terraNOVA Collective Announces 2012 Groundbreakers Playwrights

terraNOVA Collective announces six new playwrights for the 2012 season of their Groundbreakers Playwrights Group which will include Krista Knight (2011 KCACTF Musical Theater Award for Salamander Leviathan), Jennifer Lane (Harlowe at 3LD), Andrea Lepcio (NEA Outstanding New American Play Award finalist for Looking for the Pony), Matthew Paul Olmos (Princess Grace Award finalist), Crystal Skillman (2010 New York Innovative Theatre Award for The Vigil or The Guided Cradle), and Ken Urban (Summer Play Festival at The Public). Visit www.terranovacollective.org for more information on terraNOVA, Groundbreakers, and the 2012 playwrights.

Groundbreakers is terraNOVA Collective's annual developmental playwrighting lab, in which 6 playwrights receive the unique opportunity to work on a specific project with the goal of creating a completed draft. Each playwright brings in their play 3 times over 18 weeks for a round-table reading with professional actors, receiving feedback from the Groundbreakers playwrights group and special guests, along with the artistic staff of terraNOVA Collective. terraNOVA assembles a diverse group devoted to creating theatrical, original, innovative, socially relevant new work for the stage and welcomes submissions of new plays and solo shows in various stages of development that will benefit from collective feedback and further terraNOVA Collective's artistic mission. Through Groundbreakers, terraNOVA has developed over 80 plays and solo shows. Groundbreakers is made possible through public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Dramatists Guild Fund.

KRISTA KNIGHT's plays have been produced by The Ontological Hysteric Theater, Walden Theatre, Hangar Theatre, Brown University, LiveGirls!, Harvest Theatre, Goshen College, The Attic Theatre, The New Perspective Festival, The Pan Theatre, and The Bus Barn Stage Company among others. Commissions include The Assembly, Livegirls!, The Berkeley Rep Theatre School, and Class Act. Krista has been in Residence at Tofte Lake, New York Mills, WordBRIDGE Playwrights Lab, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Interplay in Australia, UCROSS, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Yaddo, and MacDowell. SALAMANDER LEVIATHAN won the 2011 KCACTF Musical Theater Award from the Kennedy Center. It will be part of ANT FEST at Ars Nova on Halloween and will be developed by the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis in June 2012. 2007 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. 2011-2012 Shank Playwriting Fellow at the Vineyard Theatre. BA: Brown University. MA: Performance Studies from NYU. MFA Playwriting: UC San Diego. www.KristaKnight.com

JENNIFER LANE is a New York City-based playwright and fiction writer from Troy, Michigan. Most recently, her play Harlowe was performed at 3LD Art & Technology Center, and was developed under the mentorship of Sarah Ruhl. Other plays include: Psychomachia(which premiered at Theatre 54, directed by Robin Paterson); The Would-Be Room (which enjoyed two runs last year, one in New York City and one in Chicago); and Does Anyone Know Sarah Paisner? (which premiered at the Gene Frankel Theatre). Several of her short plays were workshopped with Anne Bogart and performed at Ensemble Studio Theatre. When she's not writing, she's probably playing video games, futzing with graphic/web design, or running in Astoria park. MFA: Columbia University; BA: Sarah Lawrence. For more information, please visit http://jennifer-lane.net.

Andrea Lepcio's Looking for the Pony was a finalist for the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award and the NEA Outstanding New American Play Award. It was presented in a "Rolling World Premiere" Off-Broadway at Vital Theatre Company in New York City and Synchronicity Performance Group in Atlanta with subsequent productions at Venus Theatre and Detroit Repertory Theatre. Tunnel Visionwas read by Sarah Paulson and Quincy Tyler Bernstine at the LGBT center and workshopped at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. Room 16(book by Andrea Lepcio, music by Stephen Sislen, lyrics by Stephen Sislen and Ben H. Winters) was presented at the Festival of New Artists at Goodspeed Opera House in January 2010 and Broadway Close Up: Bound for Broadway XI hosted by Liz Callaway. Andrea is the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program Director. M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, Carnegie Mellon University. B.A. Human Ecology, College of the Atlantic.