JONATHON WARD - Hill and Holler (Summerfest 2019), “Where Wine Flows Like Blood” (New Circle Theatre Company reading 2019), “Journey Down the Rhine” (Chelsea Rep LAB e-Merging One-Act Festival 2020), “Acorn in the Dark” (NCTC 7/7, 2019), The Beautiful (FringeNYC 2018), “A Playwright’s Dream” (Birdhouse Edge Fest 2018, Manhattan Rep 2018, Barrow Group reading, Lucky Jack’s Plays & Pizza), “I M = 2 U” (#metoo Plays, Barrow Group reading, Plays & Pizza), “What-If Cliff” (Manhattan Rep, Secret Theatre, Little Funky Theatre Spectrum 2017), “Selfie Satisfied” (Northport Readers Theatre 2017, Open Eye Theater Reading 2016), “Garden of Delusions” (Plays & Pizza Reading 2017), The Theatre Made in Paradise (FringeNYC Festival 2016, published by Indie Theater Now), “Kain’s Curse” (Secret Theatre Act One: One Acts NYC 2017, Manhattan Repertory Theatre NYC 2017, Itinerant Theatre Louisiana 2017, William Inge Festival New Play Lab 2016), “The Artist of the Beautiful” adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne story (Metropolitan Playhouse 2016), “Life Passing By” (Manhattan Rep 2017, Lama Theatre at Dixon Place Reading 2015), Dexter and Lewellyn (Barter Theater Appalachian Festival Reading 2015), “Room to Roam” (InspiraTO 2015 Toronto), “B’Hoys Do Macbeth” (Metropolitan Playhouse NYC 2015, published 2016 Applause Books Best Short Plays of 2014-15), An Island Dream (currently developing in Barrow Group Advanced Playwriting, Commission 2015 NYSCA Huntington Arts Council), Shakespeare in America (accepted FringeNYC Festival 2015), “Color in Black and White” (Finalist in IATI reading series selection), Memorial Night (NYSCA Individual Artist Commission presented at Open Eye Theater 2014, reading at Next Series at James Fenimore Cooper Art Museum, 2017), “Hip and Lip Get a Grip” (10by10 in Raleigh, Semi-finalist 2015), Murderous Caduceus (currently in development at Pulse Ensemble Theatre Playwrights Lab, TACT Development 2015), “Pension Check” and “Man of Zoo” (Riant Theatre), Atalanta, Wolf!, Minotaur, The Little Lame Prince, and Raksha’s Child (Abrons Arts Center and Great Small Works), Little Love Child, “Desperate Flippancies,” Reverence and Romance, and Damnation of Theron Ware, (Community Free Theater NYSCA grants). Associate Member of New Circle Theatre Company, Member of Pulse Ensemble Theatre Playwrights Lab, Protagonists Union, and studied with Arlene Hutton at Barrow Group, Julie McKee at HB Studio and Jeremy Kareken at The Acting Studio. Artist-in-Residence at Catskills Center Platte Clove cabin 2015. Retired Dept. Admin. from the NYU Graduate Acting Program 2014.
Plays
At sea in a storm in 1619, Rebecca Stanford, the wife of an abusive Puritan leader, discovers an actor, Nathan Field, on board who she knew in London as a girl. He is sailing to the new world disguised as a Pilgrim to start a theatre in Jamestown after the Globe Theatre didn’t hire him to replace Burbage. Rebecca’s husband, the Puritan leader, finds the copy of The Tempest they are reading. Believing the storm is conjured by the actor using spells from the play, he accuses them of being witches and threatens to denounce them. In the storm, Rebecca is washed overboard, and floats ashore on Cape Cod where her husband has left her actor friend and Stephano, her servant from Africa, to force them to confess that they are conjurers. Hiding in the woods, Rebecca is befriended by a woman from a Wampanoag village and together they gain the freedom of Rebecca’s friends and the Wampanoag’s husband. Nathan, Stephano and Rebecca are invited to stay in the Native village for the Winter, where they plan to start their Paradise Theatre and do their day jobs planting corn and digging out canoes.
Lewellyn moved back to teach, settle down and take care of her parents. Dexter, who has worked in the local factory since high school, believes he can win her back if he disentangles himself from his past. However Christopher, a freelance videographer from the city, likes Lewellyn, and Skip, the manager of the local factory, is trying to get it moved to Mexico. They are all chasing dreams in a small town where the values of family and community have been corroded by economic decline, and they are all forced to go beyond their dreams and face a reality they didn't choose.
The Damnation of Theron Ware (published in England as Illumination) is a classic American novel written by Harold Frederic in 1896. The book and my adaptation are a tragi-comedy depicting the rise and fall of a minister in the Gilded Age. Theron preaches in a small town where he falls in love with a well-to-do young woman, who is worldly and free-thinking. He leaves his wife to follow her to New York City, where she jilts him. He ends up living on the streets in the Bowery until he is found by his wife and Sister Soulsby, who runs a mission. He accepts Soulsby's help and is reunited with his wife, but he doesn't return to preaching. Sister Soulsby sees he is not capable of being a sincere believer and she gets him a job selling real estate Out West so he can, at the very least, support his wife and family.
The play takes place in 2008 on Daniel Hale’s dairy farm near the Catskills along the Delaware River and by a front-lawn memorial for his son Marcellus, who was killed in Iraq. On Memorial Day, as his family and friends gather to remember his son, Daniel lets his wife know he’s going to lease the mineral rights of his 600-acre dairy farm to a gas company. The farm is too expensive to operate and more work than he can handle. Moreover he wants to remake the farm the way his son would have wanted, and be released from the guilt he feels for driving his son away from home. His wife, daughter, and son-in-law want to keep the farm going in memory of Marc, and they confront him and the landman, who offers a very favorable lease. The landman, who knew Marc in the Army, promised to take care of his father and mother if anything happened to him, but realizes that by leasing the natural gas rights, he will destroy his friend’s family. In the middle of the night, angry that his friend has given him a task that seems impossible, and knowing that the barn is falling down and can’t be rebuilt without the money from the lease or fire insurance, he sets the barn on fire. Daniel, awakened after drinking heavily Memorial Night, is convinced that Marc has returned and set the fire and imagines that he sees and hears Marc in the flames. He is taken to the hospital with a stroke and dies. At the family memorial for Daniel, they remember what made the farm important to him as a young man and how he loved the land and cultivated it for its own sake and know that that is what Marc would have wanted as well.