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MCC Daily Tribune

The Sixth Act 2023-2024

As always, The Sixth Act is dedicated to providing meaningful and collaborative co-curricular opportunities for students across MCC, focusing primarily on students studying Theatre, Creative Writing, and English. We welcome all students to get involved with any/all of the below listings, and we welcome participation/feedback from MCC faculty and staff too.

The Sixth Act

Formed in 2004, The Sixth Act provides co-curricular support for the study of drama across disciplines at MCC. To this end, The Sixth Act (1) develops co-curricular events and materials for MCC faculty and students, especially those who might teach or study plays or playwriting, and (2) provides enrichment opportunities to encourage all MCC faculty, students, and staff to see and talk about plays produced at MCC and in the Rochester area. The Sixth Act seeks as its leaders faculty, staff, and students drawn from a variety of academic disciplines and departments. The Sixth Act is supported by MCC’s Creative Arts Committee and School of Humanities and Social Sciences. For more information visit the Sixth Act website or contact Maria Brandt (mbrandt@monroecc.edu).

Bake-Off/24-Hour Play
Saturday, October 21, 7 PM, Forum, R. Thomas Flynn Campus Center

MCC students will meet in The Forum at 7 PM on Friday, October 20, to begin the process of creating a series of short plays from nothing. 24 hours later, those plays will be ready for an audience. Come laugh with us, cry with us, and help us celebrate the magic of co-curricular, interdisciplinary collaboration at its most immediate.

Visiting Playwright, Garrett Zuercher
Thursday, February 29, 2024, 7 p.m., Black Box Theater, Reading and Conversation
Friday, March 1, 2024, 10 a.m., Black Box Theater, Playwriting Workshop
Friday, March 1, 2024, 12 p.m., 8-200, Playwriting Workshop

Garrett Zuercher (he/him) is a profoundly Deaf theater and film artist and award-winning playwright who holds an MFA from Hunter College, class of 2022. Based in New York City, he serves as the founding artistic director of Deaf Broadway, for which he is currently producing an all-Deaf, all-ASL staging of Stephen Sondheim’s Company at Lincoln Center in the summer of 2023, in which he will also star. Recently, he was awarded a residency commission from The Shed to create an original narrative piece about the lives and work of Deaf artists, which will be produced on the mainstage in the summer of 2024. His most recent short film, “Flirting (With Possibilities),” continues to garner honors at film festivals around the world. Dedicated to bringing authentic Deaf voices to the mainstream, he continues to advocate for awareness and representation within the theatre and film industries. For more, please visit Garrett Zuercher's website (garrettzuercher.com).

Seventeenth Annual Sixth Act Student Playwriting Competition
Thursday, May 9, 7 PM, Black Box Theater

This competition encourages MCC students to write plays for an audience, to provide MCC students a competitive venue for their scripts, to offer winning playwrights the opportunity to see their scripts performed as staged readings with an eye towards future play development, and to offer VaPA students the opportunity to participate in the new-play-development process. Three winning playwrights receive cash prizes. One winning playwright also will have his/her play submitted to a nationwide competition. Scripts will be accepted for consideration beginning in September.

2023-2024 Special Projects

The Sixth Act will develop curriculum-support materials and events for VaPA’s 2023-2024 season and for theatre productions in the Rochester community in an effort to encourage faculty across MCC to teach these plays in their individual courses and to enrich this process for all involved.

The Sixth Act also will continue to develop Drama on Demand, now as a Video Library. This popular program now features web-based, filmed versions of VaPA students performing scenes from published plays so these scenes can be used as co-curricular tools across campus.

Finally, The Sixth Act will pilot a special, credit-bearing Honors sequence culminating in student-driven presentations showcased each year during MCC’s Scholars’ Day.

Maria Brandt
The Sixth Act
09/13/2023