Three Cat Productions is thrilled to announce our new program “Playwright in Residence”. Playwrights will work in 2020 to develop a new play from beginning to end for the Three Cat Productions stage. Our 2020 playwrights are Gabriella Bonamici, Roy A. Freeman, and Laura Scruggs. Join us the third Monday of each month to see the progress of their plays and eventually see each piece on a Three Cat Productions stage.
About Gabriella Bonamici
Gabriella Bonamici is absolutely stoked to be taking part in Three Cat Production’s 2020 Playwright’s Residency Program. Her holiday adaptations have been featured in Three Cat’s Holiday Radio Show: 1942, 1943, and 1944. Her horror-drama, The Passing, was also read as part of Three Cat’s Next Draft Series in 2018. She is excited to continue her collaboration with the wonderfully talented and supportive Three Cat Community.
Gabriella is also proud Network Playwright at the Chicago Dramatists, where her short play, Jokes About Ted Bundy, was featured in the 2016 Ten-Minute Play Festival. She has also had the privilege to study under the brilliant guidance of Chicago Dramatist Resident Playwrights Will Dunne, Douglas Post, Mary Ruth Clarke, and Marsha Estelle.
Most recently, her play, Monsters on the Bus, was featured in Endeavor Theatre’s Evening of One-Acts in Columbus, Ohio.
About Roy Freeman
Roy Freeman lives for new and experimental artistic endeavors. He started his creative journey in downstate Illinois, working with community theatres in the Peoria area where he both acted and directed. He moved to Chicago in the early 2000s, and found a home in the local LGBT music scene. Working with Lakeside Pride, he was honored to have the opportunity to act as one of the arrangers of music for the Gay Games 2006, having his arrangements performed by an international group of performers at both Wrigley Field and Soldier Field.
Roy also performs as a pianist and keyboard player, having most recently released a new album with the local Chicago rock group “Claire and the Bears.” He is currently the musical director and arranger for ThreeCat Productions, a company dedicated to giving new writers a voice and venue in Chicago. Roy has also pursued his calling as an educator, graduating from VanderCook College of Music with a degree in Music Education. He currently teaches K-8 music in the Chicago Public Schools, where he hopes to inspire another generation of creative artists.
About Laura Force Scruggs
Laura Force Scruggs is elated to be a 2020 Three Cat Resident Playwright! She is very excited to get to write about Jane Addams. As a previous Chicago Trolley and Double Decker Tour Guide, Jane Addams was her favorite tour topic!
Three Cat has been an artistic home for Laura for a while now; a place where she feels accepted and understood and her fairy wings are encouraged. She first worked with Three Cat when she performed her one woman show, “Punk Grandpa,” back in 2014, at the SOLO Festival.
Last year, she was honored to have her play, “Heart of Fairy,” developed and produced at Three Cat as part of their season.
And she has highly enjoyed getting to be a part of the 2017 and 2019 Three Cat Holiday Radio Shows. She adapted L. Frank Baum’s “A Kidnapped Santa Claus” and “A Fairy Christmas,” by Clement C. Moore.
She conducted fairy workshops for the Magic, Myth and Mystery Camp here at Three Cat as well. She was also hired by Three Cat Director and Designer Pat Henderson to conduct fairy trainings for her students at Trinity High School, who performed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and then for her middle schoolers who performed in an adaptation of the show.
Laura directed a documentary, “Uncle Fun: You’re The One,” about the late Chicago toy store, Uncle Fun and its creator, Ted Frankel. It premiered at Chicago Filmmakers and was also screened at The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore (which John Waters attended), The Intuit in Chicago, The Lonely Seal Festival in Arlington/Boston (where it tied for Best Documentary), Bric A Brac Records, Space Oddities, The Wasteshed and The Nest in Michigan City, Indiana. It will also be screened at the traveling Lonely Seal Festival this year, in various cities across the U.S. For more information about “Uncle Fun: You’re The One,” feel free to check out unclefunyouretheone.com.
She is also working on a documentary about the late Chicago Trolley and Double Decker Bus Company with Chris Churchill, who directed the documentary, “Tell Me About My Mother.” Laura is working on another documentary about fairy festivals, too.
Furthermore, she is writing a play about her late grandma, wife of her punk grandpa and will be performing part of it at The Nest in Michigan City this March as part of a Women’s Month celebration, as her grandma was one of the most influential women in her life. She was a reader, prayer warrior and also liked to talk about sex a lot.
Laura is the former Curator/Creative Producer of the Three Cat Cabaret on the Lake and will be producing the upcoming 2020 Three Cat Cabaret Variety Hour and Podcast.
She currently works part-time as a respite worker for a young lady with autism and was also recently hired on as a Tour Guide and Tour Manager at Withlocals.
She taught theatre for about ten years in a variety of environments.
She has performed her one woman show, “Punk Grandpa,” around the country. She is so excited to now have had it performed as a multiple character play (at the FRIGID Festival in NYC and at Three Brothers Theatre) and it was published by Chicago Dramaworks.
Laura was also commissioned by Three Brothers Theatre to write the story of Macbeth from Lady Macbeth’s perspective, set in the context of the American government; this script, “The Magic of Ladie M,” was performed at both Three Cat and Three Brothers, at their new work festivals.
Laura’s short play, “Bossy,” about her time as a Drama Instructor was produced by Unity Players in Chicago.
Laura has her B.S. in Elementary Education, with a Jr. High/ Middle School Theatre endorsement and an M.A. in Communication, Media and Theatre.
She is a Member of The Playwrights’ Center, Dramatists’ Guild and a Three Cat Playwright and a former Network Playwright at Chicago Dramatists.
She also enjoys hiking, thrift shopping and spending time with her nieces.