A collection of
four new works.
One Actor
One Location
40 Minutes Or Less
The "Playwright Initiative: Solo Works" is the first TTC commissioning series involving the development of new films, each starring one Actor and highlighting one location in Portland.
Commissions began in June of 2020.
Learn About the PI:SW Playwrights
Claire Willett
The Broken Heart Spread
World Premier July 23 - August 22, 2021
Claire Willett is a Portland native, playwright, novelist, former Catholic youth minister, and nonprofit grantwriter. She was the 2011 Oregon Literary Fellow for Drama, has received creative project grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and the Oregon Arts Commission, was a founding artist of Portland's Fertile Ground Festival of New Work (for which she wrote five plays and two librettos), and spent six years as a company member of the award-winning Portland-based writers' collective Playwrights West. Her play Dear Galileo was produced in Portland in 2015 by Playwrights West and CoHo Productions and has been developed at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture and the Lark Play Development Center (New York, NY), Pasadena Playhouse (Pasadena, CA), Enroot Theatre Company (Seattle, WA) and Artists Repertory Theatre (Portland, OR). Her other plays include Red Sky at Morning, produced in 2018 by Southwest Stageworks at Wilson High School in partnership with Playwrights West; The Demons Down Under the Sea, a queer retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” produced in 2014 by Shaking-the-Tree in partnership with Playwrights West as part of a collection of world premiere Poe adaptations titled The Masque of the Red Death; the Scottish folk musical Carter Hall (with Nashville songwriter Sarah Hart); and the chamber opera The Witch of the Iron Wood (with composer Evan Lewis), among others. Her first novel, The Rewind Files, a feminist time travel adventure about Watergate, was released in September 2015 by Retrofit (now Axiomatic Publishing) in Los Angeles, with two sequels currently in process. She has a B.A. in Theatre from Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA), is a graduate of the Paul A. Kaplan Theatre Management Program at Manhattan Theatre Club (New York, NY), and resides in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. In her free time, she yells about politics, feminism and Star Trek on Twitter. She was also co-host of the Meta Station podcast, analyzing and interviewing cast and crew for speculative fiction shows like The 100, Good Omens, Russian Doll, and His Dark Materials. She also periodically writes for Broadly Magazine about feminism and pop culture.
Yussef El Guindi
The Cut-Up
World Premier January 30 - February 28, 2023
Yussef El Guindi was born in Egypt, raised in London and now based in Seattle, his work frequently examines the collision of ethnicities, cultures and politics that face Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans. El Guindi holds an MFA in playwriting from Carnegie Mellon University, and has worked as a playwright at Silk Road Rising; literary manager for Golden Thread Productions; and playwright-in-residence at Duke University. He is the recipient of many honors, including the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award and the 2010 Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award. El Guindi's most recent productions include People of the Book at ACT in Seattle; Language Rooms (Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award) at Pony World Theatre in Seattle, and Broken Nose Theatre in Chicago; Hostages at Radial Theater Project in Seattle; The Talented Ones at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland (Santa Barbara Independent Indy Awards); Threesome at Portland Center Stage, ACT, and at 59E59 (winner of a Portland Drammy for Best Original Script); Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World (winner of the Steinberg/American Theater Critics Association's New Play Award in 2012 and the 2011 Gregory Award) also at ACT, Center Repertory Company (Walnut Creek, CA), and at Mosaic Theater Company (DC). Other productions: Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat was produced by Silk Road Rising and won the M. Elizabeth Osborn award. His play Back of the Throat (winner of L.A. Weekly's Excellence in Playwriting Award for 2006), Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World, Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda and Karima’s City have been published by Dramatists Play Service. Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, Collaborator, Threesome, The Talented Ones and Hostages have been published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc. In January, 2019, Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama published Selected Works by Yussef El Guindi. Currently a Core Company playwright member at ACT in Seattle, and a Resident Artist at Golden Thread Productions.
DeLanna Studi
Capax Infiniti
World Premier September 10 - October 9, 2021
DeLanna Studi, proud citizen of the Cherokee Nation, has over 25 years of experience as a performer, storyteller, educator, facilitator, advocate, and activist. Her theater credits include the First National Broadway Tour of Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play August: Osage County, Off-Broadway’s Gloria: A Life at the Daryl Roth Theatre, Informed Consent at the Duke Theater on 42nd Street, and Regional Theaters (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, Cornerstone, and Indiana Repertory Theater). Studi originated roles in over 18 world premieres, including 14 Native productions. A pivotal moment in her career was writing and performing And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears, based on retracing her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears with her father. And So We Walked has been produced throughout the country, and was the first American play chosen for the Journees Theatricales de Carthage in Tunisia, Africa. In film and television, Studi can be seen in the Peabody Award winning Edge of America, Hallmark’s Dreamkeeper, Goliath, Shameless, and General Hospital. She is a recipient of the Butcher Scholar Award, Mapfund Grant, and Cherokee Preservation Grant. Studi has been a part of residencies and workshops at various universities and organizations, including the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, Brown University/Trinity Repertory Theater, Dartmouth College/Hopkins Center, University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Arizona State University, Gonzaga University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Since 2007, she has served as the chair of the SAG-AFTRA National Native Americans Committee.
Emily Gregory
Improvements
Private Screening March 2023
Emily Gregory is a theatre-maker, writer, and dramaturg. She is co-founder of String House, a new works laboratory based in Portland, Oregon, dedicated to home-grown, innovative works of live performance. Favorite writing credits include Waxwing, produced for Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival (2012); The Undertaking, conceived by Jessica Wallenfels with text by Emily Gregory, co-produced by Many Hats Collaboration and Northwest Piano Trio for Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival (2018); Toska, presented as part of the BERG Festival of New Writing at SLAM! King’s Cross, London (2017); ...And the Great Refraction!, an ensemble-devised play and finalist for a Portland Drammy Award for Best Devised Work (2014). She holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Lewis & Clark College and an MA in Writing For Performance and Dramaturgy from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Current Directors and Actors for The Playwright Initiative: Solo Works
Top Row: May Adrales (Director, The Cut-Up) / Brian Thomas Abraham (Actor, The Cut-Up) / Jen Rowe (Director, Capax Infiniti) / Brandon Woolley (Director, The Broken Heart Spread)
Bottom Row: DeLanna Studi (Actor, The Broken Heart Spread) / Laura Faye Smith (Actor, Capax Inifiniti) / Erica Terpening-Romeo (Director, Home Improvement) / Julia Morizawa (Actor, Home Improvement)