SUMMER LAUNCH PAD: New Plays in Process invites three professional playwrights to join the UCSB community as artists in residence in a summer course.  The collaboration between LAUNCH PAD Artistic Director Risa Brainin, a team of undergraduate students and the playwrights culminates in public readings and open rehearsals.

Click HERE to read the UC Santa Barbara Current's article about the LAUNCH PAD: New Plays in Process series.

Jami Brandli’s ¡SOLDADERA!

Part epic and part grotesque comedy, ¡SOLDADERA!, is set in the Mexican Revolution during The Day of Dead Feast. A teenage girl finds the Zapatista soldiers camp where her mother fled to become a revolutionary soldadera (female solider). Mexican folks songs accompany dialogue in a play that Brandli calls, “By far, the “biggest” play I’ve ever written about women…”

Jami Brandli’s work has been produced and developed at HotCity Theatre, WordBRIDGE, Ashland New Plays Festival, The Lark, New York Theatre Workshop, Great Plains Theatre Conference, The Aurora Theatre Company, Moving Arts, Milwaukee Rep, and Rogue Machine Theatre.  Technicolor Life is receiving its world premiere at Rep Stage in the DC area. She received the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award, the Holland New Voices Award and most recently The Aurora Theatre Company's 2014 Global Age Project (GAP) Prize. Her play BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!), was just named in The Kilroy’s THE LIST, which highlights the 46 most recommended new female-authored plays for this year. http://www.thekilroys.org/thelist/

DRIVING DIRECTIONS TO UCSB

Driving to UCSB from the south?

Take Highway 101 North to the Highway 217/Airport/UCSB exit. Highway 217 will lead you directly to the East Gate entrance of UCSB. Upon entering campus, veer right of the roundabout and follow Mesa Rd to the third stoplight, Ocean Rd. Turn left onto Ocean Rd, then follow through a stop sign, two stoplights (across El Colegio Rd), then park in Lot 23 an open lot on the left. When you park in that lot, you’ll see the Theater/Dance building in front of you across the bike path (Faculty Club is on the right and we are on the left.)  Go through the glass door and room 1507 is halfway down the hall on your left.  

Driving to UCSB from the north?

Take highway 101 South to the Glen Annie/Storke Rd exit; turn right onto Storke Rd and follow across Hollister Ave to El Colegio Rd. Turn left. El Colegio Rd will take you directly onto campus. At Ocean Rd, turn right, then park in Lot 23 an open lot on the left. When you park in that lot, you’ll see the Theater/Dance building in front of you across the bike path (Faculty Club is on the right and we are on the left.)  Go through the glass door and room 1507 is halfway down the hall on your left.

This program is supported by the UCSB Summer Sessions Cultural Enrichment Grant and the UCIRA Open Classroom Grant.