Salt Lake Acting Company                  News Release

PRESS CONTACT: CYNTHIA FLEMING | 801.363.7522 | [email protected]

May 1, 2017

For Immediate Release

Salt Lake Acting Company &

The David Ross Fetzer Foundation For Emerging Artists

Announce Grant Winner Rae Binstock

The Salt Lake Acting Company (SLAC) and The David Ross Fetzer Foundation for Emerging Artists are thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2017 Davey Foundation Theatre Grant is Rae Binstock’s A LAND OF NO MERCY. 

Rae’s play was selected from 30 script submissions received from around the country. The selection committee was comprised of theatre professionals as well as collaborators and friends of David Fetzer. They were Carleton Bluford, Jason Bowcutt, Kathleen Cahill, Cynthia Fleming, Brynne Frauenhoffer, Alexandra Harbold, Whit Hertford, Julie Jensen, Shannon Musgrave, Betsy Ross, Morag Shepherd, Katherine Vondy, and Robin Wilks-Dunn. 

A LAND OF NO MERCY will receive a weeklong developmental workshop at the Salt Lake Acting Company this summer. The artistic team will be comprised of local artists including a director, dramaturg, stage manager, actors, and possible multi-media artists. The workshop will culminate in a public staged reading at SLAC on Monday, July 31, 2017 at 7pm. 

About the Play

The apartment sits on the corner of Monroe and Clinton, tucked away in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It’s a cozy little place, just big enough for two—but which two? Yetta and Solomon, the Jewish immigrants from 1915, business owners fighting to get through each day and hold on to a world thousands of miles away, while they worry about starting a family in the Land of Opportunity? Or Maria and Alex, the millennial oddballs of the present who sweep into the neighborhood on a tide of gentrification, struggling to keep their college relationship viable in the face of new stressors, new ambitions, and new neighbors? A century apart but close enough to touch, two couples inhabit the same cramped apartment. Their stories weave together, contrasted throughout history, a collage of youth, hope, and uncertainty in what Tony Kushner calls “the melting pot where nothing melted”.

About the Playwright

Rae Binstock was raised in Cambridge, MA and earned her BA from Columbia University, where she was mentored by Ellen McLaughlin and David Henry Hwang. Her full-length plays include Watch Me Burn (LezPlay – Pride Films & Plays, Idle Muse Theatre’s Athena Festival, The Fresh Fruit Festival), Expedition (Monster Piece Theatre Collective, National Theater for Student Artists, Seymour Brick Memorial Prize for Playwriting), We Are The Light Of The World (Red Theater’s National Playwriting Prize, winner of the 84th National Writer's Digest Writing Competition) and The Snowstorm (2016 Historic Elitch Theatre New Works Festival, Harold Clurman Playwright’ Division Pick). Rae is a member of New Perspective Theatre’s Short Play Lab, a contributing writer at Slate.com, and a co-creator of the web-series Rejected. She is an O’Neill Conference semifinalist and the recipient of a 2017 artistic residency with The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Rae lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The Davey Foundation was created to honor the life of David Ross Fetzer and his commitment to the film and theatre arts. The Foundation is excited to make grants available to artists 35 and younger for the development of innovative film and theatre projects, and to provide the mentoring framework that will allow the Davey grantee to flourish. More information at www.thedaveyfoundation.org

Salt Lake Acting Company’s mission is to engage and enrich community through brave contemporary theatre. Founded in 1970, SLAC is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 professional theatre dedicated to producing, commissioning, and developing new works and to supporting a community of professional artists. SLAC has been nationally recognized by the Shubert Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Edgerton Foundation, among others. SLAC operates under a STP Actors Equity Association contract and is a Constituent Member of Theatre Communications Group (a national organization for non-profit professional regional theatres), and the National New Play Network (a national alliance of non-profit professional theatres that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays). More information at www.saltlakeactingcompany.org.