theatres, as well as many Off-Broadway productions in NY.

 Icicle Creek Center for the Arts - is  Destination for Extraordinary Performances & Inspired Learning Experiences, Dedicated to celebrating excellence in the lively arts and inspiring generations of students, artists and audiences through exceptional educational experiences, live performances, and special events - all in the breathtaking, natural setting of the mountain meadows.

For more information on Icicle Creek, please visit www.icicle.org