More than 300 attendees from at least 24 states and 3 countries Zoomed in to witness and support the 3 plays presented as Conference readings during the 2020 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. The Conference also featured 3 in-house readings, including "Birth of the Pill" by featured playwright Jessica Huang, and 2 playwrights in-virtual-residence.

2020 PLAYS & PLAYWRIGHTS

  • CONFERENCE READINGS
  • INTENSIVES
  • FEATURED PLAYWRIGHT
  • RESIDENCIES
  • STUDENTS
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Playwrights in the Conference Reading process participated in a two week pre-Conference, including a Virtual Design Meeting with Skip Mercier and meetings with a director and dramaturg. Each play in this process received 16 hours of rehearsal before being presented as a live ZOOM reading for an invited audience. 

Thursday, June 18th at 8pm EDT
7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific
​THE ALLIGATOR GOSPELS by Matt Pelfrey

​When Val arrives at her sister Izzy's farmhouse hoping to save their broken relationship, she discovers her sister has become a devoted apostle to a new god who has appeared on her property in the form of an alligator.  As Val struggles to understand Izzy's new beliefs and figure out if they are the twisted result of a return to drug abuse or mental illness, Val will experience things, frightening things, that make the ground beneath her reality shake and force her to question if she's the one who truly needs saving.
Read Matt Pelfrey's Bio
Matt Pelfrey is a theatre, film and television writer.  His plays have been produced around the country and include Cockroach Nation, Terminus Americana, An Impending Rupture Of The Belly, Pure Shock Value, Freak Storm​ and the stage adaption of The Pilo Family Circus and John Ball’s In The Heat Of The Night.

​Los Angeles Theatre Works produced an audio version of In The Heat Of The Night, which aired nationally on National Public Radio.  A live version of the LATW production toured the U.S.  His work is available from Broadway Play Publishing, Original Works Publishing, and Samuel French.
 
He is the winner of the Actor’s Theater of Louisville’s Heidman Award, a Backstage Garland Award for playwriting, and was nominated for an LA WEEKLY playwriting award and a Los Angeles Ovation award.
 
He worked as a writer on the MTV drama “Skins” and for the Facebook Watch series “Turnt.”
​
He is a member of the WGA. He received his BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State and his MFA in Playwriting from U.C.L.A.  He is the program director for Point Park University’s MFA in Writing for Screen & Stage.

Friday, June 19th at 8pm EDT
7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific
THE KILLING FIELDS by Anya Pearson

​For Cly, the news of her husband’s early release from prison complicates her budding relationship with his cousin, Aegisthus. But that’s nothing compared to the threat he poses to her efforts to wrestle their daughter back from a life of addiction. Set in East Oakland in the midst of the 1980’s crack epidemic, The Killing Fields re-imagines the story of Agamemnon through a mother’s epic struggle to rescue her daughter.
Read Anya Pearson's Bio
Anya Pearson is an award-winning actress, playwright, poet, producer, and activist. She is thrilled to continue developing The Killing Fields at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, which reimagines Agamemnon through the war on drugs and its effect on inner city communities. She was the inaugural winner of the $10,000 Voice is a Muscle Grant from the Corporeal Voices Foundation, for her choreopoem, Made to Dance in Burning Buildings. Made to Dance in Burning Buildings was showcased at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater and received its World Premiere at Shaking The Tree Theatre where Anya was the Playwright-in-Residence for the 2018-2019 season. Anya is currently working on a series of projects (in dialogue with to Made to Dance) aimed at empowering other survivors of sexual violence (especially survivors of color), raising awareness around the lasting effects of PTSD and trauma, and combatting rape culture. They include: a collection of poetry, a TV show, a documentary, a memoir, and a guide to healing co-authored with a leading trauma expert. Anya received the $10,000 Problem Play Commission from Bag&Baggage Productions to adapt Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure focused on mass incarceration and its effect on black families. Her adaptation, The Measure of Innocence received its World Premiere in March 2020. She was a finalist for the 2020 George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship in Playwriting and a finalist for the 2019 National Black Theatre’s I Am Soul Playwriting Residency. Anya runs a production company called Urban Haiku whose mission is to produce groundbreaking work that transcends the traditional boundaries of theatre while also serving as the catalyst for art and community action to combine for real social change. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, Linestorm Playwrights, Couch Film Collective, and a graduate of the William Esper Studio in New York City. Her best production is her 7-year-old daughter, Aidee, who can be seen, most nights, trying to circumvent bedtime by asking deep philosophical questions like: “When are we going to see the world? When is my life going to truly begin?” www.anyapearson.com

Saturday, June 20th at 8pm EDT
7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific
YOU WILL GET SICK by Noah Diaz

​It starts with your balance, but it begins to spread, as these things often do. Your legs numb, your grip-strength weakens, your arms go rigid and hard. Before long, you’re hiring a stranger to say aloud what you can't say yourself: that you got sick. A play in the second-person about learning to live in your own body as you find your way home.
Read Noah Diaz's Bio
Noah Diaz is a playwright from the Iowa/Nebraska border. His plays have been developed with La Jolla Playhouse, Baltimore Center Stage, The Playwrights Realm, The Sol Project, Two River Theater, Howlround Latinx Theater Commons, Seven Devils New Play Foundry, and WildWind Performance Lab. He is a recipient of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize, a five-time recipient of playwriting awards from the Kennedy Center, and is currently under commission from La Jolla Playhouse, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan, Baltimore Center Stage, and Audible/Amazon Studios. MFA: Yale School of Drama. https://www.noahdiaz.me/
Writers in the Playwrights Intensive Program particpated in one Pre-Conference week, followed by an intensive period of work with a director and dramaturg. Plays were read and discussed with actors in an in-house reading/rehearsal. In the second week of the Conference, playwrights meet with Frances K. Starr Design Fellow Jay Tyson to discuss the physical life of their plays.

MADAM EUPHORIA REVEALS YOUR FUTURE by Jenny Sternling

Madam Euphoria can hear the thoughts and see the future of anyone near her, and has moved to the forest to escape the constant din of her "gift".  But when a young mother tracks her down seeking guidance about her child that won't stop crying, a chain of events is set into motion that even Madam Euphoria can't foresee. Now, she must sacrifice her last shred of sanity to save the young woman's family from chaos and pure evil. But will that be enough?
Read Jenny Sternling's Bio
Jenny Sternling is a native Idahoan who has worked in the Northwest for over 35 years as a professional actor, director, writer, and producer in stage, film, voice-over, and television. Her past theatrical adventures include founding a comedy improv troupe; starring in a Marine World TV special alongside a baby tiger; appearing as Lyubov Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, directed by Michael Hoffman at Boise Contemporary Theatre; and writing and producing dozens of custom-tailored corporate theatre productions with her company, Event Entertainment. As a theatre arts teacher for organizations including Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Boise State University’s MBA program, and Bishop Kelly High School (where teaches and directs theatre,) Jenny has collaborated with students and colleagues to write, produce and present numerous plays and films. After she toured numerous archives conducting research on a forgotten 19th-century form of melodrama called dog dramas, Jenny wrote a unique play: Taking the Seize: A Dog Drama. Selected as a Playwright in Residence, Jenny honed her play and skills at the 2015 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and her play Breathe Me was selected for the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference in 2016. She has been an actor for “Seven Devils” and a playwright in their “My Own Private Idaho” program. Jenny’s newest play, Madam Euphoria Reveals Your Future, was selected for Boise Contemporary Theater’s 5x5 Reading series in 2019. ​

THE HERO AND THE SCHOLAR by Marshall Botvinick

Robert Malone has been a university professor for nearly three decades. But when one of his students mentions his lectures in a suicide note, he finds himself fighting for both his job and his innocence. Yet he can't help but wonder: Did I cause this? Are my words the reason a young man died?
Read Marshall Botvinick's Bio
​Marshall Botvinick is a playwright, dramaturg, director, and educator based in Durham, North Carolina. He is a founding member of Bulldog Ensemble Theater. He holds an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy from the A.R.T./MXAT Institute at Harvard University and is currently a faculty member at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His play The Hero and the Scholar was a finalist for the Todd McNerney Playwriting Award and the Georgia College Arts & Letters Prize for Drama. He is also the author of the monograph Jonson: Volpone.
Featured Playwright Jessica Huang joined us as the inaugural recipient of the Four-Seasons Residency Program, a collaborative project amongst 5 development programs, including Seven Devils, with the goal creating new models of support for playwrights. Jessica utilized her time with Seven Devils as a home-stay residency that includes the support of a director and dramaturg, along with two in-house reading/rehearsals with actors.

BIRTH OF THE PILL by Jessica Huang

Katharine McCormick and Margaret Sanger schemed for decades about a pill that women could swallow like aspirin that would grant total autonomy over their fertility. To achieve this feat, they need to team up with maverick scientist Gregory Pincus and charismatic gynocologist John Rock - and find willing human test subjects from New Hampshire  to Puerto Rico. Based on the book by Jonathan Eig and commissioned by TimeLine Theatre Company, The Birth of the Pill depicts the transformation in science, society and possibilities for women that came alongside the invention of the birth control pill, made ever more complex by the link between the pill and the Eugenics movement.
Meet Jessica Huang
Jessica Huang is a playwright based in New York, from Minnesota. She is the inaugural recipient of the 4 Seasons Residency; the 2019 resident playwright at Chance Theater; a 2018 MacDowell Fellow; and a three-time Playwrights’ Center Fellow. Her work includes The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (2018 Barry and Bernice Stavis Award, 2017 Kilroy’s List), Mother of Exiles (2020 Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, 2020 Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award, 2020 Kendeda Prize Finalist),Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying, and Purple Cloud. She has commissions with Manhattan Theatre Club, TimeLine Theatre Company, Audible, Theater Masters, History Theatre, and Theater Mu. Her work has been seen or read at New York Stage and Film, The New Group, Atlantic Theater Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Old Globe, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, The Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Minnesota Museum of American Art, Yellow Earth Theatre and more. She has received awards from the Sloan Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Jessica co-founded and co-directs Other Tiger Productions, a theatrical production company with a mission to pursue multidisciplinary collaborations, intentional inclusivity and a re-examination of traditional theater practices. She has been a member of the Civilians R&D Group, Page 73's Interstate 73 and Ars Nova Play Group. She attends the Playwrights Program at Juilliard. ​
Writers in Residence is a self-directed program. Our two 2020 playwrights served as dramaturgs for each other's work during the conference, and met with Christy Montour-Larson to engage the work from a director's perspective.
THE REGULAR by Bob Bartlett
​Bob Bartlett's plays include Union, an ink-still-drying fiction chronicling Walt Whitman’s years living and loving in Washington, DC during the Civil War; E2, a contemporary reimagining of Marlowe's Edward II, which premiered last season at Maryland's Rep Stage; The Orbit of Mercury (2017 O'Neill Finalist); Swimming With Whales (1st Stage - nominated for six 2019 Helen Hayes Awards; developed at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference); Happiness (and Other Reasons to Die) (The Welders); The Accident Bear (The Avenue Laundromat); Falwell (Active Cultures); Kuchu Uganda (DC Queer Theatre Festival); Kansas; and others. His work has also been seen at The Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage Festival and The Capital and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, and developed at Seven Devils, Rep Stage, Theater Alliance, Spooky Action Theatre, Mosaic Theater Company, and Alliance Theatre. His play Bareback Ink, a queer reimagining of the Ganymede myth, recently had a run at NYC's Hard Sparks. He is the 2018 Playwright-in-Residence at New Voices for the Theater, an affiliated artist with the National New Play Network, a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, and a member of the faculty at Bowie State University, where he teaches playwriting, screenwriting, and dramatic literature/theory. Bartlett is a founding member of The Welders, a DC-based, producing playwrights collective, who earned his MFA in Playwriting at Catholic University of America and lives in Central Maryland in an old farmhouse. (bob-bartlett.com)
THE BARTENDER'S TALE by Gay Smith
Gay Smith is thrilled to be returning to Seven Devils, with so many good experiences over the years as dramaturg, preceded by a dozen years at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and Padua Hills in L.A. (those early Sam Shepard and Irene Fornes days). She is now Professor Emerita of Theatre at Wesleyan after founding the playwriting program and teaching for 35 years. Her publications include several articles and a few books: Lady Macbeth in America: From the Stage to the White House; George Sand’s Theatre Career; George Sand’s Gabriel; edit and introduction for Plays by Phil Bosakowski. Living in Montana this past year, she is adapting a play from a novel written by a beloved western writer, in addition to continuing research for a historical novel with a cast of real historical characters: writers, artists, actors, army captains, and French trappers, spanning time from the French Revolution to the American Civil war. She loves McCall, Idaho- a prime destination!
Thanks to our 2020 Mentors:
Tom Coash, Heidi Kraay, Dano Madden, Sheila McDevitt, Tira Palmquist
Our work with the student playwrights of McCall-Donnelly High School took place in May 2020 and was incorporated into the school district's abbreviated online school year. How did it work?
  • Literary Manager, A.P. Andrews, created two masterclass videos for the 14 students in the drama program, including exercises that became part of the group's classwork. Because of the nature of the student's schedules, pre-recorded videos that could be watched independently were preferred over live online sessions.
  • 5 students who were interested in furthering their work were assigned professional mentors from Seven Devils Company of artists. The mentors met with the students several times, supporting them through the revision process and fielding questions along the way, often via text.
  • Teacher Audrey Linville pulled together a ZOOM reading of the students working, casting students and local actors. Mentors and Seven Devils staff attended the session and offered feedback.
In the end, it didn’t matter much how we got there, as long as students produced work they were proud of and were able to share it.  We achieved that thanks to dedicated people and an indestructible program. 

       - Audrey Linville, McCall Donnelly High School

Seven Devils recognizes and celebrates the generosity and support of our partners,
​benefactors & sponsors in McCall, Idaho.

With you in spirit, until we can be with you in person

Seven Devils Playwrights Conference is made possible, in part, by donations from:

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CONTACT US:  
​paula@sevendevils.org