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Donna DiNovelli

DONNA DINOVELLI

  
Nationality:    USA
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    A3 Artists Agency  

as a bookwriter and lyricist, Donna DiNovelli has collaborated with artists from around the world in both opera and music-Theater. as a playwright she has fashioned texts for stage and radio. She is currently collaborating with composer Rachel Portman and playwright Beth Henley on PRaIRIe, presented at New York Stage and Film, July 2006. PRaIRIe will be directed by Francesca Zambello, with whom she collaborated on HILDeGaRD: a MeaSURe OF JOY commissioned by the San Francisco Grammy-award winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer. Her opera, FLORIDa (music by Randall eng), selected for the New York City Opera's VOX series, won a Frederick Loewe Foundation grant, was presented at the Public Theater's New Work Now! Festival and was produced in July at Lyric Opera Cleveland. She wrote the text for the Los Angeles Modern Dance and Ballet's dance-Theater work, TWeLVe DaNCING PRINCeSSeS, which premiered in the Ford amphiTheater in Los Angeles choreographed by Naomi Goldberg-Haas. DiNovelli's other music-Theater work has been presented at Joe's Pub: including NO GOD BUT YeaRNING (music by David Rodwin), and a collection of ten-minute musicals: BReaK aS MaNY eGGS aS ReQUIReD, PROM and Santa LUCIA. She began a series of new work when she was invited to attend the National Musical Theater Conference at the O'Neill Theater Center. Her stage play, the FIRST eFF (Mark Taper Forum), was excerpted in the latest New Monologues For Women; by Women, published by Heinemann Press. She has won commissions and fellowships from Bellagio (the Rockefeller Foundation), MacDowell Colony, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Mabou Mines, Manhattan Theater Club, aSCaP, and the BBC. the BBC, CBC and NPR have broadcast her radio plays. She teaches bookwriting and playwriting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, where she earned an MFA as an Ira Gershwin fellow. She teaches playwriting at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and was a visiting professor at Brown University, where she earned an A.M. studying with Paula Vogel.

Research:    Member of the Dramatists Guild of America (as at 2015)

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below is a list of Donna DiNovelli's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         12 Dancing Princesses         Crushed Tomatoes         First Eff, The         Florida         Good Swimmer, The         Hildegard: A Measure Of Joy         Little House On the Prairie         No God But Yearning         Prairie         Red         Route Of Wolves (Myth)
12 Dancing Princesses

Synopsis:
Princesses captivated from beginning to end in this 90 minute retelling of female royalty

Notes:
Created by company Artistic director Naomi Goldberg And Mark Taper Forum Associate Artistic director Corey Madden with Playwright Donna DiNovelli Adapting the story And text from the Brothers Grimm tale of the same name.

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Genre:
Part dance, part theater

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Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

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Crushed Tomatoes

Synopsis:
a young teenage girl vies for the title, "Most Like the Virgin Mary", as the Cold War heats up and a saucepot simmers with a secret. a coming-of-age play with the voices of the saints and the everly Brothers as dance score

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Genre:
One act

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  3            Other:  -

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First Eff, The

Synopsis:
a collection of dream narratives too real to be unreal; and archetypal tea scenes of domestic riffs. For video and an ensemble of women who wear their black cardigan sweaters buttoned up the backand anything else they want.

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Florida

Synopsis:
a highly-stylized work, FLORIDa investigates the community response to the murder of Florida's mother. the idiosyncratic script and score takes us from the time preceding the murder to the subsequent courtroom rituals. Throughout the piece, the ordinary life of the eponymous heroine, and the extraordinary events that surround her are at play, along with the vowels that create her, constrain her and potentially free her.

Notes:
music by Randall eng, text by Donna DiNovelli

1st Produced:
Lyric Opera, Cleveland     2006

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Genre:
Opera

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Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

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Good Swimmer, The

Synopsis:
The Good Swimmer, part requiem, part lifesaving drill, is a new music-theatre piece by Heidi Rodewald (music) and Donna Di Novelli (libretto) directed by Kevin Newbury. Set entirely on a surf beach, the piece updates the kinship relationships of Antigone to a family of lifeguards during the early days of the Vietnam War. The pop musical rips apart non-literary found' texts (field guides, historical quotations, lifesaving manuals) to create song lyrics for four principals, a chorus of lifeguards, and a rock band. The Good Swimmer pits the common good' against the primacy of kinship as a sister opposes a monument to be built in her beloved brother's memory. All the singers onstage are under 21 years of age, reflecting the somber truth that a majority of those lost in Vietnam would never reach their 22nd birthday.

Notes:
Composed by Heidi Rodewald

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Genre:
music-theatre 70 min

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Hildegard: A Measure Of Joy

Synopsis:
Twelve Cardinals meet in Rome to decide whether Hildegard of Bingen should be canonized a saint. Moving from skeptics to believers, they take us through her life, her miracles, and finally, her defiance of Rome. the story is theirs: it is a journey of how they come to define and discover what is holy; what is blessed. the structure allows for a variety of music, sometimes medieval, sometimes contemporary, i.e., joyfully anachronistic. as Hildegard's sanctity is questioned in arenas both sacred and practical so, too, the music reflects worlds of exalted spirituality and profound simplicity

Notes:
Commissioned for Chanticleer, Text by Donna DiNovelli, New music by Regis Campo And Steven Stucky

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Genre:
music theatre piece

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Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

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Little House On the Prairie

Synopsis:
Little House on the Prairie has remained one of the most beloved celebrations of early Americana since the appearance of Laura Ingalls Wilder's popular classic book series 70 years ago. Now the inspirational stories take on a brand new frontier in an uplifting new musical. Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura for ten years in the much-loved television series, continues her legacy by playing Ma. Families will continue to fall in love with these life-affirming stories about the Ingalls' struggles and triumphs through the celebration of the pioneering spirit and the core values on which this country was founded-a spirit that resonates within each of us today
- press release

Notes:
lyrics Donna di Novelli, book Rachel Sheinkin, music Rachel Portman

1st Produced:
Paper Mill Playhouse, NY     19/2009

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Genre:
Musical

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  5            Other:  -

Further Reference:
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No God But Yearning

Synopsis:
NO GOD BUT YeaRNING looks at the planting of anemones; a bar room toast; an act of eco-terrorism; the naming of a cottage; the elemental cry of an S.O.S.; and calls them all prayer. as the 5 characters transform we witness the similarities between a young teenage docent named Lucy and a powerless Saint; between Guillermo Marconi and a Sailor who names his brethren who have died at sea; between the letter s that seduces Marconi to annie Dillard, the center of a teenage cult; between the taxi driver Hafiz and a fog horn that calls out its warning. the center of the piece is Santa Lucia where the environment of the sea comes alive to take part in a calling home

Notes:
Text by Donna DiNovelli, Music by David Rodwin

1st Produced:
Joe's Pub    

Organisations:
Public Theater's New Work Now! Festival

1st Published:
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Prairie

Synopsis:
as American as wanderlust and rebellion, PRaIRIe is the story of one family's adventures during the country's massive land give-away that was Homesteading. It is the story of how a people poor and uprooted, persevered by fighting the emptiness of their larder with a generosity of spirit. When a promise of free land lured them to the unyielding sod, homesteaders relied on their wit and their will in a battle to stay alive and stay together. Out on that endless prairie, one girl embodies the pioneer spirit by refusing to bow to the forces of conformity and despair. eventually, the spirited Laura must sacrifice the freedom she so cherishes to protect the family she loves.

Notes:
music by Rachel Portman, lyrics by Donna DiNovelli, book by Beth Hanley

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Genre:
Musical

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Red

Synopsis:
Donna DiNovelli wields one clever, lyrical mind, this time providing libretto for a psychologically savvy, fractured fairy tale involving a wolf, grandmother's lore and the feeling that eating an omelet will get you gobbled - or confine you to a kitchen forever.
- the Village Voice

Notes:
Book And lyrics by Donna DiNovelli, music by Ada, Cohen

1st Produced:
Dixon Place    

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Genre:
music theatre piece One act

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Route Of Wolves (Myth)

Synopsis:
a radio play for the stage that deconstructs the folk tale. 4 characters and a foley artist.

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1st Produced:
Bac A Downtown    

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To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
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