Morgan Gould + Matthew Olmos
ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE: THEATER
MORGAN GOULD — I’m originally from Cape Cod, MA. I moved to New York to go to acting school and then quickly realized that the best part of acting class was watching the teacher give notes, and that’s when I thought maybe I should be a director. (Though I also spent time doing costume design for a little while.) I pretty much immediately knew that I was interested in working on new plays, because I value the relationship between the director and the playwright so highly. So after college, I worked for two seasons at the Lark Play Development Center, where I met Matt (see below). After the Lark, I moved into a year long position at Playwrights Horizons as a directing resident and also began working with experimental director/ playwright Young Jean Lee on her adaption of King Lear. When I completed my residency at Playwrights Horizons, I stayed on with Young Jean and I’m now the Associate Artistic Director of her company, Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company. Working with her has shaped me in ways I never thought possible. It has opened my eyes to new methods of collaboration and a fearlessness that has enriched my own work very deeply. My own directing work has been seen at Dixon Place, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Georges, Fordham University, The New York Fringe Festival and more. I’m also a member of New George’s writer/ director lab, an Ensemble Studio Theatre Resident Director, a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab.
MATTHEW PAUL OLMOS — I was born in Montebello, CA, grew up in Southern California, and moved to New York City in August 2001. I am the inaugural recipient of the La MaMa ETC 2012 Emerging Playwright Award (as selected by Sam Shepard), a Sundance Institute Time Warner Storytelling Fellow, a two-time Resident Artist at Mabou Mines/Suite, BBC International Playwriting Top Prize of the Americas winner, Ensemble Studio Theatre lifetime member, and 2012 terraNOVA Groundbreakers playwright. A recent finalist for InterAct Theatre’s 20/20 Commission; semi-finalist for Princess Grace, P73 Fellowship, O’Neill Conference, alternate Van Lier recipient at New Dramatists, and Playwrights of New York (PONY) nominee.
Co-founder and former Artistic Director of woken’glacier theatre company (two time New York Innovative Theater Award nominee), an NEA New Play Development reader, a New York Innovative Awards judge, a member of No Passport’s Hibernating Rattlesnakes with Caridad Svich, and a core staff member of five years at the Lark Play Development Center. I hold an M.F.A. in Playwriting from The Actor’s Studio Drama School, a B.A. in Playwriting from UC Santa Barbara, and was given UCLA’s GOP Award for Graduate Playwriting. I am a regular contributor to The Brooklyn Rail’s In Dialogue series, New York Theatre Review, and am soon-to-be-published in their annual book on downtown theater with an essay on Mabou Mines. My work has been presented and developed by Sundance Theatre Institute, Mabou Mines/Suite, P.S. 122, HERE Arts Center, Intar Theatre, The Working Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, LaMicro, Lark Play Development Center, The Kennedy Center with The Inkwell, and the Gala Theatre in DC, Teatro del Pueblo in Minneapolis, and as well in Spain. I am currently working on an original TV series, and two new works: the drinking of an unhappy people and so go the ghosts of mexico, a new trilogy piece about the U.S./México drug wars. I live in Brooklyn, recently became a PADI certified scuba diver, and am currently learning (slowly) to surf. The world-premiere of i put the fear of méxico in’em will take place in April 2012 at Gala Theater in DC. And a new work will be produced by La MaMa ETC in 2012-13.
Project Description
MONKEY is an absurdist comedy which concerns a privileged Caucasian woman who takes in an urban youth as a means of safekeeping after he commits an impassioned felony. The characters include the Woman From Whitesville, her white butler Winthorp, an aged cholo, Speedy, and his estranged daughter who sparks a love with the urban youth. It takes place in an imagined suburbia just outside of an every’city and is inspired by the film Trading Places. The piece came to me as always I am struck by the disconnect between those’that’have and those’that’do’not. And so, in a ridiculous world, I imagine the two meeting. To perhaps illustrate how far we all are still, and how despite our differences in zip code, lifestyle, and temperament, there is always a need and human curiosity to connect.
LINKS
MAKE A DONATION
BAX serves as a fiscal conduit for Morgan Gould + Matthew Olmos. Please click below to make a direct donation to their project:
