VoxFest 2020: Drive

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Drive
written by Deborah Yarchun
directed by Dina Vovsi
Thursday, July 30 at 7 pm

A VoxFest 2020 Festival performance
performing via Zoom webinar; event password: VoxFest

The 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards for Playwriting winner. Set in a future not far down the road, a community of truckers in a small town in Iowa are forced to shift gears when they lose their jobs to self-driving vehicles. When Gloria becomes the only trucker in town still employed, resentments begin to surface. Tensions escalate as they grapple with a mystery: Haygen, a driver with close ties to all of them, has disappeared. 'Drive' explores what the next stage of automation might mean in a country where individual identity is defined by one's work and we are forced to reevaluate what drives us.

Featuring
J.Stephen Brantley
Abigail Gampel
Carene Rose Mekertichyan '16
Lee Sellars
Nidra Sous La Terre
Andrea Syglowski

Hannah Fairchild, composer
Jacqueline Byrne '22, assistant director/stage directions

About The Performance Format

• This performance will be hosted via Zoom webinar. The zoom link is available here or via the "watch here" icon above. The password is "Voxfest".
• Unlike a regular Zoom meeting, webinar viewers have neither video nor audio feed, so there will be no need to mute yourself or to disable your video. 
• The creative team will be taking questions from the audience following the performance. Attendees can use the "Q&A" feature (located in the bottom toolbar of your Zoom webinar screen) to convey any questions that you may have for the artists.
• Email Theater Dept Administrator Milena Zuccotti with questions or issues concerning viewing this performance 

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM

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Deborah Yarchun is a NYC-based playwright. Her plays have been developed by the Civilians, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The New Harmony Project, Jewish Plays Project's OPEN Festival, The Great Plains Theater Conference, Jewish Ensemble Theater, Martha's Vineyard Playhouse, The Playwrights' Center, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, TheatreSquared's Arkansas New Play Festival, the William Inge Center for the Arts, WordBRIDGE, and Workhouse Theater Company, and produced at places including Amphibian Stage Productions, Fusion Theatre, Theater Master's National MFA Playwrights Festival, EstroGenius Festival, the Minnesota Fringe, the Philadelphia Fringe, The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival, Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater by Young Playwrights Inc., and Williams Street Rep. Deborah's honors include two Jerome Fellowships at The Playwrights' Center, a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, an EST/Sloan Commission, Dartmouth's 2020 Neukom Literary Arts Award for Playwriting, The Kennedy Center's Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, the Kernodle New Play Award, the Richard Maibaum Playwriting Award, and Women in the Arts & Media Coalition's 2019 Collaboration Award. Her play Great White was an Honorable Mention for the Relentless Award. She was recently a playwright-in-residence at the William Inge Center for the Arts and a member of the Civilians' R&D Group. Deborah earned her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. You can read more about her work at DeborahYarchun.com.

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Dina Vovsi is a New York-based director. Recent credits include Sincerity Forever (The Flea), Shady Acres: a homegrown epic (Rutgers/Mason Gross MFA Program), The Agency (Fairleigh Dickinson University), Iphigenia and Other Daughters (Long Island University), First by Faith: The Life of Mary McLeod Bethune (14th Street Y), The Bastard (Dixon Place), and Visiting Hours (TheaterLab). Dina has developed and directed new work with The Civilians, New Georges, Working Theater, The Culture Project's Women Center Stage, The Barn Arts Collective, Pipeline Theatre Company, Fresh Ground Pepper, The Motor Company, Theatre 167, Amios, and FringeNYC. Dina was a Robert Moss Directing Fellow at Playwrights Horizons, a member of The Civilians' R&D Group, a resident director at The Flea, the recipient of an SDC Foundation Observership at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, a member of the Lincoln Center Directors' Lab, and a Mass MoCA Assets for Artists Grantee. She is a New Georges Affiliated Artist and the recipient of a Working Theater 5 Boroughs 1 City Initiative commission, currently developing a play about the Russian and Pakistani immigrant communities in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. As an assistant director, Dina has worked on new plays, classics, and opera on Broadway, off-Broadway, and regionally. www.dinavovsi.com
 

CLICK HERE to view the complete VoxFest 2020 schedule of July performances.