Children and Art
When art collector Gwendolyn Luce approaches artist Elaine Lee for her latest work, sight unseen, she never imagined what would be delivered to her Soho gallery: a twelve-year old girl named “Untitled.” Untitled introduces herself as the “future of art”–but as Gwendolyn prepares herself for the debut of the century, her own daughter, Meg, realizes she must liberate this child–and quickly. And it’s not long before Elaine, herself, realizes she may have given away the one piece of work that meant anything to her at all. Children and Art is a dark comedy about the responsibility artists have to their art, that mothers have to their daughters, and how much of our children we actually own, anyway.
Ian August is a NJ based award-winning, internationally produced playwright. His works have been developed at the Powerhouse Theatre Festival (NY Stage and Film), PlayPenn, the Great Plains Theatre Commons, Ashland New Plays Festival, Durango PlayFest, Red Mountain Theatre Company, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, New Jersey Repertory Company, City Theatre of Miami, the Garry Marshall Theatre, UC Davis Dept of Theatre and Dance, Williamstown Theatre Festival, the NY, Philly, and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, and elsewhere. He is a founding member of the American Theatre Group’s Playwrights Lab, and a graduated member of PlayPenn’s playwriting lab, The Foundry. He was a 2019 Playwright in Residence at the William Inge Center for the Arts in Independence, Kansas, and a recipient of a 2021 Independent Artist Fellowship from the NJ Council for the Arts. Mr. August lives at a boarding school with one husband and four cats. Seriously; FOUR.
Ryan McRee is a Los Angeles-based director, dramaturg, and educator. He is a member of the Artistic Board of the Road Theatre and this year served as the Festival Curator for the Summer Playwrights Festival. Past readings at the Road include Kaiju, He Looked at Me With His Dick In Her Mouth, The Point, From White Plains, Chickenheads, Mister Charlie Sent Me, and Where’s the Rest of Me? Production Credits include The Woman Is Perfected (Hollywood Fringe), Equus, Much Ado About Nothing, and Six Degrees of Separation (Aeneid Theatre Company). Ryan is also the resident dramaturg for Antaeus Theatre and writes educational materials for their student matinee program. This fall Ryan will be the Associate Director on the Road’s next Mainstage production, Kaiju. Education: MFA Performance Pedagogy (Loyola Marymount University), BA Theatre & Narrative Studies (University of Southern California).
“Children and Art”
GWENDOLYN – Taylor Gilbert*
ELAINE – Sam Bianchini*
HANNAH – Ivy Khan*
MEG –Isabella Griggs*
UNTITLED – Brooklyn Bao
*Road Company Member