After receiving forty proposals, each representing a distinct and inspiring view of life in Boston, SpeakEasy Stage Company is ecstatic to announce the selection of TWO playwrights for the 2016 Boston Project. One of the playwrights is UNH Adjunct Professor Nina Louise Morrison.
The two selected playwrights will each receive a stipend of $1,000, and spend six months writing and developing their proposed plays with input and support from SpeakEasy Producing Artistic Director Paul Daigneault and SpeakEasy Artistic Associate Walt McGough. The company will provide research assistance and dramaturgical feedback, as well as facilitate check-ins and table reads as the plays take shape. The project will culminate in a two-week developmental workshop and invited staged reading of each play in February, 2016.
BORN NAKED is a tragicomic examination of contemporary independence in the heart of historic Boston. The play centers around Nicky, who loves leading tours as a historical interpreter on the Freedom Trail. When one of her fellow guides commits suicide, her whole world is suddenly turned upside down. She is left to question what freedom means: how we depend on each other, how we stand alone, and how we make our mark on the world.
NINA LOUISE MORRISON is a playwright, director, and teacher with an MFA from Columbia University. She is a Huntington Theatre Company Playwriting Fellow; a core member of the devising company Project: Project; and a member of Rhombus writers group. Her plays have been read and produced by Company One, Fresh Ink Theatre, 20% Theatre Company, Kitchen Theatre Company, Saltbox Theatre, Our Voices, WOW, Café, SLAM Boston, Wax Wings, Bostonia Bohemia, and the One-Minute Play Festival. She was a semi-finalist for the 2014 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and is the recipient of a Richard Rodgers Fellowship and a Shubert Foundation grant. Before moving to Boston, Nina was the Senior Program Associate at the Philadelphia Theater Initiative. She trained at the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center and the New Actors Workshop, and received her BA from Oberlin College. She currently teaches at the University of New Hampshire and Grub Street.
