As part of the Out Loud series, Ars Nova presents a free reading of FRATERNITY on October 5. FRATERNITY is written by Samuel Brett Williams and directed by Sam Gold. The cast includes J. Alex Brinson, Adam Driver, Betty Gilpin, Peter Scanavino and Tobias Segal.
In FRATERNITY, Mark and Chad were dorks in high school. As college freshmen, they see Sigma Alpha Sigma as the path to a new life. Now they're just trying to survive rush with some semblance of dignity intact. A play about manhood, townies, fraternities, and just how far young men will go to fit in.
Samuel Brett Williams hails from Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he was raised in a strict Southern Baptist environment. He received his BA in English and Political Science from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and his MFA in Playwriting from Rutgers University, where he studied under Lee Blessing. Brett's plays have been developed at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights' Conference, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Lark Play Development Center, Naked Angels, Yale University, and P73 Productions. His plays have been produced at Cherry Lane Theatre, Ars Nova, Stageworks/Hudson, Mile Square Theatre, the D.C. Arts Center, and New Orleans Theatre Experiment. Brett is published in Best New American Plays 2004-2005, and he recently received the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award and a National New Play Network commission to adapt the book of Revelation into a play. He teaches Basic Composition, Expository Writing, and Playwriting for Rutgers University.
Sam Gold At Ars Nova: Nick Jones and Raja Azar's Jollyship the Whiz-Bang. Sam is currently directing Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons. Other recent credits include: Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children and Betty Shamieh's The Black Eyed (New York Theater Workshop), Noah Haidle's Rag and Bone (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), Sam Forman's The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall (Stage 13), Sam Mark's The Joke (Studio Dante), Colin McKenna's The Secret Agenda of Trees (Cherry Lane), Rogelio Martinez's Fizz (The Ohio Theater), Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (NYU Grad), Anne Carson's translation of Sohocles' Electra (Williams
College). At Juilliard (Guest Director): Beau Willimon's Farragut North and War Story, Sam Hunter's I Am Montana, Marlowe's Edward II, Shakespeare?s Twelfth Night, Lanford Wilson's Book of Days, Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, and Suzan-Lori Parks' In the Blood. Sam has developed work at American Conservatory Theater, Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, Manhattan Class Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Marin Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, The Sundance Theater Lab, and The Vineyard Theater. He is a recipient of a Princess Grace Award, a Theater Hall of Fame Fellowship, and is a Wooster Group Associate Artist, a Drama League Directing Fellow, and a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect.
