CJ Hopkins

CJ Hopkins is an American playwright, novelist, and political satirist. Among his works are the plays Horse Country, screwmachine/eyecandy and The Extremists.

CJ Hopkins
Born
Miami, Florida
NationalityAmerican
OccupationPlaywright, author

Career

Early works

Hopkins was a 1994 Drama League of New York Developing Artist Fellow and a 1995 Resident Artist/Jerome Foundation Fellow at Mabou Mines/Suite.[1]

Horse Country

His 1992 play, Horse Country, had its UK premiere at the 2002 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Lyn Gardner in The Guardian wrote: "Hopkins's two-hander brings the spirit of Godot to America's bars and puts the bourbon in Beckett. It feels like a serious piece of theatre rather than fringe fluff."[2] It won a Scotsman Fringe First for New Writing and the 2002 Scotsman Best of the Fringe Firsts Award,[3][4] and later won the 2004 Best of The Adelaide Fringe Award. Following its London premiere at Riverside Studios,[5] Horse Country toured the UK, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12]

Later works

Hopkins' play screwmachine/eyecandy was copyrighted in 1994, but updated when it was performed a decade later.[13] A production ran during the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Assembly Rooms when The Scotsman described it as a "dark and twisted comedy" about the American game show in which "the excesses of American culture are held up to the light, roundly lampooned and shown to be the poisonous, culturally carcinogenic threats that they really are."[14] It received a Scotsman Fringe First Award for New Writing.[15] The US production was presented at 59E59 Theaters[16] in New York in 2006. Mark Blankenship wrote in his review for Variety: "Although he apes the themes of everything from 1984 to Series 7, a film about a murderous reality show, Hopkins delivers his dogmatism with heavy-handed arrogance."[13] A production was presented at the PushPush theater in Decatur, Georgia in 2008,[17] and it was performed at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2017.[18]

Also in 2006, Hopkins' commission by the Free University of Berlin to write and direct a site-specific work, The Insurgency, was staged in German at the university's Philological Library.[19]

His 2009 play, The Extremists, commissioned by 7 Stages and directed by Walter D. Asmus, premiered in Berlin and Atlanta in 2010.[20]

Novels
  • Zone 23, (self published, 2017) ISBN 978-3000555268[21]

Plays
  • Horse Country, Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 0413774074 (2004)
  • screwmachine/eyecandy, Broadway Play Publishing Inc., ISBN 0881453382 (2007)
  • The Extremists, Broadway Play Publishing Inc., ISBN 0881454419 (2010)
  • The Insurgency, Bordercrossing Berlin, Verlagshaus J. Frank (2006)
  • cunnilinguistics
  • How To Entertain the Rich
  • The Installation
  • A Place Like This[22]

References
  1. "Program History/Artist Alumni". Mabou Mines. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  2. Gardner, Lyn (20 August 2002). "Horse Country". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  3. "The Scottish Playground | The Village Voice". The Village Voice. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  4. Sumi, Glenn (27 March 2003). "Horse country". NOW Magazine. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  5. "Edinburgh Horse Country Rides In for London Double". WhatsOnStage.com. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  6. "PAST SHOWS - HORSE COUNTRY by CJ Hopkins 2002 (USA)". www.theatretoursinternational.com. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  7. "Was that a seal I saw you with last night?". The Globe and Mail. 18 April 2003. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  8. "Harbourfront Centre - World Stage 2012 | History of World Stage". www.harbourfrontcentre.com. Harbourfront Centre. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  9. "Fringe Vault". fringevault.com.au.
  10. "ATG Events - Reviews". theatreguide.tripod.com.
  11. "Horse Country :: Arts Projects Australia". www.artsprojects.com.au.
  12. Vries, Mark de; Dost, Lennard; Visschedijk, Rik; Piël, Wideke; Brink, Jan Auke (August 29, 2004). "Dagelijks verslag Noorderzon festival - Noorderzon verblindt". 8weekly.nl.
  13. Blankenship, Mark (April 16, 2005). "screwmachine/eyecandy". Variety. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
  14. "Screwmachine/Eyecandy". The Scotsman. August 8, 2005. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
  15. Adam, Karla (August 29, 2005). "Top Prizes at Edinburgh Fringe". The New York Times.
  16. "screwmachine/eyecandy | Theater | reviews, guides, things to do, film". Time Out New York.
  17. Holman, Curt (December 10, 2008). "Theater Review - screwmachine/eyecandy at PushPush Theater". Creative Loafing. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  18. Janiak, Lily (September 12, 2017). "A case for the Fringe Festival as central". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  19. "Bibliothek als Bühne". www.fu-berlin.de. Free University of Berlin. September 21, 2006.
  20. Holman, Curt. "Theater Review - The Extremists disarms weapons of mass distraction". Creative Loafing. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  21. "Rebelion. La "hitlerización" de Jeremy Corbyn (entre otros)". www.rebelion.org. Rebelion.org. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  22. "OOB's Theatorium Gets Out of A Place Like This, June 17". Playbill. 2000. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
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