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NURTURING, DEVELOPING, AND INTRODUCING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PLAYWRIGHTS

Take Ten is a genius equation: young American theater artists + an inspiring setting + experienced mentors + community involvement = thrilling new work.

– David Auburn, Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright

2021 Marks Theater Masters'

Hurry! Join us April 22 for our celebration!

20th Anniversary Benefit Gala Presents

Astonishment artist Gary Weinstein will take us on a thrilling online 45-minute ride
of story, magic, and mind reading.

Join Us for this Spectacular Evening
Thursday April 22 at 7PM

An interactive tale of improbable connections, colorful characters, and incredible happenings starring YOU in mind bending explorations of unreal phenomena.

ORDER YOUR TICKETS TODAY!

Announcing Our 2021 Visionary Playwright!

LAUREN YEE was the second most produced playwright in America for the 2019/20 theatrical season (as per American Theatre Magazine). Her plays include Cambodian Rock Band (South Coast Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, City Theatre, Merrimack Rep) and The Great Leap (Denver Center, Seattle Repertory, Atlantic Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Arts Club, InterAct Theatre, Steppenwolf). Honors: Doris Duke Artists Award, Steinberg Playwright Award, Whiting Award, Steinberg/ATCA Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters literature award, Horton Foote Prize, Kesselring Prize, Primus Prize, Hodder Fellowship, #1 and #2 plays on 2017 Kilroys List. New Dramatists, Ma-Yi Writers’ Lab, Playwrights Realm alum. TV: Pachinko (Apple), Soundtrack (Netflix). BA: Yale. MFA: UCSD. www.laurenyee.com

Theater Masters is honored to announce Lauren Yee as one of our 2021 Visionary Playwright Award winners!

I feel privileged to have seen Lauren Yee’s brilliant and moving Cambodian Rock Band during it’s sold-out run at Signature Theatre- just before the pandemic changed everything.

Dubbed “fierce, gorgeous and heartwarming” by The Los Angeles Times, Cambodian Rock Band tells the story of a woman trying to piece together her family history thirty years after her father fled Cambodia. Through innovative storytelling that's part play, part rock concert (with phenomenal music by Dengue Fever), Yee shows us the Cambodian rock scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s, a movement cut short by the Khmer Rouge’s brutal attempt to erase the music and musicians.

Yee (a TAKE TEN alum) and I connected this month to talk theater and the future.

-Vicky Hansen, Theater Masters

What are you looking forward to?

Strangely, I get nostalgic not so much for the performances themselves as what comes before or after. The thrill when the lights go down. Drinks after a show. Conversations about what the play really meant on the ride home. Also very much looking forward to the ways in which that theater marks time spent together. I've gotten to go to a lot of different places over the course of my career, and it's been a joy to see how the arts function in different communities and how community members support one another. I miss that.

Do the things you love end up in your work?

I've realized that I metabolize things slowly. It actually takes about four years for something I've experienced or witnessed to make it into my writing. (I can point to specific examples that prove the four-year digesting period!) More than things I love, it's things that haunt me. Things I (for better or worse) may not necessarily understand at first glance and become obsessed with.

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