Presenter: José Cruz González & Eric Schmiedl
Thursday, July 24th from 1-4pm

$60

Join internationally renowned playwright José Cruz Gonzales & award-winning playwright Eric Schmiedl discuss their latest collaboration The Throwaways a community-based project focused on the impact of parental incarceration currently being workshopped at Clevland Play House as part of their Family Theatre pillar of education. The Cleveland Play House Family Theatre program focuses on bringing adverse childhood events (ACES) to light is a gentle way that begins a dialogue on resiliency and healing.

José Cruz González's plays include The Throwaways (Cleveland Play House), If by Chance (South Coast Repertory), The Extraordinary ZLuna Captures the World (DCPA Theatre Company), Under a Baseball Sky (Old Globe), American Mariachi (14 regional theater productions), Sunsets & Margaritas (DCPA Theatre Company), September Shoes (Geva Theatre), The San Patricios (PCPA), Among the Darkest Shadows (Wharton Center for Performing Arts), The Sun Serpent (Childsplay).  In 2022, Mr. González was selected to the Kennedy Center’s Next 50, a new initiative celebrating cultural leadership with 50 trailblazing leaders and organizations. He was also a grantee of the 2021 ReImagine: New Plays in TYA to support the development of The Wondrous Adventures of Pia Sandía. The Astronaut Farmworker was a 2016 PEN Center USA Literary Award finalist.  He is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Professor Emeritus at California State University Los Angeles, The Dramatists Guild of America and TYA/USA, and a board member of the New Harmony Project, dedicated to a desire to support stories of hope, optimism, and the resiliency of the human spirit.

Eric Schmiedl is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, and a graduate of Kent State University and the University of Hawai’i. As a theatre artist he is inspired by the intersection of cultures and stories. He has worked with theatres around the country including the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Cleveland Play House, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Public Theatre, Karamu House, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, the Oregon Children’s Theatre, the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the Lantern Theatre, and Great Lakes Theater. He has partnered with community organizations like the Cleveland Treatment Center to foster performing arts experiences in underserved communities. Eric is the recipient of a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, a Creative Workforce Fellowship, an Aurand Harris Fellowship, and a Sloan Foundation Commission. His plays have been awarded three Edgerton Foundation New American Play Awards. His play My Hemisphere, a partnership with his wife and storyteller Adaora Nzelibe Schmiedl, was a National Playwrights Conference finalist at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in 2020 and 2021. In 2023 he embarked on a collaboration with internationally acclaimed director Liesbeth Coltof, the 10CHILDREN program, and the Cleveland Play House to create a new theatre piece based on the experiences of children in three Cleveland neighborhoods. Eric also began a 2023 tour of the innovative poetry/theatre piece What We Learned While Alone; Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic which premiered at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. He is currently collaborating with playwright José Cruz González and the Cleveland Play House, directing José’s new play exploring the effects of incarceration on families. He is also collaborating with Cleveland-based artists Calil “Just C.O.S.” Cage and Tina D. Stump on a new play based on the Cleveland Buckeyes and their historic 1945 season in the Negro National Baseball League. And he is developing a new musical entitled, Infamous, with composer David Owen Michaels about the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Eric has taught playwriting and theatre history at theatres, colleges, and universities including Kent State University, Spalding University, Cleveland State University, Case Western Reserve University and Baldwin Wallace University. Eric is a proud member of Dobama Theatre’s Playwright’s Gym and of the Cleveland-based folk group The Welcome Table.