The Playwrights Database
IAN W HILL
(1968 - )Nationality: USA
email: n/a Website: n/a
Literary Agent: n/a
IAN W. HILL was born 1968 just outside Philadelphia, PA. Raised a bit there, in Bloomington, IN and Wilmington, DE, but mostly in Cos Cob, CT. Attended Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, studied theatre extensively there, as well as writing several radio plays and sketches, and winning awards for his poetry and photography. Graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1990 with a BFA in Film Production -- wrote and directed an hour-long 16mm film, Deep Night, for his final project. Intended to be a filmmaker, but got sidetracked into acting onstage, working extensively with directors (and friends/mentors) Christopher Carter Sanderson, Murphy Gigliotti, and David LM Mcintyre. Started writing plays in 1990. First play produced in 1993 -- Even the Jungle, a collaged retelling of Kipling's The Jungle Book and Coppola's Apocalypse Now, the first "New Collisionist" compilation-play, conceived and co-written by David LM Mcintyre. Was artistic associate and caretaker of the NADA spaces on Ludlow Street from 1996-2000. Has written, and has mostly produced/designed/directed with his company Gemini Collisionworks (founded in 1997), 7 more compilation-plays (including 4 in the NECROPOLIS series and 2 in the Invisible Republic series), 4 full-length two-act plays (Spell, ObJects, Removal, and Spacemen from Space!), 4 one-acts, 2 adaptations of existing works (including The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage), 2 adaptations of a collaborative improvised theatrical text (Sacrificial Offerings and Invincible City, with David Finkelstein), one theatrically-staged and run wedding (The Wedding of Berit Johnson & Ian W. Hill), and with Ms. Johnson, the first English-language translation of Eugène Ionesco's short play The Viscount. Despite this, he is still primarily known as a director/designer of existing plays, and as a designer for other companies, primarily in light (NYIT Award Nomination for Outstanding Lighting in 2009). Co-Technical Director at The Brick in Williamsburg, Brooklyn since 2007 with Berit Johnson(collaborator/partner/wife), where Gemini CollisionWorks has presented a season of its new and adapted work each August since 2007, and will continue to do so as long as it's allowed.
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below is a list of Ian W Hill's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Antrobus Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic 2) Gone Invincible City Necropolis Series, The ObJects Removal Sacrificial Offerings Spacemen From Space Spell Strategist, The or: The Woman of Some Virtue, or: Before You Ever Heard of It That's What We're Here For (An American Pageant) Viscount, TheAntrobus
Synopsis:
Antrobus: At the end of the world, or soon after, or soon before, as the ice rises and the food grows scarce, the six members of a "family" that has banded together for survival begin to turn on each other as the years of hardship, cabin fever, and resentment catch up with them, and neither the old or young members of the family are sure what to do next: stay still and avoid risk, or move forward and search for other people and ways of living in a changed world. the one thing they have to hold onto are the pages of a thick history book, telling the story of how the world came apart, which mysteriously comes apart itself every night and must be ritually restored, every single day . . .
- nytheatre.com
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Brick theatre
575 Metropolitan AVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 13 Aug 2011
575 Metropolitan AVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 13 Aug 2011
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageEverything Must Go (Invisible Republic 2)
Synopsis:
a play in dance and fragmented businesspeak. a day in the life of an advertising agency as they work on a major new account, interspersed with backbiting, backstabbing, coffee breaks, office romances, motivational lectures, afternoon slumps, and a Mephistophelian boss who has his eye on a beautiful female Faust of an intern. a constantly shifting dance-theatre piece in which anything that matters must have a price, anyone is corruptible, and everything must go
- playwright
- playwright
Notes:
test, design And direction by Ian W. Hill with the company
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 7 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageGone
Synopsis:
Gone: At the end of a life, two dear old friends sit at a cafe table and reminisce. One of them will not be leaving. But before that, and before, during and after night falls, they will share, argue, debate, and discuss the details of their shared and separate lives, in a form of the english language that is nearly unrecognizable, made of almost nothing but portmanteau words and echoes of familiar sounds. these sounds may become understandable and meaningful, if you really listen to them. But be careful how close you listen, as the pain is never far away.
- nytheatre.com
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Brick theatre
575 Metropolitan AVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 13 Aug 2011
575 Metropolitan AVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 13 Aug 2011
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageInvincible City
Synopsis:
In Invincible City, the world is ending, time zone by time zone. a group of wealthy tourists, able to jump across the stratosphere from city to city, apparently at will, are staying just ahead of the death and destruction, trying to ignore it and have one last party before the end comes. But they cannot escape their own fears nor the resentment of the citizens of the cities they have plundered for so long as they move from Rome to Madrid to eventually . . . Detroit? Time's up gentlemen.
- nytheatre.com
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
written by David Finkelstein And Ian W. Hill
1st Produced:
Brick theatre
575 Metropolitan aVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 02 Aug 2012
575 Metropolitan aVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 02 Aug 2012
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
one act
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageNecropolis Series, The
Synopsis:
the four plays that comprise the series are NeCROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed, and NeCROPOLIS 0&3: Kiss Me, Succubus & at the Mountains of Slumberland. the following description is from the press release: "a world where the leaders lie, cheat, steal and murder. a world where art and Science and Beauty and Reason are no longer valued. a world where survival means selling out, and trying to do the 'right thing' means failure as a human being. a familiar place? Yes, of course, it is the fictional, 1940's world of film noir, nothing like our own present world at all, right? Right? Or has noir come true, and we're all living in a world gone wrong? Combining a cast of 21 in precision choreography with slides and an entirely pre-recorded collage soundtrack, World Gone Wrong is a film noir pastiche-play consisting of dialogue from over 150 noirs, as well as quotes from our current U.S. administration and other pertinent sources, combined into a semiabstract, dreamlike tale of corruption, betrayal, and revenge.
- nytheatre.com
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
- -
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageObJects
Synopsis:
At the end of a Nation. the United States, 50, maybe 70 years from now, tops. the country is ruled by geographic/corporate fiefdoms that can't hold the place together anymore (and a practically non-existent government), with a populace so overwhelmed by technological future shock and infotaining bread and circuses that it has lapsed into near-catatonia, and can no longer actually do anything anymore. One visionary, an eccentric capitalist diva, Mrs. Franklin-founder and CeO of the Kronos Corporation-secretly plans with brilliant young biohacker Miss Lee Lightfoot to create a "positive plague"-a modified contagious disease that will infect the brains of U.S. citizens and make them process the modern world better and faster (and make them once again better producers and consumers). the top dozen members of Kronos-a collection of MBAs, surgically-modified psychics, backbiters, yuppies, and body servants-debate the pros and cons of the plan, and try to figure out how to make their names and/or fortunes as part of it, as the disease turns out to have unexpected consequences . . . A dense, dark, science-fiction satire, Ian W. Hill's ObJects drops you in a world where the underlying tensions of America in 2011 have only intensified, where corporate rule is now wholly sanctified, where the class war has been won (even if the losers don't know it), where computers run on human blood, and where man-eating robots are destroying cities (don't worry, they're being contained in the southwest).
- nytheatre.com
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Brick theatre
575 Metropolitan AVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 11 Aug 2011
575 Metropolitan AVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 11 Aug 2011
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 8 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageRemoval
Synopsis:
This is a new full-length play about a novelist who has reached the end of words and is ready to be done with his work, but who finds that his words don't feel like ending and his work isn't done with him. On the day he announces his retirement, his fictions rise up against him and take over not only his work but his life. a multi-genre/multi-media fantasy on how your sausage-art gets made, as an almost-stock living-room marriage comedy tears itself apart to become a 1970s detective-spy thriller in the foreign country of Backlotistaan, a combination of every Hollywood cliche there has ever been about the rest of the world. Vladimir Nabokov meets the Firesign theatre meets Mission: Impossible on the set of a George S. Kaufman play, if thats even possible.
- nytheatre.com
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Brick theatre
575 Metropolitan aVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 05 Aug 2012
575 Metropolitan aVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 05 Aug 2012
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 7 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageSacrificial Offerings
Synopsis:
David Finkelstein has spent over 20 years creating improvisation-based theatre with his Lake Ivan Performance Group, most recently moving into creating original video artworks that begin as videotaped improvised duets between him and other performers, which then are overlaid with a complex interweaving of abstract and literal imagery, text, and original music. after creating several improvs with Ian W. Hill, and deciding on one to transform into a video piece, he has suggested that Hill take the text from his video and re-interpret it as a stage work, and then combine both pieces as a double bill. So Hill has indeed created Sacrificial Offerings, a Dramaticule in which a group of eight actors perform the originally improvised text as a play about a group of wealthy layabouts of several decades past gathering for a seance, amid arguments and backbiting. a version of Finkelstein's video piece of the same text as originally improvised by him and Hill (known as Skewered Remarks) is shown as an interlude from another world midway through the stage adaptation.Sacrificial Offerings is a small, contained experiment with improvisation, interpretation, repetition, the mixing of prerecorded video and live performance, and ideas of what exactly constitutes a play
- press release
- press release
Notes:
written by David Finkelstein And Ian W. Hill
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Piece
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageSpacemen From Space
Synopsis:
Holy smokes! Unusual weather patterns are devastating the entire world! Scientists are baffled! Little do they know that this is an alien attack, courtesy of Queen Oneida of the planet ataraxia, who intends to soften up earth before her planet sends its armies to conquer it. But little does Queen Oneida know that opposing forces who have figured out her plan are gathering at the one place on earth immune to her cosmic-wave-beam gun, Rancho Bardo, home to radio hero Cowboy adam (and His Lonely Valley Boys), a singing cowboy who fights crime and is a Real American. But little does Cowboy adam know that arriving on his ranch is the scientist and hero Rocket Brannon, who fights crime by flying around on his jet pack, and who knows the secret to defeating the ataraxians. But little do Our Heroes know that their old flame, tough-talking dame reporter Chickie West is determined to get a great story and has snuck onto the ranch, about to get in everyone's way. and little do they aLL know that the masked supervillain the Lavender Spectre is also on the ranch, with a brace of evil Minions who are out to control the weather themselves, and eventually RULe the WORLD! a loving pastiche of 1930s/'40s b-movie serials intended to keep hyper children entertained during extended Saturday matinees, Spacemen from Space: an exciting New Serial for the Stage in 6 Thrill-Packed episodes! combines as many elements of the straight-faced, sincerely-played episodic genre works into one big mashup of fast-moving fun - a single play made up of six episodes played one right after another (with cliffhanger endings, of course).
- nytheatre.com
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Brick theatre
575 Metropolitan aVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 12 Aug 2010
575 Metropolitan aVenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 12 Aug 2010
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 15 Female: 6 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageSpell
Synopsis:
an American woman who considers herself a patriot has committed a horrible terrorist act as an act of protest and, she hopes, revolution against the government, which she believes no longer represents the law, people, and Constitution of the USA. as she is interrogated, her mind reinterprets her surroundings into a chorus of voices-witches, revolutionaries, doctors, generals, bossmen, old boyfriends, fragments of herself-arguing over the validity of her violent actions while at the same time trying to deny that the monstrous act has ever occurred, or that she could be capable of such a thing. a meditation on-among other things-whether violence can ever be truly justified, and if so, what limits are there and where does it end?
- press release
- press release
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 7 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageStrategist, The or: The Woman of Some Virtue, or: Before You Ever Heard of It
Synopsis:
A modern Restoration Comedy of Manners, in the style of THE MAN OF MODE or THE COUNTRY WIFE, only set in today's Brooklyn, with a cast of characters concerned with fashion, food, publicity, social media, social events, and, maybe, sex. The more things change. . .
Notes:
written by Ian W. Hill and Berit Johnson
1st Produced:
The Brick in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC Nov 2013
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks and The Brick Theater, Inc
1st Published:
http://www.indietheaternow.com/Play/the-strategist -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
play 150 min
Parts:
Male: 10 Female: 10 Other: 1
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageThat's What We're Here For (An American Pageant)
Synopsis:
-
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Gemini CollisionWorks
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
-
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageViscount, The
Synopsis:
-
Notes:
Original Playwright - Eugene Ionesco
1st Produced:
Ionesco Festival, New York 2001
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Translation
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of Page