Electric Pear Productions

Synesthesia: n. 1. A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.

Synesthesia is a yearly festival that showcases a unique fusion of art forms in one cohesive two-hour evening performance. It is the culmination of months of work by musicians, sculptors, actors, writers, directors, photographers, dancers and a multitude of other artists who come together to engage each other in a cross-genre conversation.

Synesthesia is an ambitious performance piece that takes an unforgettable look at how artists influence, inspire and steal from each other. It's a peak inside the dirty work of creation through the schoolyard game of telephone...with art.

And it all started with a fortune cookie.

An artist chooses a cookie and uses the enclosed fortune to inspire a piece of work from their genre. After a few days of furious work, the artist passes his/her creation off to the next artist, who then creates a piece of work inspired by that which was shown to them by the first artist. The second artist then passes his/her work to the next person, and so on...and so on, through a series of 10 to 12 artists.

Each of these “hand-offs” is filmed by a documentary filmmaker who captures the artists’ responses in these first moments of inspiration. This five-month-long game of artistic telephone is then presented through live performance and video, documenting the artists’ journeys...

Synesthesia brings the schoolyard into the gallery. It is live performance, documentary, artistic call and response, and a completely original look at the creative process.

The Outlet is a collaborative workshop environment in which two playwrights develop works-in-progress with a consistent team of actors over an intensive six week period. Each week, both playwrights bring in revisions of pages or entirely new scenes at their discretion. Pages are read aloud and followed by a feedback session. Because the same actors participate each week, they gain an intricate knowledge of the play and its movement, and their feedback becomes invaluable. The workshop is facilitated by Electric PearÕs Creative Development Director, Laura Esti Miller.

Participating Playwrights

Spring 2009

• Callie Kimball
• Molly Rice

Fall 2008

• Justin Boyd
• Sarah Hammond

Fall 2007

• Andy Bragen
• Winter Miller with Josh Hecht (director) and Lance Horne (composer/lyricist)

Spring 2007

• Daria Polatin
• Joe Waechtner

Fall 2006

• Ashlin Halfnight
• Megan Mostyn-Brown

Submission Guidelines

To be considered for inclusion in the next session of The Outlet, playwrights must submit a project proposal, resume, and 10-20 page writing sample to Laura Esti Miller: laura@electricpear.org. While electronic submissions are preferred, you can also send to:

Electric Pear Productions
PO Box 281
New York NY 10028

Deadlines

For inclusion in the spring session, please submit on or before January 1st.

For inclusion in the fall session, please submit on or before July 1st.

Playwright Bios

Justin Boyd: Justin's plays have been produced and presented in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, South Carolina and Ohio. They include Copy Man, Foreign Object, Ultravision and Swim, among others. In addition to writing plays, Justin is co-theater editor of the arts/culture/politics magazine The Brooklyn Rail, and a 2008 Affiliated Writer with American Theatre magazine. He received his MFA in playwriting from Ohio University.

Megan Mostyn-Brown: Plays include: Girl, The Secret Lives of Losers, 4th of July, Going After Alice and The Hawk Has No Home. Her plays have been read and performed at: The Actor's Theater of Louisville, The Women's Project and Productions, LAByrinth Theater Company, The Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis Playwrights Center, The Public Theater, The Warehouse Theater, Barrington Stage Company, The NYC International Fringe Festival, The Tribeca Theater Festival and The HBO Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, CO. She won an honorable mention for The Secret Lives of Losers in the 2004 Herrick Theater Foundation New Play Competition. Megan is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company and The Women's Project Playwrights LAB. She has been a guest playwright at New River Dramatists and the 24/7 Lab. Megan is a graduate of Northwestern University.

Molly Rice:Molly's plays have been developed and produced in Austin, Dallas, Providence, Ithaca, Montana, Delaware, Philadelphia, Aspen, Baltimore and New York (Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, Clubbed Thumb, Atlantic Theater, Women's Project, Mint Theater, Drilling Company, New Georges). Residencies include the Yale/ P73 Residency (2008), Missoula Colony (2007), Voice and Vision (2006), and Hangar Theater (2005); awards include the Weston Award for Graduate Playwriting (Brown University); Women's International Playwriting Festival (Perishable Theater); and nominations for the Kesselring Fellowship, Cherry Lane Mentor Project, and New York Innovative Theater Award (Outstanding Original Short Play). Recent projects: book, lyrics and music (with Ray Rizzo) for the new musical CANARY, developed by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and Playwrights Horizons, and THE SAINTS TOUR, a site-specific play recently produced in Louisville with local musicians and the Louisville Salvation Army. She is a member of the America-In-Play Commission/Workshop, Electric Pear's Outlet development program and P73's writing lab Interstate 73. Heinemann Press, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Press, Salvage Vanguard Press, Perishable Press, Austin Script Works Press, and DEVICE have published her plays, and her articles have appeared in the Austin Chronicle, Kenyon Review Online and American Theater Magazine. Upcoming projects include a collaboration with director Rachel Chavkin and composer Stephanie Johnstone inspired by the work of James Agee, and a musical play about bullfighting. She has taught at Brown University, the Brown/ Trinity MFA Acting Program, the University of Rhode Island, and Kenyon College, where she stood in for Wendy MacLeod last year. She currently teaches Site-Specific Playwriting in an old mansion at Brown University, and at Marymount Manhattan College. Molly was a Lucille Lortel fellow at Brown (2004-2006), where she earned her MFA in Playwriting.

Electric Pear is accepting submissions of original plays and musicals for future production in New York City.

Submissions should include:

• Resume
• Synopsis
• First 10-20 pages of dialogue

Please send to Julie Haverkate, Literary Director, at literary@electricpear.org in PDF or Word format.

Electric Pear is in the process of developing an innovative and accomplished company of actors who will collaborate, create, and work within the structure of the company's growing family of artists.

Headshots, along with covering letter, may be submitted to Electric Pear Productions at PO BOX 281, NY NY 10028

Thank you to everyone who came out for the first Trivia Night on January 12th! Congratulations to all of the winners.

A special thanks to Crema Restaurante and Pasita for their generous donations!

Electric Pear spent July and August in Budapest working with Hungarian artists on a new bi-lingual play entitled Cronotopia. Ashlin Halfnight, Emily Long and Melanie Sylvan collaborated with actors Yvette Feuer, Andy Hefler, and Otto Pecs; and musician Samu Gryllus during an intensive three week workshop period. Cronotopia, a play in Hungarian and English, weaves the myth of Cronos with the modern tale of an American real estate developer in Budapest.

A "trailer" of the Cronotopia project was created by the group and performed at the Sziget Festival in Budapest, one of Europe's largest summer music and arts festivals.  The 15 minute piece was performed on August 9th and 11th at the "Open" Stage to a full tent of festival goers who took a break from the international music acts (this year's line-up included The Killers, Cesaria Evora, Nine Inch Nails, and Sinead O'Conner) to see some experimental theatre!

We send our sincere thanks to Yvette, Andy, Otto, Samu, and Kinga Keszthelyi from the National Theatre, who so generously gave their time, energy and passion to this project.  We plan on continuing to develop the piece with hopes of presenting it in New York and at theatre festivals in Europe.

Partial funding for this trip was provided by a grant from the Theatre Communications Group. Thanks to the Merlin International Theatre and the National Theatre of Hungary for hosting us during this development process.  And a special thanks to the Hungarian Cultural Center in New York.

The Live Wire is a low tech performance series that presents the best emerging musicians and songwriters from across the country – and across the world – in an intimate setting. If you’re tired of bad bands, overproduced junk, and astronomical ticket prices, the Live Wire is the place to be.

The Live Wire premiered with Craig Cardiff, one of Canada’s best singer/songwriters teaming up with New York-based Leah Seigel for a wonderful night of new lyric-driven music.

For more details, click here.