The Huntington Theatre Company has announced its choices for the 2006 Huntington Playwriting Fellows program, which provides a supportive, structured environment for local theatre artists to explore and talk about their writing, while providing significant access to the company's distinguished artistic staff.

Lydia Diamond and Rebekah Maggor from Cambridge, and Somerville residents John Shea and Kate Snodgrass comprise the current class of Fellows. This is the second group to go through the program, which began in 2004 as a Huntington initiative to nurture and develop new local playwrights.

"The Fellows program is a key part of the Huntington's larger mission to support and develop local theatre artists," says Huntington Literary Manager Ilana Brownstein, who directs the program. "The first group of playwrights included artists of whom we were already aware, but this year we looked deeper to find artists whose work was not as well known here," she says.

While the new Fellows receive formal commissions from the Huntington's Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays, Brownstein says the program is meant primarily to encourage the development of each writer as "a whole artist," rather than as an incentive to produce specific work.

The group will meet together with Brownstein twice monthly for one year to discuss creative ideas and receive critical input on their works. In the second year, they have the option to remain with the program and receive individual support focused on specific theatrical pieces they are developing.

Chicago-to-Boston transplant Lydia Diamond is an established playwright and a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow at Harvard University. Two of her plays, "Voyeurs de Venus" and "Stick Fly," will premiere this spring in Chicago, and she's currently working on a new commission from Steppenwolf Theatre Company. "Voyeurs" is scheduled to be part of the Huntington's 2006 Breaking Ground Festival in April.

Rebekah Maggor's play "Two Days at Home, Three Days in Prison" was featured in the Huntington's 2005 Breaking Ground Festival and had a workshop production last December in London, where it will be produced next season. Her one-woman show, "Shakespeare's Women," recently finished an acclaimed run in Cambridge.

Somerville native John Shea's play "Erin Go Bragh-less" was first developed at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference under the direction of Daniel Goldstein, who helmed the Huntington's "Falsettos" and "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Shea recently finished the draft of a musical, as well as a new play, "The Painter."

Kate Snodgrass is artistic director of Boston Playwrights Theatre, where she has spent more than 15 years guiding playwrights of the future. Her play, "The Glider," debuted there in 2004; this month it receives a public reading at the New Jersey Repertory Theatre.

The 2004 inaugural group of Huntington Playwriting Fellows included Melinda Lopez, John Kuntz, Sinan Unel and Ronan Noone, all of whom have had significant local and national successes after participating in the program.

-- OnStage Boston

02/11/06

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