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Arts & Culture Incubator

The Playhouse's Arts and Culture Incubator seeks to deepen roots in the community by providing space and resources to our artistic and cultural peers. Launched in the spring of 2023, the program uses our new state-of-the-art facility to provide resources to a selected group of local artists and cultural organizations to help elevate their work. Members of the Arts and Culture Incubator have access to Playhouse spaces at no cost for classes, rehearsals, creative work, networking, collaboration with their peers, and public and private events. The Playhouse also provides professional development services crafted to meet each of their unique needs.

The Arts and Culture Incubator at Playhouse in the Park provides meeting, rehearsal and performance space to a broad cohort of local organizations. The content of their presentations represents the views and opinions of the partner organization and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Playhouse in the Park.


UPCOMING EVENTS


Urban Native Collective presents

LIFE ON THE MARGINS LIVE PODCAST RECORDING

  • Hosted by Briana Mazzolini-Blanchard & Homer Shadowheart
  • Monday, December 9 at 7 p.m.
  • at Cincinnati Playhouse in The Park

Check back for information on the evening’s topic.
Free with no registration required

The Ghostlight Stage Company presents

Model Auditions for Cabaret on the Runway

  • Monday, December 9 from 6 -9 p.m.
  • at Cincinnati Playhouse in The Park

Details on on audition registration coming soon.


2024-25 PARTNERS


RESIDENT ARTISTS

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Queen City Flash is Director Bridget Leak and Playwright/Composer Trey Tatum. They are committed to:

  • Creating new plays — critically acclaimed original works, emboldened by experiments with form, augmented with original music and deepened by collaborations with neighbors and partners.

  • Money in people’s pockets, not on the walls — where a minimum of 51 percent of the budget goes to paying local artists, not sustaining venues or overhead.

  • Open access — creating experiences that an entire family can afford, enjoyed in transformed and relaxed environments.

Queen City Flash: Bold Stories, Irreverently Told.

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An award-winning playwright and AEA actor, Maggie Lou tells epic stories about epic women. After growing up in rural southwest Oklahoma, she attended William Jewell College, Oxford University, and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Her work has been seen off-Broadway in New York, as well as Chicago and Los Angeles, and on Tony Award-winning stages. She’s won the Theater J Patty Abramson Jewish Play Prize with Theatre J in DC and the Notre Dame College New Play Festival and was selected for Utah Shakespeare Festival’s Words Cubed Program and Red Bull Theater’s New Short Play Festival. She’s been a finalist for the Henley Rose Playwrighting Award for Women, Central Florida Community Arts New Play Festival, twice for the Lanford Wilson Festival, a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Road Theater Summer Playwrights Festival, the Garry Marshall Theatre New Works Festival, Dayton Playhouse’s Future Fest, and UP Theater's Renewal Reading Series. Her work has been developed at DePaul University, Human Race Theatre, Inkwell Theatre, Skeleton Rep, and Occasional Drawl Productions and seen at Know Theatre, InBocca Performance, Commonwealth Theatre Center, The Marsh, Eclectic Full Contact Theatre, Idaho Shakespeare, Urban Stages, Theatre Pro Rata, and colleges from coast to coast.

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Isaiah Reaves is an emerging young playwright whose work explores a spectrum of Black and Queer experiences. A native of Cincinnati, he graduated cum laude from Northern Kentucky University in 2020. His plays have been commissioned and staged by Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and many others. Isaiah has received five Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He is also a semi-finalist for the Ucross and The Blank Theatre Future of Playwriting Prize, a 2020 finalist of the Jackie Demaline Regional Collegiate Playwriting Competition, an Iowa Arts Fellow, and a recipient of a Cincinnati CityBeat Critic’s Pick.

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Curtis D. Shepard is an actor, writer and spoken-word artist, as well as the founder of the grassroots support group for dads, D.A.A.M. (Dads Against Angry Moms), which supports moms with more than money and encourages absent dads to be present dads, present dads to be good dads, good dads to be great dads and great dads to reach out and share their experiences and strengths. In August 2022, D.A.A.M.’s first annual Legacy Letters event showcased daughters, mothers and wives sharing through song, poetry and short stories how the legacy of father figures in their lives (and lack thereof) has shaped and influenced them. Curtis has kept busy touring and perfecting his two, one-man shows, UnMasked and Sidewaze Rain, while also co-starring in Greg Stallworth’s stage play Trapped, which premiered at the Indianapolis Fringe Festival in August 2022. His latest collaboration with Greg Stallworth, A Black Father’s Plea, will make its debut at The Indianapolis Onyx Festival in spring 2023. In 2021, his staged reading of Get Off Of Me was performed at the Pacific Northwest Multi Cultural Readers Series & Film Festival. Curtis was a finalist in the 2021 Breath Project with his production, Ronnie and Vince.

 

INCUBATOR PARTNERS

Cincinnati Pride, DuWaup’s Cincinnati Poetry Slam, The Ghostlight Stage Company, Urban Native Collective, and Young Professionals Choral Collective of Cincinnati

 

Cincinnati Pride DuWaup’s Cincinnati Poetry Slam The Ghostlight Stage Company Urban Native Collective Young Professionals Choral Collective of Cincinnati

 


NEW WORK COMMISSIONS
& PLAYREADINGS


Among the more than 80 world premieres produced since the Playhouse’s founding in 1960 are plays that have been commissioned. Since 2006, this work to develop new stories and contribute to the American theatre canon has expanded thanks to the Jerome Fey Endowment for New Plays. The funding provided not only pays a playwright to write a new play, it also allows for the readings, workshops and script development necessary to prepare it for full production.

 


UPCOMING EVENT


THE TREATMENT

  • By Amy Berryman
  • Monday, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m.
  • in the Rosenthal Shelterhouse Theatre. 
  • at Cincinnati Playhouse in The Park

Join us for a reading of a new play from emerging playwright Amy Berryman. Her play Walden premiered on London’s West End and was New York Times Critics’ Pick. The Treatment follows a family through generations in a world where there is a treatment that ends aging. This event is free, but reservations are recommended.

COMMISSIONED PLAYWRIGHTS

Nathan Alan Davis

Nathan Alan Davis 

Website
Theresa Rebeck

Theresa Rebeck

Website
Derek Snow

Derek Snow

 

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