Award-winning theatre group The Civilians has announced that Dramaturgy alumna Elizagrace Madrone ’20 is one of the artists selected for the group’s 23-24 R&D Group. Playwriting alumnus Kareem Fahmy ’07 has also been named one of two inaugural artists in a new project by The Civilians, The Next Forever: New Stories for a Changing Planet.
The R&D Group brings together theater artists from a wide array of disciplines to develop new musicals and plays over the course of nine months in a group led by The Civilians’ Resident Dramaturg Phoebe Corde. Madrone is one of only eight artists selected for the group, and will use the time to develop her project, missing people/missing people, a theatrical exploration of California’s back-to-the-land movement. The R&D program will culminate in a works-in-progress reading series scheduled for June 2024.
The new Next Forever program awards commissions and residencies to promote the creation of theatrical work that comments on and engages with environmental subject matter. Two commissions will be awarded annually by The Civilians in partnership with Princeton University’s High Meadows Environmental Institute and Lewis Center for the Arts. Commissioned artists will also receive a Princeton undergraduate class on narrative and the environment, access to Princeton faculty, and an extensive series of readings and events.
Fahmy has been commissioned by the group for his play Riparian States which is about a geopolitical crisis in Egypt and Ethiopia caused by a new dam on the Nile.
Founded in 2001, The Civilians is an investigative theatre company which seeks to interrogate the stories that shape our society, and awaken new thinking through the experience of live theatre. Learn more about The Civilians here.
