Press Release: Love Brothers Serenade by Jacqueline E. Lawton selected as 2013 O'Neill Conference Semifinalist
Love Brothers Serenade by Jacqueline E. Lawton was selected as a 2013 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist.
Love Brothers Serenade is a hiphop infused drama that follows Reynaldo and Ricardo as they struggle for survival and fight to forge their own identities in DC's inner city ghettos. As these young men come of age, they find comfort, security, and family in the street gangs, drug deals, and violence that surrounds them. Adapted from Giuseppe Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, this play investigates the honor code, loyalty, and rites of passage at the heart of this volatile community. Love Brothers Serenade reveals that the bond of brotherhood has just as much strength to destroy as it does to unite.
Love Brothers Serenade received a new play development workshop and reading at Howard University (November 2011) and at the Kennedy Center's Page-to Stage Festival (September 2011) under the auspices of theHegira Theatre Company.
Love Brothers Serenade is a hiphop infused drama that follows Reynaldo and Ricardo as they struggle for survival and fight to forge their own identities in DC's inner city ghettos. As these young men come of age, they find comfort, security, and family in the street gangs, drug deals, and violence that surrounds them. Adapted from Giuseppe Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, this play investigates the honor code, loyalty, and rites of passage at the heart of this volatile community. Love Brothers Serenade reveals that the bond of brotherhood has just as much strength to destroy as it does to unite.
Love Brothers Serenade received a new play development workshop and reading at Howard University (November 2011) and at the Kennedy Center's Page-to Stage Festival (September 2011) under the auspices of theHegira Theatre Company.
Jacqueline E. Lawton was named one of 30 of the nation's leading black playwrights by Arena Stage’s American Voices New Play Institute. Her plays include: Anna K; Blood-bound and Tongue-tied; Deep Belly Beautiful;The Devil’s Sweet Water; The Hampton Years; Ira Aldridge: the African Roscius; Lions of Industry, Mothers of Invention; Love Brothers Serenade (2013 semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference), Mad Breed, and Our Man Beverly Snow. Lawton’s work has been developed and presented at the following venues: Active Cultures, Classical Theater of Harlem, Folger Shakespeare Library, theHegira, Howard University, Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival, Rorschach Theater Company, Savannah Black Heritage Festival (Armstrong Atlantic State University), Shakespeare Theatre Company, Source Theatre Festival, Theater J, and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. She is published in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project (University of Texas Press). Ms. Lawton received her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She participated in the Kennedy Center’s Playwrights’ Intensive (2002) and World Interplay (2003). She is a 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color award recipient and a National New Play Network (NNPN) Playwright Alumna. She has been recognized as a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference and the Playwright's Center PlayLabs, and as a SheWrites Festival finalist. A member of Arena Stage's Playwright's Arena and the Dramatist Guild of America, Ms. Lawton currently resides in Washington, D.C.
The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center is the country’s preeminent organization dedicated to the development of new works and new voices for the American theater. The O’Neill has been home to more than 1,000 new works for the stage and 2,500 emerging artists. Scores of projects developed at the O’Neill have gone on to full production at other theaters around the world, including Broadway, Off-Broadway, and major regional theaters.
Founded in 1964 in honor of Eugene O’Neill, four-time Pulitzer Prize Winner and the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, it is the recipient of two Tony Awards, in 2010 for Regional Theatre, and in 1979 for Theatrical Excellence. In addition to its Tony recognition, the O’Neill has received the National Opera Award, the Jujamcyn Award for Theatre Excellence, and the Arts and Business Council Encore Award.
Founded in 1964 in honor of Eugene O’Neill, four-time Pulitzer Prize Winner and the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, it is the recipient of two Tony Awards, in 2010 for Regional Theatre, and in 1979 for Theatrical Excellence. In addition to its Tony recognition, the O’Neill has received the National Opera Award, the Jujamcyn Award for Theatre Excellence, and the Arts and Business Council Encore Award.