New Plays from A.C.T.’s Young Conservatory Volume III

Jim Grimsley is a playwright and novelist. Jim's first novel, Winter Birds, was published by Algonquin Books in 1994. The novel won the 1995 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and received a special citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Jim's second novel, Dream Boy, won the American Library Association GLBT Award for Literature (the Stonewall Prize) and was a Lambda finalist. His third novel, My Drowning, was released in January 1997 by Algonquin Books and for it he was named Georgia Author of the Year. His fourth novel, Comfort & Joy, was published in October, 1999, and was a Lambda finalist. A fantasy novel, Kirith Kirin, was published by Meisha Merlin Books in 2000 and won the Lambda in the science fiction and horror category for 2001. He has published short fiction in The Ontario Review and Asimov's and his stories have been anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 16, Men on Men 4, Men on Men 2000, and Best Stories From the South, year 2001. Boulevard, published in 2002 by Algonquin, was again a Lambda finalist in the literature category and won Jim his second Georgia Author of the Year designation. His novel, The Ordinary, a science fiction novel published in 2004 by Tor Books, won a Lambda in the science fiction/fantasy/horror category. His latest two novels are The Last Green Tree, published by Tor Books of New York in 2006, and Forgiveness, published by the University of Texas Press as part of the inaugural James. A. Michener Fiction Series. His new story collection, Jesus Is Sending You This Message, was published in September 2008 by Alyson Books. Jim received the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Writers Award for his body of work in 1997, and has twice been a finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2003 – 2004). In 2005 he won an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He served as playwright in residence at About Face Theatre in Chicago under a National Theatre Artist Residency Program grant from Theatre Communications Group/Pew Charitable Trust (1999-2004); he has been playwright in residence at 7Stages Theatre in Atlanta since 1986. In 1987 he received the George Oppenheimer/Newsday Award for Best New American Playwright for MR. UNIVERSE. His collection of plays, MR. UNIVERSE AND OTHER PLAYS, was published by Algonquin Books in 1998, and was a Lambda finalist for drama. His books have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, and Japanese.

Lynne Alvarez (1947 – 2009) arrived in New York in 1977 planning to be a hot-shot poet who burned out brilliantly and died young. In the first matter, she won a CAPS grant for poetry in 1979 and served as Vice President of the board of directors for Poets & Writers for ten years. She did succeed in publishing much poetry, giving many readings and having two books published by Waterfront Press — THE DREAMING MAN (1981) and LIVING WITH NUMBERS (1986). She also became a member of PEN. But in the second matter — she continued to live, did not burn out but turned abruptly to playwriting in 1978. On a whim, Alvarez accompanied a friend to a gathering of Hispanic writers at Miriam Colon's Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. At 31 she had never considered writing a play, but she was now hooked. She wrote two plays under the auspices of this workshop, GRACIELA and THE GUITARRON, which premiered at the St. Clements Theatre in 1983 and won her an NEA fellowship and entry into New Dramatists. It was first published in a TCG anthology ON NEW GROUND in 1986. Alvarez wrote several plays as a New Dramatist — including HIDDEN PARTS (1981), which won a Kesselring Award in 1983 and premiered at Primary Stages in 1987; THE WONDERFUL TOWER OF HUMBERT LAVOIGNET, which won two awards, The Compte de Nouey Award for new plays in 1984 and a FDG/CBS award for best play, and later Best Production at Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, NY in 1985. In 1984 The Actors' Theatre of Louisville commissioned a one-act play which became the full length THIN AIR: TALES FROM A REVOLUTION. THIN AIR premiered at San Diego Repertory Theatre in 1987 and won a Drama League Award and a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1988. Two New York Foundation grants followed in 1994 and 1998, years in which she wrote three plays for ACT's Young Conservatory in San Francisco: THE REINCARNATION OF JAIMIE BROWN, EDDIE MUNDO EDMUNDO and ANALIESE. All three opened there and were variously published in Smith & Kraus anthologies, BEST PLAYS BY WOMEN IN 1994, 1997, and 2001. Volume I of Alvarez's collected plays was published by Smith & Kraus in 2000. The Lincoln Center Institute commissioned Alvarez to adapt …AND NOW MIGUEL, which was produced in their 1995 season. The Repertory Theater of St. Louis also commissioned two children's plays which they produced in 1991 and 1992 — RATS, a musical based on the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and also an adaptation of RIKKI TIKKI TAVI, which was remounted in 2004. Alvarez was often commissioned as a translator of plays and poetry as well. In 1988, she translated Fernando Arrabal's THE DAMSEL AND THE GORILLA, OR THE RED MADONNA for a 1988 production at INTAR. In 1990, she translated and adapted Tirso de Molina's DON JUAN OF SEVILLE for the Classic Stage Company's production in New York City. She translated three plays by the great contemporary Mexican playwright Felipe Santander. These were published as a collection by Smith & Kraus in 2002. Primary Stages produced TWO MARRIAGES: ROMOLA & NIJINSKY Off-Broadway in 2003.