As her husband John is dying in a nearby room, a young woman named Ailyn sits in an abandoned reading room with Richard, a priest and John’s childhood friend. The pair take an emotional journey as they talk of trees, love, childhood, death, and Cinderella's betrayal of young girls' ambitions. Tree of Life is a full-length drama about need and the mistakes we make in grief and loneliness.
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Pia Wilson
(Playwright)
Pia Wilson is a 2011 Heideman Award finalist for her short play, TURNING THE GLASS AROUND and a semi-finalist in the 2011 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She is a 2012 resident with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace program, a member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, and a 2009 playwriting fellow with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is also a member of The Passage Theatre Play Lab and a member of the 2009 Project Footlight team of composers and librettists.
Her full-lengthe play, THE FLOWER THIEF, was an August 2012 co-production between Horse Trade Theater Group and The Fire This Time play festival. Her play, GENERATION T, was featured in The Classical Theatre of Harlem's Future Classics reading series in June 2012. Her full-length drama, RED ROOSTER, was likewise a part of the Future Classics reading series as well as the Emerging Writers Spotlight Series at The Public Theater in 2009. ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS was featured in The Looking Glass Theatre's Spring 2009 Writer/Director Forum. THE RIVER PURE FOR HEALING was part of the 2008 Resilience of the Spirit play festival. Her play, TREE OF LIFE, received a 2007 workshop production at The Red Room Theater.
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Shelley Butler
(Director)
Shelley Butler is a New York-based director who has worked extensively with writers on new plays and musicals. Recent productions include the critically acclaimed world premiere production of This is Fiction by Megan Hart, starring Richard Masur at Cherry Lane (InViolet Rep), The Borrowers, James and the Giant Peach (South Coast Repertory), No Way to Treat a Lady (The Colony Theater), Agamemnon 2.0 (Cadbury Theatre, UK), world premieres of Christina Gorman's Sacred Ground (Stella Adler), Ruth McKee’s The Nightshade Family (SPF), John Glore’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time (South Coast Repertory) and Eric Coble's Straight On 'Til Morning (Great Lakes Theater Festival). New York premiere of Adam Rapp's Mistral (Drama League). Educational productions of Much Ado About Nothing (Powerhouse Theater), Beckett Shorts (LIU Post) and Kid Simple (UNC MFA Program). Shelley spent two seasons as artistic associate in charge of new play development for Hartford Stage and three seasons as artistic associate for Great Lakes Theater Festival. She has directed and developed new work for Hartford Stage, South Coast Repertory (Pacific Playwrights Festival & New SCRipts), New York Stage and Film, Primary Stages, New Dramatists, the Lark, New Georges, Women’s Project, Dixon Place, The Playwright’s Realm, Urban Stages, Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theatre, Terra Nova, GroundUp, InViolet Rep, and NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing. Shelley is the recipient of a Drama League Directing Fellowship, a 2005 Director’s Guild of America Trainee with rotations on E.R., BONES, THE UNIT and multiple pilots and a member of SDC, the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab and the Women’s Project Directors Lab.
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