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Ruth Margraff

RUTH MARGRAFF  

 Nationality:    USA
email:    Click here to contact     Website:    Click here

Literary Agent:    Susan Schulman Literary Agency  


Ruth Margraff. Playwright and librettist Ruth Margraff is a recipient of four Rockefeller Foundation commissions, a McKnight national commission and residency with the Playwrights' Center, a Fulbright New Opera Award to Greece, and two NYSCA Individual Artist awards, in addition to awards from TMUNY, TCG/ITI, NEA, Arts International, and Meet the Composer, among others. Her work has been developed and produced throughout New York City and the U.S., as well as in Russia, Greece, Japan, India, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Netherlands, Romania, Great Britain, and CanadA. Ms. Margraff is currently collaborating with Overtone Industries and the Theater of Note in Los Angeles, Big Red Media for BAM New Wave and the Apollo Theater in New York, and Seven/Vital Voices Global Partnership in Washington, D.C., as well as touring with her Cafe Antarsia Ensemble signed to Innova Records. She released her second album, Songs of the Table, in October, 2007, and her writing has been published by Performing Arts Journal,Kendall/Hunt, Backstage Books, American Theatre, Theater Forum, The Dramatist,Romanian Cultural Institute (CUNY), Johns Hopkins, Manchester, NuMuse Anthology(Brown), Chain (Temple), Epoch (Cornell),Conjunctions (Bard), Autonomedia, and Playscripts, among others. Ms. Margraff is an alumnae of New Dramatists and a member of Hourglass Group, Theatre Without Borders, and League of Professional Theater Women, and represented by Susan Schulman. She's an Associate Professor of the Master of Fine Arts program in Writing at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

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

 All Those Violent Sweaters         Anger / Fly         Cafe Antarsia         Cry Pitch Carrolls, The         Deadly She-Wolf Assassin At Armageddon         Elektra Fugues, The         Farida Azizi (Afghanistan)         Harlequin         Locket Arias         Over The Garden Wall         Red Frogs         Seven         Stadium Devildare         Three Graces         Wallpaper Psalm         Wellspring

All Those Violent Sweaters

Synopsis:
Edith and Patti-Jo attempt to come to terms with their post-high school friendship in a 1980s world of Harlequin romances, Hallmark sentiment, and marching band uniformed burglars. Patti-Jo marks time in her whirlwind life by a sequence of Senior pictures of her boyfriends until one tragic car accident, while Edith descends into the loneliness of mail order catalogs and knitted sweaters. The story that unfolds between the two girls moves like an X-ray of female friendship, and the tightly knotted bones of many things latent.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Public Theater's New Works Project (workshop) (New York, NY, United States)    1992

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Playscripts, Inc - New York   -

Music:
-

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Genre:
35-60 min Dark comedy/Romance

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  2            Other:  1 male, 2 females (2-9 actors possible: 0-7 males, exactly 2 females)

Further Reference:
-

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Anger / Fly

Synopsis:
Inspired by an eight-page film scenario written by Eugene Ionesco, ANGER/FLY deconstructs and expands the story of a perfect little town that erupts in a violent riot set off when all the husbands simultaneously find flies in their soup. The piece is a dark absurdist comedy that explores a tramp as gypsy, communism as cyclical utopian apocalypse, and marriage as manic ritual. The adaptation utilizes the contrived innocence of bubblegum pop, the exaggerated expressionism of silent film, and the rolling cadence of player piano ragtime rhythms. Ionesco's original film scenario, entitled La Colere (Anger) is written in short narrative form. It begins with happy townfolk coming out of church one sunny spring morning and ends with the destruction of the world. Throughout the action, a lady television announcer calmly broadcasts good news. ANGER/FLY translates this montage into a hysterically visceral live performance event. The multi-layered piece was adapted and devised by playwright Ruth Margraff, with director Kate Hendrickson and the Trap Door ensemble, through a uniquely collaborative process that delved into cubist points of view, Ionesco's use of language, his themes of social estrangement and the absurdly farcical tone of his work.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

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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:
piece

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Cafe Antarsia

Synopsis:
Near the end of the Ottoman Empire, two blood brothers take to the taverns of Crete. One has become the Ottoman pasha. The other is fated to rise and fall like his Greek fathers' heads still hanging on the lemon tree. In the swell of nationalism, freedom, modernity, antiquity, west and east that wrestle still like devils throughout the next millennium, the tavern rouses to a brutal crucible for enmity and brotherhood. Night falls as the dervishes spin ominously in the scorching cucumber wind of endless lamentation and the henna girls refuse to dance. This is a modern ILIAD for Greece, told with the ancient, operatic passion of Greek blues and Cretan rebel songs of the table. Set in the coveted passageway between the Balkans, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean Basin.

Notes:
In 1889, two Empires collide in the hands of two blood brothers. One As Ancient As the idea of Empire itself, had spawned Byzantium, the "west", And the rebels of America And Europe before shutting its eyes under the scourge of occupation for Almost two thoUSAnd years. The other rose up overnight from the Ottoman nomads of Asia Minor to conquer Greece, the Balkans, parts of what is now Iraq, Egpyt, etc., casting its shadow over Europe. www.myspace.com/CafeAntarsiaEnsemble

1st Produced:
Act I was presented by the Here's 2005 Culturemart Winter Festival    -

Organisations:
Commissioned by a Fulbright Foundation new opera award to Greece, developed by a Slovenian Exchange with Wax Factory/PreGlej in Ljubljana and a Harp residency at Here Arts Center

1st Published:
Published by the Slovenian Cultural Council in English and Slovenian, 2006   -

Music:
-

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Genre:
world folk opera Opera

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  1            Other:  2-4 singer/musicians (conceived to be performed live by the CAFe ANTARSIA ENSEMBLE

Further Reference:
-

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Cry Pitch Carrolls, The

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Salvage Vanguard Theater    1999

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
NuMuse Anthology: Brown University, Salvage Vanguard Press,    -

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

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Genre:
Nativity operetta, Christmas pagaent

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Deadly She-Wolf Assassin At Armageddon

Synopsis:
Raised as a weapon by a brutal conspirator, a young female assassin discovers that her target has spun the empire of Japan into crisis and ruin--and--is none other than her father. The Shogun, in a rage, has fired her master and hired three superwarriors from the West to eliminate this Last Wolf of Japan who defies his legacy. Torn between loyalty to her mission, her nation and her soul, she must face the unimaginable at the twilight of an imperial epoch.

Notes:
Written by Fred Ho and Ruth Margraff

1st Produced:
Japan Society/commissioned by the New York State Council for the Arts "Individual Artist" award    2004

Organisations:
Japan Society/Big Red Media, Inc./Peregrine Arts

1st Published:
Performing Arts Journal 86 Vol. XXIX, No. 2 May 2007,    -

Music:
-

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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:
Manga theater/martial Arts theater Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  Was conceived to be performed with up to 12 martial artists but can be done as theater also.

Further Reference:
-

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Elektra Fugues, The

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
DIVINE FIRE: Eight Contemporary Playwrights Inspired by the Greeks from Backstage/Watson-Guptill Publications, 2005   -

Music:
-

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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:
an operatic black box recording of classic disaster

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Farida Azizi (Afghanistan)

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
part of Journeys is A series of stirring monologues from courageous women Around the world engaged in the dangerous struggle for human rights. Each of these remarkable And heroic leaders tells An inspiring story of commitment.

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Vital Voices Global Partnership

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:
-

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Harlequin

Synopsis:
Set in 1994 Rhode Island, a poetry graduate student meets an Iraqi refugee in a bookstore cafe. Their conversation sweeps them across many landscapes, imprints of history, urgent pressings of immediacy, and the masquerades of foreboding.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Playwrights' Center, 1st draft reading    -

Organisations:
Playwrights' Center/McKnight Foundation national commission/residency

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

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Genre:
Political / Romance Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Locket Arias

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Contained in: "Play A Journal Of Plays" Issue One   -

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:
-

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Over The Garden Wall

Synopsis:
Guaranteed performable by anyone anywhere , inspired by American "Jonathan" plays from the 1800s*, bird malady novellas, pocket beauty books, minstrel shows, and parlor play burlesques. No rehearsal necessary.Bring back the dilettantes!! Drawing-Room Theatrical Version with the whole of the stage business built right in OR high art for amateurs.

Notes:
At first I was interested in what happened to our American parlors which have turned into kitchens, living rooms And tv dens, with no space left for pretension After dinner over the piano. As if reality programs were never pretentious!! So why don't we still recite operatic things we scavenged from the British? And why does most experimental theater smack of the Victorian?? Why has it gone extinct except for smug ironic strivings to be AS Anti-theatrical As mainstream theater scoffers? When did the realist become the last Jester to the king? What Are we the bastards of? Or should I just calm down And try to write A play that is produceable Anywhere sprung from the text/imagination Alone? Or give in to the old-fashioned heavy-handed text - that comfortable bludgeon. . .So I worked with American JONATHAN* plays from the early 1800s, (most of which included minstrel characters in possibly the earliest experimental blindspot of the American theater), so that Fopling tries to stomp out his regime in the cagey way we tried to disinherit, And the other three try to transform or wriggle out of it At every turn - make themselves up, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, And mistake their own identities. That we used to suspend our disbelief in these question marks--seems theatrical. That we could turn And return to our own blindspots As bastards in some whole other way--seems like pure American fool's gold!! --Ruth Margraff

1st Produced:
Tribecca Performing Arts Center (NYC) and the Ontological- Hysteric Experimental Text Festival    2007

Organisations:
America-in-Play

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

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Genre:
Farce/comedy, 15 minute One Act

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  Director reading stage directions

Further Reference:
-

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Red Frogs

Synopsis:
Edgy, confrontational. . .a seething chambermaid probes the resentments and psychosexual fantasies in the rituals of domination and submission that bind her to an unseen mistress. When an abrupt reversal of power, worthy of Jean Genet, puts her in charge, she mutates into an equally oppressive monster before contemplating the final leveler of human experience. - Los Angeles Times

Notes:
Commissioned by P.S.122 through the Jerome Foundation And NYSCA/Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. An excerpt of this play was workshopped by Bottom's Dream Theater At the 2000 Common Ground Festival by Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theater Projects, directed by I

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
American Theatre Magazine, NY - November, 2002    -

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

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Genre:
Melodrama/Burlesque Melodrama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  6 W or 5 W and 1 M (20s-30s) any race

Further Reference:
-

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Seven

Synopsis:
A collaboration of seven award-winning women playwrights, SEVEN is based on personal interviews with seven women leaders of the Vital Voices Global Partnership network who have triumphed over huge obstacles to create major changes in human rights in their home countries. In the seven interwoven stories we see the commonality of challenge and of bravery, and in the individual monologues that follow, we experience each fascinating whole true story.

Notes:
written by Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol K. Mack, Ruth Margraff, Anna Deavere Smith And SUSAn Yankowitz

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY (2009)   978-0-8222-2351-1

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

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Genre:
Documentary

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  7            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Stadium Devildare

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Rude Mechanicals, (Austin, Texas)    2004

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
published in the textbook Performing The Here And Now: An Introduction To Contemporary Theater And Performance ISBN: 0-7575-2085-5, 2005   -

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

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Genre:
Reality program for the intimate American arena

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  2            Other:  Voice of Texie, an actual child who never appears onstage

Further Reference:
-

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Three Graces

Synopsis:
This is part of Ice Factory 2011. An Iliad for modern Greece, told in the lyric voice of a woman named Three Graces. In a swell of failed rebellion, forbidden lust, west and east - two blood brothers wrestle like devils in the night. A Cretan wife keens in lament, a trickster spins like a dervish in an ominous cucumber wind, and a henna girl refuses to dance. An operatic panorama inspired by Greek blues and Cretan rebel songs from the tables of a timeless tavern.
- nytheatre.com

Notes:
book And lyrics by Ruth Margraff, music by Nikos Brisco

1st Produced:
3LD Art & Technology Center
80 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10006    20 Jul 2011

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

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Genre:
piece with music 80 min

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Wallpaper Psalm

Synopsis:
-

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:
-

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Wellspring

Synopsis:
This is a workshop production of a new world folk opera punk poet/lyricist Ruth Margraff. This description is from the press release: "Wellspring is set in 1999 war-torn Sarajevo. It follows an American woman searching for her husband, a troubled United Nations peacekeeper, who has disappeared in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Inspired in part by Verdi's Il Trovatore, the story is structured as an escalating series of East/West serenades; as she journeys deeper into the former Yugoslavia, Thaissa is troubadored by two brothers with war criminal poetry and Maxfield Parrish lutes. Wellspring's music is influenced by Greek blues and the Romani/Gypsy music of the Balkan marketplace."
- ny theatre.com

Notes:
book And lyrics by Ruth Margraff; music by Nikos Brisco

1st Produced:

Organisations:
The Hourglass Group

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:
Musical

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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