MCC Daily Tribune

Spring 2022 Co-Curricular Opportunities

Creative Arts and The Sixth Act are offering some fantastic co-curricular options for faculty to consider while finalizing Spring 2022 Course Information Sheets. Details are below. Please contact Maria Brandt at mbrandt@monroecc.edu with any questions.

Visiting Creative Nonfiction Writer, Nadia Owusu
Wednesday, February 16, 12 PM, CNF Workshop
Zoom Link: https://monroecommunity.zoom.us/j/84641175716
Recording: Nadia Owusu - reading from Aftershocks (suny.edu)

Nadia Owusu is a Ghanaian and Armenian-American writer and urbanist. She was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and raised in Italy, Ethiopia, England, Ghana, and Uganda. Her first book, Aftershocks, A Memoir, topped many most-anticipated and best-book-of-the-year lists, including The New York Times, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, TIME, Vulture, and the BBC. It was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Nadia is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her lyric essay, So Devilish a Fire won the Atlas Review chapbook contest. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The Lily, Orion, Granta, The Paris Review Daily, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Catapult, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure, and others. By day, Nadia is the Director of Storytelling at Frontline Solutions, a Black-owned consulting firm that helps social-change organizations to define goals, execute plans, and evaluate impact. She is a graduate of Pace University (BA) and Hunter College (MS). She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction at the Mountainview low-residency program where she now teaches. She lives in Brooklyn.

Visiting Playwright, Donna Hoke
Thursday, March 17, 7 PM, Black Box Theater, Reading and Conversation
Friday, March 18, 12 PM, 8-200, Playwriting Workshop
Please contact Maria Brandt at mbrandt@monroecc.edu for PDFs of Hoke’s plays

Donna Hoke’s work has been seen in 47 states and on five continents. Plays include BRILLIANT WORKS OF ART (Kilroys List), ELEVATOR GIRL (O’Neill, Princess Grace, and Austin Film Festival finalist), SAFE (winner of the Todd McNerney, Naatak, and Great Gay Play and Musical Contests), and TEACH (Gulfshore New Works winner). She has been nominated for the Primus, Blackburn, and Laura Pels prizes, and is a three-time winner of the Emanuel Fried Award for Outstanding New Play (SEEDS, SONS & LOVERS, ONCE IN MY LIFETIME). She has also received an Individual Artist Award from the New York State Council on the Arts to develop HEARTS OF STONE, and, in its final three years, Artvoice named her Buffalo's Best Writer—the only woman to ever receive the designation. Donna served the Dramatists Guild Council since 2012, is an ensemble playwright at Road Less Traveled Productions, blogger, moderator of the 13,000+-member Official Playwrights of Facebook, New York Times-published crossword puzzle constructor; children's and trivia book author; and founder/co-curator of BUA Takes 10: GLBT Short Stories. Speaking engagements include Citywrights, Kenyon Playwrights Conference, the Dramatists Guild National Conference, Chicago Dramatists, the Austin Film Festival, and a live Dramatists Guild webinar. Her commentary has been seen on #2amt, howlround, The Dramatist, the Official Playwrights of Facebook, Workshopping the New Play (Applause, 2017), and at donnahoke.com.

Sixth Act Night at Geva, Somewhere Over the Border
Thursday, April 14, 7:30 PM, Tickets $15
Please contact Maria Brandt at mbrandt@monroecc.edu to secure tickets

Inspired by the real-life journey of the writer’s mother (Reina Quijada) from El Salvador to the US – and by L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – Somewhere Over the Border embraces the factual and the fantastical in its depiction of one young girl’s pursuit of the American dream. As Reina travels north to the Mexican border, she gathers friends, faces down dangers, and holds tight to the memory of the little boy she left behind. Set in the 1970s and propelled by cumbia, Mexican mariachi boleros, American rock and hip hop, this new musical is both fable and family history – and a testament to the determination born of love.

Fifteenth Annual Sixth Act Student Playwriting Competition
Thursday, May 5, 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.

Maria Brandt
English/Philosophy
01/05/2022