The Playwrights Database
MONICA HUNKEN
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Monica Hunken grew up on the coast of California and then skipped over to New York City in 2001, where she started her first day of acting school at NYU on September 11th, immediately politicizing her theatrical endeavors from then on. She started a radical street theater group, volunteered as an acting teacher at homeless shelters, organized anti-war rallies and teach-ins, began working with the bicycle advocacy organization- Time's-Up! and the local rights performance community-Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping. She received her BFa in Drama from the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU's Tisch School of the arts with a Minor in applied Theater in 2004, winning a Tisch award for Community Connections and was selected for the ETW International Summer Program in amsterdam. Before she attended grad school, Monica volunteered in Ranote, Thailand teaching English and helping repair a flooded school and in Bangalore, India where she taught at a boys' orphanage for three months. Her first solo international travels created an appetite for adventure she has yet to satiate. Monica received her Ma in Educational Theater from NYU's Steinhardt School of Education in 2005, in which she completed her Master's with the Community-Engaged Theater Program at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Monica continued to teach and design arts-in-education programs throughout NYC boroughs and then set out to further explore the world; starting with a tour across the US with the Reverend Billy Choir filming the Morgan Spurloch documentary, What Would Jesus Buy?, back to California and to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Not Man apart Theater Company touring a dance theater version of Shakespeare's Pericles, creating puppet parades with Bread and Puppet in the farms of Vermont, to an international festival in Ecuador with The Living Theatre, biking across Portugal, Spain and Poland. Monica has developed her personal process of generating performance material from her travel adventures. Her first solo show, Reading the Water, came out of an investigative journey up California to learn about her scientist father who died mysteriously from chemical exposure at his work. It was initially accepted into and produced at HERE arts Center's American Living Room Festival, and has continued to be produced- at the Puffin Foundation Solo Festival, and most recently as part of the movement against toxic gas drilling. Monica has used the piece to inform audiences about the dangerous extraction process by pairing it with segments of Gasland- Josh Fox's new documentary and benefiting the non-profit NYH2O with performances at The Living Theatre and upstate in Otsego County. Her latest show, Blondie of arabia, about Monica's solo bike tour through four countries in the Middle East, was self-produced at the Living Theater for a sold out run with plans to show it again in the fall and tour it on bicycle through Europe in the Spring of 2011. Monica's next play is about her bicycle trip across Poland to find the story of her experimental theater director eccentric grandfather, an expedition which led to squatter punk encounters and a workshop from one of the last remaining members of Jerzy Grotowski's original company.
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below is a list of Monica Hunken's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Blondie Of Arabia Reading The Water Wild Finish, TheBlondie Of Arabia
Synopsis:
The story of an American Woman's bicycle journey through the heart of the Middle East. alone. Two weeks before Christmas, Monica Hunken flew into the heart of the Persian Gulf to cater at a royal wedding party and ended up biking across the Middle East. This play chronicles the true story of her desert odyssey. Watch the broke, blonde American swerve her bicycle through close encounters with military capture, sex tourism, Gulf royalty and near death. as Hunken perseveres in her adventure as a parade of one, defeating trouble at every turn, indulging her super-hero fetishism, she plays over 20 characters in this 80 minute comedy that brought audiences to their feet every show.
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1st Published:
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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
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Genre:
Solo show/ comedy
Parts:
Male: - Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageReading The Water
Synopsis:
Reading the Water, written and performed by Monica Hunken, is a surreal journey of a woman exploring the mysterious life-and death-of her scientist father. an intimate portrait of the unknown father unfolds as the young woman travels through tales of deep-sea dives, top-secret government experiments, madcap relatives, lawsuits and an untimely death. This one-woman show attempts to uncover the life of an introverted scientist in love with the sea, and is a personal investigation of identity and loss. an engineer at Hughes Research Laboratory (HRL) in Malibu, California for several years until he began to develop health problems, the author's father died from lung cancer that he attributed to long-term exposure to heavy metals at HRL. In the last year of his life, he took HRL to court, a battle that the author's mother continued to fight, but subsequently lost after his death, leaving her to raise two daughters alone. Last summer, the author returned to California to interview and film her father's co-workers, friends and family in an effort to better understand the circumstances of his death and to learn about the man himself. The story unfolds in the form of an exhilarating investigation: it begins underwater during a scuba dive, shifts into a confrontation with the corporate institution itself in an imaginary boxing match, then delves deeper as the author interviews his eccentric, scientist colleagues. The author transforms in and out of each character seamlessly, even managing a four-person conversation. although the play upholds a documentary style, surreal movement sequences suggest the father's deteriorating health. The author maintains momentum with highly physical storytelling. Interspersed with excruciating family moments, the experience reveals heartbreaking, and sometimes conflicting, truths.
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1st Produced:
HERE Arts Center
145 6th avenue, New York, NY 10013 -
145 6th avenue, New York, NY 10013 -
Organisations:
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1st Published:
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Music:
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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:
Solo show/ Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageWild Finish, The
Synopsis:
In this one-woman travelogue, Monica embarks on a bicycle journey across the vodka-soaked roads of Poland in search of Leonidas Dudarew Ossetynski, her grandfather. Resolving to hunt down the mystery of this enigmatic character, Monica sets off to an overland bicycle odyssey to understand the demon that still haunts her family. She squats with anarchist punks in old factories, barely escapes a knifing by Neo-Nazis, hides in churches and encounters a strange and amazing cast of characters: a sardonic filmmaker, Peer Gynt, the ghost of a beautiful, Norwegian bride, a clairvoyant, possessed dominatrix, and in the climax, Rena Mirecka, one of the last original members of Jerzy Grotowski's theater company who leads Monica in a para-theatrical workshop guiding her into the wilderness of her mind, into the darkness of her past where she must face her family demons once and for all.
- nytheatre.com
- nytheatre.com
Notes:
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1st Produced:
ABC NO RIO, 156 Rivington Street, NY 25 Jan 2012
Organisations:
The Polish Cultural Institute and Culture Project
1st Published:
In this one-woman travelogue, Monica embarks on a bicycle journey across the vodka-soaked roads of Poland in search of Leonidas Dudarew Ossetynski, her grandfather. Resolving to hunt down the mystery of this enigmatic character, Monica sets off to an overland bicycle odyssey to understand the demon that still haunts her family. She squats with anarchist punks in old factories, barely escapes a knifing by Neo-Nazis, hides in churches and encounters a strange and amazing cast of characters: a sardonic filmmaker, Peer Gynt, the ghost of a beautiful, Norwegian bride, a clairvoyant, possessed dominatrix, and in the climax, Rena Mirecka, one of the last original members of Jerzy Grotowski's theater company who leads Monica in a para-theatrical workshop guiding her into the wilderness of her mind, into the darkness of her past where she must face her family demons once and for all. -
Music:
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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:
60 min piece
Parts:
Male: - Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
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