Visionary Playwrights (OLD)

Meet the 2020 Visionary Playwrights:

AVA GEYER received her BA from Princeton University in 2015 and MFA in playwriting from UC San Diego in 2019. Geyer is currently the Shank Resident Playwright at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, a member of EST/Youngblood, and under commission by La Jolla Playhouse. Her play Monster was a finalist for the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. She was a finalist for the 2019/2020 Jerome Fellowship and semi-finalist for the Ingram New Works Lab. Her play Fruit Snacks appeared in Williamsburg, Brooklyn as part of the Hopeful Decade event celebrating new work by female playwrights. Past plays include SERE (Wagner New Play Festival 2018) and Baby Teeth (WNPF '17).

PHILLIP HOWZE is a theater maker whose work includes Self Portraits (BRIC-Arts Media) and Frontieres Sans Frontieres (Bushwick Starr). He is currently a Lucas Artist Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center and a Resident Writer at Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3. He was recently named the Lecturer in Playwriting at Harvard University’s new Theater, Dance & Media program.

Meet the 2019 Visionary Playwrights:

Our New Play Development series invites a director, playwright, and cast to Aspen, New York, or Palm Beach, where workshops of a new play-in-progress culminate in a reading for the community and/or industry. In 2015 Theater Masters additionally launched a partnership with the O'Neill Playwrights Center for them to offer a residency to a Theater Masters playwright in the Fall. Plays and musicals developed have received a 1st Place in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the honor of being the critics choice as one of the 10 best plays of the year, Off-Broadway productions and a production at the Berkshire Theater Festival.

Talkabouts

As part of Theater Masters' education for audiences, our Talkabout programs feature world-renowned artists in a series of lectures and theatrical readings on a variety of topics. Past Talkabouts have included director Richard Digby Day and actress Dana Ivey discussing what theatre's great characters reveal about political ambition; Denver Center Theater's Kent Thompson on what it takes to be an artistic director; and Cheers' star Shelley Long on mastering stage, film, and television.

Theater Masters Presents

Theater Masters presents distinguished professional productions for Aspen/Roaring Fork audiences. These popular events have included Gareth Armstrong's Shylock, Frank Barrie's Playing Shakespeare, and the provocative plays Dearborn Heights and Open Admissions.

Our School Outreach program uses a Theater Masters production as a springboard to bring arts education to the high schools in the Roaring Fork Valley. A study guide is produced for students and teachers. The Theatre professionals visit classrooms to discuss the play Theater Masters is presenting, with a focus on how the themes relate to the students' studies and their own lives. This is followed by a trip to the theater where the students see the play for themselves and deepen their discussion.