Prince William Sound Community College Last Frontier Theatre Conference
General info about the conference here at the college website
Conference Attendees (past and present)
Meron's blog
Adrienne Pender's blog
Jason Grote's blog
Dan Trujillo's blog
Last Frontier Theatre Conference
Last Frontier Theatre Conference
Last edited by Newman on Mon Jun 20, 2005 8:33 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Theatre Conference 2005 - Featured Artists
Theatre Conference 2005 - Featured Artists
All attendees subject to change.
Danielle Dresden is a playwright, actor and residency artist. Her work has been performed throughout the United States and abroad. She received the Council of Wisconsin Writers 2000 Drama Award and was a Finalist for the Yukon Pacific prize at the Last Frontier Theater Conference. As associate director of TAPIT/new works, based in Madison, Wisconsin, Dresden writes, tours, performs and conducts residencies throughout the year. She devotes considerable time to using the arts to build literacy skills among children from low income backgrounds. In 2003 her work was performed across the Midwest, at New York City's Looking Glass Theatre Playwright's Forum, and at the 1st International Festival of Madness and Arts in Toronto, Canada. Dresden has BAs in Journalism and Comparative Literature and a Masters in Business in Arts Administration, all from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Erma Duricko is the founder and Artistic Director of Blue Roses Productions, Inc. (www.blueroses.org) and an Artistic Associate for Circle East Theater Company, NYC. She has directed hundreds of plays in NYC and across the county; and has received numerous awards and grants for directing. Erma is particularly proud to have been the recipient of the first Tennessee Williams Award, recognizing her for Outstanding Contributions Preserving, Promoting and Perpetuating the Work of Tennessee Williams. Her recent professional career is devoted to directing and producing New American Plays and the work of Tennessee Williams. She has directed the world premieres of two unpublished short plays by Mr. Williams, short plays by Lanford Wilson, Craig Lucas, Lisa Humbertson, Tim Brown, John Yearley, Roland Tec, Barbara Vaccaro/Stephen Yaffee, Pamela Turner and many other known and promising writers, as well as many new full-length plays by some of the same writers. For the second year in a row, one of her productions has won The Samuel French Off-Off Broadway New Play Festival and will be published. In New York, she teaches Professional Scene Study classes for working actors and along with Michael Warren Powell and Peg Denithorne, “The Workshop”, a professional lab for writers, directors and actors. When her schedule has allowed, she guest directs at major universities. Ms. Duricko, a long standing member of The Society of Stage Directors/Choreographers, is on the national advisory boards for The Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Alaska, the Delta Tennessee Williams Festival in Mississippi and the editorial board of the Tennessee Williams Journal. She is a member of First Look Theatre Company at Tisch/NYU and The Drama League.
Gary Garrison is the Artistic Director, Producer and a member of the full time faculty in the Department of Dramatic Writing Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He has produced the last eighteen Festivals of New Works for NYU, working with hundreds of playwrights, directors and actors. Garrison’s plays include It Belongs on Stage (and Not in My Bed), Crater, Old Soles, Padding The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou? and When A Diva Dreams. This work has been featured at Primary Stages, The Directors Company, Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Fourth Unity, Open Door Theatre, African Globe Theatre Company, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New York Rep. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of Your Life (Heinemann Press; a revised edition will be out in October, 2005), Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten Minute Play (Heinemann Press) and co-editor of two volumes of Monologues for Men by Men (Heinemann Press) with Michael Wright. He is a the Program Director for the Summer Playwriting Intensive for the Kennedy Center, the National Chair of Playwriting for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival and the Artistic Director for both The First Look Theatre Company at NYU as well as Playwrights’ PlayGround of Manhattan. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Prior to taking his current position as Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Michael Hood was professor of theatre at the University of Alaska Anchorage for 22 years. He was awarded the President's Award of the Northwest Drama Conference in 1994, and received the UAA Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1998. Five of his productions have won regional recognition from the KC/ACTF, most recently Zastrozzi: Master of Discipline for IUP in 2004. Mr. Hood has worked professionally on stage, in film, on radio and television, and has twice directed professionally in the Russian Far East. His production of True West, mounted in Yuzhno-Sahkalinsk in 1994, traveled to acclaim in Khabarovsk and later to Moscow, where it played the new stage at the Moscow Art Theatre in the fall of 1995. In 1997 his UAA production of A Piece of My Heart was performed by invitation at the PODIUM Festival in Moscow. His most recent publication (2000) appeared in Theater sans frontieres, a collection of critical essays on the work and process of Canadian director and animateur Robert Lepage. In 2003, Hood was elected to membership in the National Theater Conference.
Steve Hunt is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Converse College in Spartanburg, SC where he teaches Playwriting, Acting and Directing. He currently serves as the National Playwriting Program Chair for Region IV of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and has served as the Co-Chair for the Southeastern Theatre Conference Ten-Minute Play Festival and Founder of the South Carolina Theatre Association Ten-Minute Play Festival. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and on the Advisory Board for Estreno: Contemporary Spanish Plays. He recently served as the guest critic for the Clemson University New Play Project and reader for the SETC Getchell New Play Award. Five of his plays have been read at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference — A Veiling, Gliders, Girl at the Window, Cinderella Stonesmith and All the King’s Horses — and he appeared as a panelist in 2003.
Jon Klein is the author of over twenty produced plays, produced Off-Broadway and at many prestigious regional theatres, including the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arena Stage in D.C., Arden Theatre in Philadelphia, Center Stage in Baltimore, South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Alley Theatre in Houston, A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Seattle Children’s Theatre, and many others. Produced plays include Wishing Well, Dimly Perceived Threats to the System, T Bone N Weasel, Peoria, Betty the Yeti, The Einstein Project (co-authored with Paul D’Andrea), and Octopus. His newest play, Suggestiblity, is currently premiering at Victory Theatre in Los Angeles. He has also written several stage adaptations, including one of the popular children’s book, Bunnicula, which is currently on national tour. Two adaptations of the Hardy Boys book series have been widely produced, and his stage version of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black was produced at ACT Theatre in Seattle. Jon adapted T Bone N Weasel for a Turner Network film, starring the late, great Gregory Hines and Christopher Lloyd. Awards for other screenplays include the UCLA Showcase, the Zaki Gordon Memorial Award, and the George Burns and Gracie Allen Comedy Award. He has also received both the HBO Playwrights USA award and the Midwest Author’s award for T Bone N Weasel, a CBS New Play Award for Losing It, and three National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships. Dimly Perceived Threats to the System was a finalist for the American Critics Theatre Award. Jon has been a Playwright-in-Residence at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, and the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. He has taught playwriting and screenwriting at the University of Texas, the University of Washington, Ohio University, and Hollins University. He was recently appointed the head of the MFA Playwriting Program at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Barclay Kopchak lives just a ferry ride away in Cordova, Alaska where she is active in local Stage of the Tide productions. She has acted (Clairee in Steel Magnolias, Edna Mae Carter in Just Desserts), sung (Golde in Fiddler on the Roof, Queen Aggravain in Once Upon a Mattress, Sarah in Quilters) and directed (You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown). In her offstage hours Barclay teaches at PWSCC, launches kayak tours, and answers questions about proper apostrophe usage. She dreams of mastering the triple buck and wing step.
Colby H. Kullman is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi where he has taught since 1984. He is editor of the two-volume reference work Theatre Companies of the World (1986), is co-founder and co-editor (with Philip C. Kolin) of the journal Studies in American Drama, 1945 – Present (1986-1994), and co-editor of Speaking on Stage (1996, with Philip C. Kolin). His interview with Arthur Miller appeared in the Fall 1998 Michigan Quarterly Review, a special edition of the journal celebrating Millers Death of a Salesman at fifty. Awaiting publication are articles on Mart Crowley, Beth Henley, Tennessee Williams, and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. For the past ten years, he has given tours of Tennessee Williams’ Mississippi Delta. In 1995, he was awarded the University of Mississippi’s Liberal Arts Teacher of the year; in 1997, he was elected as Ole Miss’s Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher; and in 2001, he was celebrated with a Phi Kappa Phi Award for Contributions to Excellence in Higher Education.
Mark Lutwak just completed six years as artistic director for Honolulu Theatre for Youth, directing 28 plays, including 15 world premieres, and has developed several new play programs, including classes, workshops, and writers’ groups. Prior to HTY, he worked as a freelance stage and video director in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and Seattle, specializing in developing and directing new plays at such theatres as New Dramatists, Arena Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, Public Theatre, Kennedy Center New Visions/New Voices, Taller Latinoamericano, George Street Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Seattle Group Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, First Stage Milwaukee, Annex Theatre, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, and Kumu Kahua Theatre. He was a founding director of The Road Show in Los Angeles and Theatre for Your Mother in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was founding executive director of Rain City Projects, a playwrights’ service organization based in the Pacific Northwest; a producer, director, and writer of award-winning interactive media for Videodiscovery; a founding member of Theatre Puget Sound, and served on the board of the Hawai‘i State Theatre Council. He is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.
A UAA Theatre alum, P. Shane Mitchell left Alaska to earn his Masters Degree in Theatre Communications at Wichita State University and returned to Anchorage in 1997 to benefit the community he loves. As a playwright Shane has two published plays with a third pending publication in the fall of 2005. He has over twenty original works and adaptations produced all over the United States. He received a Panelists Choice Award at the Edward Albee Theatre Conference for his work Fractured and a Bard Fellowship for his work A Card For Mr. King.
As a performer Shane received Best Actor Awards at both UAA and WSU, is the recipient of two Patricia Neal Acting Awards and is known as one of Alaska's most eminent and critically acclaimed artists. He has toured nationally and internationally and was an American Arts Representative to the 2000 Olympics and World Voices Concert in Australia. Shane has appeared with almost every theatre company in the Anchorage area including Eccentric Theatre Company, Kokopelli, Bright Night's Summer Rep, UAA, Once a Year Theatre, JanDar, Valley Performing Arts, and the Three Baron's Fair.
As an arts educator Shane brings twenty years of experience to the table. He has taught theatre at every level from pre-kindergarten through college and was a founding member of the University of Alaska Anchorage's Theatre For Young People. Shane has lead intensives, residencies and workshops all over the United States and in several international venues and is in constant demand with many youth programs such as Campfire Boys and Girls, Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, and Boy and Girl Scouts, not only working with young people but to train adults to work with young people.
Mr. Mitchell is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Dawson Moore (Conference Coordinator) has been involved in the Last Frontier Theatre Conference since 1995, when he was one of six Alaska playwrights presenting their work in the first Play Lab. He presented in the Lab for the next five years, also participating as an actor. When awards were still being given out, he won them for both his writing and acting. He received his BA in Theatre from UAA in 1997, then moved to California. He spent one year in Los Angeles, where he was a story analyst for Skylark Films. A family emergency forced him to move to San Francisco in 1999, where he became very active in the theatre community. He served as literary manager for Eureka Theatre, and was one of two founding artistic directors of Three Wise Monkeys Theatre Company (www.threewisemonkeys.org), a company dedicated to producing work by Bay Area writers. Their Bay One-Acts Festival is currently in its fourth year. In addition to publishing the plays from this collection in an anthology each year, a number of the plays presented there have gone on to productions in Bologne, Italy, with Theatro del Naville, including Moore’s Bile in the Afterlife and Living with the Savage. In Anchorage, Moore is responsible for creating the Alaska Overnighters, a bi-yearly series of plays fully created and realized in 24 hours. The series has been called ‘some of the best theatre of the year’ in the Anchorage Daily News, and to date has produced 48 premieres by Alaska playwrights. Moore’s other produced plays include LibidOFF, The War of Virginia and Alabama, Domestic Companion, Welcome to the Future, Happy Loving Couples are a Thing of the Past, Laundry Time, Secret Stuffing, The Making of Eye Contact, The Tie, Sand & Granite On Liberty, Oh, Nancy!, Burning, and In a Red Sea, which recently won awards for performance, direction and the script at the Turnip 15-Minute Play Festival in New York City.
Gregory Lawrence Pulver is currently the Assoc Professor at Western Washington University in Costume Design. He teaches courses in Beginning Costuming, Costume Design I & II, Costume History, Millinery, Introduction to Design Communication, Movement for Actors and Puppetry. He is also an active director/choreographer in the Northwest and Northern California. His recent titles include The Suppliant Women, The Impossible Marriage, Nunsense I, II and IV (really…), and Bye, Bye Birdie. Mr. Pulver holds an MFA in Costume Design and Choreography from Humboldt State University, CA. He is the 1993 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) National Costume Design Winner for his work on Three Penny Opera. Gregory is currently the KCACTF Regional Chair of Design for the Northwest Region VII – Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming. He is currently working to develop a new work by graduate playwright Sheri Akers, and director Deb Currier at Western Washington University, which will include the use of Bun Raku Puppets and live action.
Ronald Rand (Actor, Playwright) recently appeared with Marian Seldes, Elizabeth Ashley, Jayne Atkinson, Libby Skala , Donald Margulies, and Rosemary Harris in a program he created for The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series at The Jewish Museum in New York City. He began his acting career appearing in over 250 plays at a professional children's theatre in Florida. His Off-Broadway debut in Julius Caesar at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Richard Dreyfuss and George Rose, was followed by numerous New York appearances including Hamm in Endgame ,directed by Joseph Chaikin; the lead in Goldoni's The Liar; as the First Gravedigger in Hamlet; leads in several of Bernard Shaw's plays; and all three male roles in Perfect Crime for two years. Mr. Rand also toured for five months throughout Europe as the Fool in King Lear. Mr. Rand appeared as Sturdyvant in a sold-out run in The Classical Theatre of Harlem's production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by Arthur French. His television appearances include: Milton Sterns in A Marriage - O'Keefe and Steiglitz on American Playhouse, opposite Jane Alexander & Christopher Plummer; Homeless with Yoko Ono; Law & Order; Saturday Night Live (for many seasons); and all of New York City's daytime serials. His extensive film work include roles in The Emperor's Club; In & Out; Jerky Boys; Another You; Rude Awakening; and Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford. He studied with Stella Adler for over 5 years, receiving a B.F.A. in Acting at NYU's School of the Arts, and was also fortunate to have studied with Harold Clurman. He counts among his mentors: Jerzy Grotowski, Joseph Chaikin, Richard Schechner, John Strasberg, Sabra Jones, and Bobby Lewis. He also studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. As a playwright, Mr. Rand's plays also include Ode to the Moon; Ziz, King of the Birds; The Site of Human Life; and The Group! about the life of The Group Theatre (World Premiere at Northern Illinois University, February, 2004). The Group! also received the distinction of being chosen to appear in the York Theatre's New Play Series, as well as The Cherry Lane Theatre New Play Festival, and has also been seen at The Actors Studio, The Harold Clurman Theatre, Lambs Theatre, Stella Adler Theatre, Neighborhood Playhouse, and The Century Center. Mr. Rand is the Founder and publishes The Soul of the American Actor, now in its seventh year of circulation. It is the only free newspaper in America dedicated to the art and craft of the actor and the art of the theatre. Over the past three years Clurman has received acclaim in New York City: Off Broadway in an exclusive three week run at The Century Center , at The Players, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Maggie Flanigan Studios, Sande Shurin Theatre, Penny Templeton Studio s, Actors Movement Studio (for William Esper ’s students), Episcopal Actors’ Guild of America, and at New York University. Across the nation Clurman has also received standing ovations at the Governor’s School for the Arts (Norfolk, Virginia), Northern Illinois University (Dekalb, Illinois), University of the Arts & Villanova University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Vaudeville Muse Theatre (Des Moines, Iowa), and as a special presentation at The New England Theatre Conference’s Annual Convention (NETC) in Bedford, New Hampshire.
Elaine Romero participated in the 2004 Sundance Institute’s Playwright’s Retreat at the Ucross Foundation. Her plays Barrio Hollywood, ¡Curanderas! Serpents of the Clouds, Day of Our Dead, and If Susan Smith Could Talk have been presented at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Borderlands Theater, Women’s Project and Productions, INTAR, Kitchen Dog Theatre, the Working Theatre, San Diego Repertory, The Phoenix Theatre, Invisible Theatre, and the New Theatre. She has been published by Vintage Books, Samuel French, Smith & Kraus (Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2000), Poems & Plays, UA Press, and has new publications by Heinemann Press, Samuel French, and the University of Iowa Press. Playwright-in-Residence at the Arizona Theatre Company, Romero runs the National Latino Playwrights Award. Romero has been a Guest Artist at the Mark Taper Forum and South Coast Repertory. Her funders include the TCG/Pew National Theatre Artist in Residency Program, the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, and the Ford Foundation. She has served on panels for the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, the TCG/MetLife Extended Collaboration Grant, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and the Gerbode Foundation. She served as Playwright-in-Residence as part of the William Inge Theatre Festival and at the Cornucopia Arts Center in Lanesboro, Minnesota. Learn more about Elaine on her website: www.elaineromero.com.
Laura Shamas, Ph.D., is a playwright, professor, and cultural mythologist. Her playwriting awards include a Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation grant, a Fringe First Award for Outstanding New Drama (Edinburgh), a Drama-Logue Award, and the Warner Brothers Award. She has written twenty-eight plays. Some of her published plays are The Other Shakespeare, Picnic at Hanging Rock (adaptation), Amelia Lives, Lady-Like, Living Doll, Saucer City, and Portrait of a Nude. Her monologue "Too Cool" will be published in 2005 in New Monologues For Women By Women, Volume Two (Heinemann). Twenty of her plays are included in the Alexander Street Press database collection of “Women Playwrights, 1700 - Present.” Her political comedy Re-Sourcing ran at the NoHo Arts Center this past fall. Her plays have been produced at various theaters around the country, including the Philadelphia Theater Company, Walnut Street Theater, Denver Center Theater Company, Grove Street Playhouse, and in L.A. at West Coast Ensemble. Some of her plays have been read/developed at the Geva Theater, the Old Globe, the Utah Shakespearean Festival, ASK, and the Midwest Playlabs. Her dissertation, “We Three”: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters, will be published in 2006 by Peter Lang USA Publishing. She teaches at Pepperdine University. She is the Creator/Editor of Headline Muse.com; she works as a myth consultant to two major corporations. In May 2005, a play she co-wrote with Paula Cizmar, entitled Venus in Orange opens at the Victory Theater, Los Angeles. In August 2005, another show written by Cizmar and Shamas entitled Mistresspiece will open at West Coast Ensemble, L.A. For more information on Laura, please visit [url=http
://www.laurashamas.com]www.laurashamas.com[/url].
Kate Snodgrass is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Elliot Norton Award-winning Boston Theater Marathon and Artistic Director of Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott’s Boston Playwrights' Theatre. The author of the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award-winning and much-anthologized play Haiku, her film co-adaptation premiered at the 1995 Boston Film Festival. Her plays have been translated and performed all over the world along with her short works (L’Air Des Alpes, last seen in Boston’s Centastage/Underground Railway Theatre’s 1998 “Women On Top” Festival, Que Sera, Sera and Critics’ Circle, seen in the First and Third Annual Boston Theater Marathons, respectively) which have been anthologized by Bakers Plays, Dramatic Publishing Company, Samuel French, Applause Theatre Books, and Viking Press. Kate’s full-length play Observatory, winner of the 1998 Provincetown Theatre Company’s Playwriting Award Competition and produced by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, was awarded the 1999 IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Best New Play. Her play The Glider was produced at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in November, 2004 and nominated for the American Theatre Critics Assn.’s Steinberg Award and a 2005 IRNE Award. As an actor, Kate studied at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art and in NYC with disciples of Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner; she has appeared at Lincoln Center, in regional theatres, and on national television. She lectures in Playwriting in the Boston University Graduate School, and her teaching credits include Wichita State University, Michigan State University, Brandeis University, Harvard University Extension School, American Repertory Theatre Institute, Boston College, and Wellesley College, among others. Kate is a member of A.E.A., A.F.T.R.A., and the Dramatists' Guild, Vice President of StageSource, Inc., in Boston, and a board member at North Shore Music Theatre. She is the National Chair of Playwriting at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.
Aoise Stratford has received many awards for her plays, which have been performed in the USA, Australia, Canada and Italy. Somewhere In Between (or) The Ghost of Molly Malone has been awarded a Pinter Review Prize Silver Medal (2004), the Yukon Pacific Playwright Award (2000) and an American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award nomination (2002). The ten-minute play Elephants and Coffee has won several awards including the Alan Minieri Award (2003), a Five and Dime Playwriting Award (2002), and was a finalist for the Heideman Award (2003). Will and The Ghost, a one-act play co-written with Conal Condren, won the New Britain Repertory One-Act Contest (2002) and the Pennsylvania Playhouse Contest (2002), and Love And A Wide Moon has been a finalist for Stage Three, the Eric Bentley Award, and The Nancy Weil New Play Search. Ms. Stratford has been a writer in residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, is a founding member of Three Wise Monkeys Theatre Company (where she now serves as advisor in chief), has served as a respondent for KC/ACTF, is a member of the Dramatists Guild, and of the Australian National Playwrights Centre, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Playwrights' Center of San Francisco. She also has an MFA in fiction and has won awards for her short stories, and been published in various literary journals.
Jayne Wenger is a director, dramturg and producer whose primary focus is on original material. Throughout over 25 years of professional theater experience, she has been dedicated to the development, direction and production of original plays and solo performances. She is the past Artistic Director of the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation (1995-2000) and was the Artistic Director of Women's Ensemble of New York for eight years. As Artistic Director of the Playwright's Foundation she developed the emerging work of playwrights such as Naomi Izuka, Nilo Cruz, Ann Galjour, Holly Hughes, Brighde Mullins, Deke Weaver and Brenda Wong Aoki. Her direction of the world premiere of Claire Chafee's Why We Have a Body at the Magic Theater was recognized with numerous awards including a Dramalogue Award for Best Direction and a Cable Car award for Best Achievement in Theater. She won a Dramalogue Award for her direction of the Los Angeles premiere of Body. She collaborated with Chafee on Practical Guide for the Night Sky, a commission for Berkeley Rep with musician Beth Custer, and served as the dramaturg for her Darwin's Finches last year at the Encore Theater in San Francisco. Some past collaborations include Sara Felder's June Bride and Schtick, which both tour throughout the country; and Virtually Yours by Kate Bornstein, a pioneering lesbian transsexual performer and author. With Tom Ross, the Artistic Director of the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, she produced Reno in Reno at Josie's and the West Coast premieres of David Cale's Lillian and Somebody Else's House. Directing new work is her passion, and she has extensive experience working closely with playwrights in the development of new plays.
John Yearley’s most recent play, Leap, won the Mickey Kaplan New American Play Prize. It was produced at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in February. John has also won the Samuel French Award for short plays each of the last two years, first for A Low-Lying Fog in 2003 and then for All in Little Pieces in 2004. Other awards include the John Gassner Award for his play Ephemera, which was workshopped by the LAByrinth Theatre Company, and the Panelist’s Choice Award at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference for his play Angel Baby. In 2002, John was playwright-in-residence at Abingdon Theatre in New York, which produced his play Bruno Hauptmann Kissed My Forehead. John’s short plays include Hating Beckett, which debuted at the Long Wharf Theater. An evening of John’s short work, entitled The Unrepeatable Moment, was produced in New York last year under the direction of Joe Calarco. He also co-wrote the downtown hit (and Time Out Pick-of-the-Week) Gratuitous Nudity with friend Roland Tec. John is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the William Esper Studio. He is a member of the Blue Roses Theatre Company, the Writers Guild of America, and the Dramatists Guild.
Y York has written lots of plays for children and their adults, many of which are published by Broadway Play Publishing and Dramatic Publishing. Awards and Honors and Festivals: AT&T Onstage Award, 2004, (The Forgiving Harvest); TCG-Pew Charitable Trust artist-in-residence at Honolulu Theatre for Youth, 2001-2003, (Nothing is the Same); AATE Charlotte Chorpenning Award for body-of-work, 2002; AATE best adaptation, 2001, (Afternoon of the Elves); New America Play Festival, San Jose Rep, 1998, (Krisit); Berrilla Kerr playwriting award, 1997, (The Secret Wife); Sundance Institute, 1989, (Gerald’s Good Idea), 1996, (The Last Paving Stone); Joe Calloway award from New Dramatists, 1992; Mark Taper Forum New Works, 1993, (Gerald’s Good Idea); New Visions/New Voices Kennedy Center, 1993 (...Elves), 2004, (Nothing is the Same); New Harmony Project, 1996, (The Game of Light); ASK Theatre Projects, 1996, (TSW), 1998 (TGOL), 2000, (The New Dark Clarity); Arena Stage New Works, 1996, (TSW); Provincetown Playhouse New Play Festival, 2002 (The Forgiving Harvest), 2005 (River Rat and Cat). Y’s plays have also received support from the NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, and King County and Seattle Arts Commissions, both in Washington State. Y is a proud alumna of New Dramatists, member of the Dramatists’ Guild, and she still lives with Mark Lutwak to whom many things are still dedicated
information from PWSCC Theatre Conference 2005 - Featured Artists
All attendees subject to change.
Danielle Dresden is a playwright, actor and residency artist. Her work has been performed throughout the United States and abroad. She received the Council of Wisconsin Writers 2000 Drama Award and was a Finalist for the Yukon Pacific prize at the Last Frontier Theater Conference. As associate director of TAPIT/new works, based in Madison, Wisconsin, Dresden writes, tours, performs and conducts residencies throughout the year. She devotes considerable time to using the arts to build literacy skills among children from low income backgrounds. In 2003 her work was performed across the Midwest, at New York City's Looking Glass Theatre Playwright's Forum, and at the 1st International Festival of Madness and Arts in Toronto, Canada. Dresden has BAs in Journalism and Comparative Literature and a Masters in Business in Arts Administration, all from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Erma Duricko is the founder and Artistic Director of Blue Roses Productions, Inc. (www.blueroses.org) and an Artistic Associate for Circle East Theater Company, NYC. She has directed hundreds of plays in NYC and across the county; and has received numerous awards and grants for directing. Erma is particularly proud to have been the recipient of the first Tennessee Williams Award, recognizing her for Outstanding Contributions Preserving, Promoting and Perpetuating the Work of Tennessee Williams. Her recent professional career is devoted to directing and producing New American Plays and the work of Tennessee Williams. She has directed the world premieres of two unpublished short plays by Mr. Williams, short plays by Lanford Wilson, Craig Lucas, Lisa Humbertson, Tim Brown, John Yearley, Roland Tec, Barbara Vaccaro/Stephen Yaffee, Pamela Turner and many other known and promising writers, as well as many new full-length plays by some of the same writers. For the second year in a row, one of her productions has won The Samuel French Off-Off Broadway New Play Festival and will be published. In New York, she teaches Professional Scene Study classes for working actors and along with Michael Warren Powell and Peg Denithorne, “The Workshop”, a professional lab for writers, directors and actors. When her schedule has allowed, she guest directs at major universities. Ms. Duricko, a long standing member of The Society of Stage Directors/Choreographers, is on the national advisory boards for The Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Alaska, the Delta Tennessee Williams Festival in Mississippi and the editorial board of the Tennessee Williams Journal. She is a member of First Look Theatre Company at Tisch/NYU and The Drama League.
Gary Garrison is the Artistic Director, Producer and a member of the full time faculty in the Department of Dramatic Writing Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He has produced the last eighteen Festivals of New Works for NYU, working with hundreds of playwrights, directors and actors. Garrison’s plays include It Belongs on Stage (and Not in My Bed), Crater, Old Soles, Padding The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou? and When A Diva Dreams. This work has been featured at Primary Stages, The Directors Company, Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Fourth Unity, Open Door Theatre, African Globe Theatre Company, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New York Rep. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of Your Life (Heinemann Press; a revised edition will be out in October, 2005), Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten Minute Play (Heinemann Press) and co-editor of two volumes of Monologues for Men by Men (Heinemann Press) with Michael Wright. He is a the Program Director for the Summer Playwriting Intensive for the Kennedy Center, the National Chair of Playwriting for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival and the Artistic Director for both The First Look Theatre Company at NYU as well as Playwrights’ PlayGround of Manhattan. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Prior to taking his current position as Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Michael Hood was professor of theatre at the University of Alaska Anchorage for 22 years. He was awarded the President's Award of the Northwest Drama Conference in 1994, and received the UAA Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1998. Five of his productions have won regional recognition from the KC/ACTF, most recently Zastrozzi: Master of Discipline for IUP in 2004. Mr. Hood has worked professionally on stage, in film, on radio and television, and has twice directed professionally in the Russian Far East. His production of True West, mounted in Yuzhno-Sahkalinsk in 1994, traveled to acclaim in Khabarovsk and later to Moscow, where it played the new stage at the Moscow Art Theatre in the fall of 1995. In 1997 his UAA production of A Piece of My Heart was performed by invitation at the PODIUM Festival in Moscow. His most recent publication (2000) appeared in Theater sans frontieres, a collection of critical essays on the work and process of Canadian director and animateur Robert Lepage. In 2003, Hood was elected to membership in the National Theater Conference.
Steve Hunt is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Converse College in Spartanburg, SC where he teaches Playwriting, Acting and Directing. He currently serves as the National Playwriting Program Chair for Region IV of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and has served as the Co-Chair for the Southeastern Theatre Conference Ten-Minute Play Festival and Founder of the South Carolina Theatre Association Ten-Minute Play Festival. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and on the Advisory Board for Estreno: Contemporary Spanish Plays. He recently served as the guest critic for the Clemson University New Play Project and reader for the SETC Getchell New Play Award. Five of his plays have been read at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference — A Veiling, Gliders, Girl at the Window, Cinderella Stonesmith and All the King’s Horses — and he appeared as a panelist in 2003.
Jon Klein is the author of over twenty produced plays, produced Off-Broadway and at many prestigious regional theatres, including the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arena Stage in D.C., Arden Theatre in Philadelphia, Center Stage in Baltimore, South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Alley Theatre in Houston, A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Seattle Children’s Theatre, and many others. Produced plays include Wishing Well, Dimly Perceived Threats to the System, T Bone N Weasel, Peoria, Betty the Yeti, The Einstein Project (co-authored with Paul D’Andrea), and Octopus. His newest play, Suggestiblity, is currently premiering at Victory Theatre in Los Angeles. He has also written several stage adaptations, including one of the popular children’s book, Bunnicula, which is currently on national tour. Two adaptations of the Hardy Boys book series have been widely produced, and his stage version of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black was produced at ACT Theatre in Seattle. Jon adapted T Bone N Weasel for a Turner Network film, starring the late, great Gregory Hines and Christopher Lloyd. Awards for other screenplays include the UCLA Showcase, the Zaki Gordon Memorial Award, and the George Burns and Gracie Allen Comedy Award. He has also received both the HBO Playwrights USA award and the Midwest Author’s award for T Bone N Weasel, a CBS New Play Award for Losing It, and three National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships. Dimly Perceived Threats to the System was a finalist for the American Critics Theatre Award. Jon has been a Playwright-in-Residence at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, and the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. He has taught playwriting and screenwriting at the University of Texas, the University of Washington, Ohio University, and Hollins University. He was recently appointed the head of the MFA Playwriting Program at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Barclay Kopchak lives just a ferry ride away in Cordova, Alaska where she is active in local Stage of the Tide productions. She has acted (Clairee in Steel Magnolias, Edna Mae Carter in Just Desserts), sung (Golde in Fiddler on the Roof, Queen Aggravain in Once Upon a Mattress, Sarah in Quilters) and directed (You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown). In her offstage hours Barclay teaches at PWSCC, launches kayak tours, and answers questions about proper apostrophe usage. She dreams of mastering the triple buck and wing step.
Colby H. Kullman is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi where he has taught since 1984. He is editor of the two-volume reference work Theatre Companies of the World (1986), is co-founder and co-editor (with Philip C. Kolin) of the journal Studies in American Drama, 1945 – Present (1986-1994), and co-editor of Speaking on Stage (1996, with Philip C. Kolin). His interview with Arthur Miller appeared in the Fall 1998 Michigan Quarterly Review, a special edition of the journal celebrating Millers Death of a Salesman at fifty. Awaiting publication are articles on Mart Crowley, Beth Henley, Tennessee Williams, and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. For the past ten years, he has given tours of Tennessee Williams’ Mississippi Delta. In 1995, he was awarded the University of Mississippi’s Liberal Arts Teacher of the year; in 1997, he was elected as Ole Miss’s Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher; and in 2001, he was celebrated with a Phi Kappa Phi Award for Contributions to Excellence in Higher Education.
Mark Lutwak just completed six years as artistic director for Honolulu Theatre for Youth, directing 28 plays, including 15 world premieres, and has developed several new play programs, including classes, workshops, and writers’ groups. Prior to HTY, he worked as a freelance stage and video director in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and Seattle, specializing in developing and directing new plays at such theatres as New Dramatists, Arena Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, Public Theatre, Kennedy Center New Visions/New Voices, Taller Latinoamericano, George Street Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Seattle Group Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, First Stage Milwaukee, Annex Theatre, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, and Kumu Kahua Theatre. He was a founding director of The Road Show in Los Angeles and Theatre for Your Mother in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was founding executive director of Rain City Projects, a playwrights’ service organization based in the Pacific Northwest; a producer, director, and writer of award-winning interactive media for Videodiscovery; a founding member of Theatre Puget Sound, and served on the board of the Hawai‘i State Theatre Council. He is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.
A UAA Theatre alum, P. Shane Mitchell left Alaska to earn his Masters Degree in Theatre Communications at Wichita State University and returned to Anchorage in 1997 to benefit the community he loves. As a playwright Shane has two published plays with a third pending publication in the fall of 2005. He has over twenty original works and adaptations produced all over the United States. He received a Panelists Choice Award at the Edward Albee Theatre Conference for his work Fractured and a Bard Fellowship for his work A Card For Mr. King.
As a performer Shane received Best Actor Awards at both UAA and WSU, is the recipient of two Patricia Neal Acting Awards and is known as one of Alaska's most eminent and critically acclaimed artists. He has toured nationally and internationally and was an American Arts Representative to the 2000 Olympics and World Voices Concert in Australia. Shane has appeared with almost every theatre company in the Anchorage area including Eccentric Theatre Company, Kokopelli, Bright Night's Summer Rep, UAA, Once a Year Theatre, JanDar, Valley Performing Arts, and the Three Baron's Fair.
As an arts educator Shane brings twenty years of experience to the table. He has taught theatre at every level from pre-kindergarten through college and was a founding member of the University of Alaska Anchorage's Theatre For Young People. Shane has lead intensives, residencies and workshops all over the United States and in several international venues and is in constant demand with many youth programs such as Campfire Boys and Girls, Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, and Boy and Girl Scouts, not only working with young people but to train adults to work with young people.
Mr. Mitchell is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Dawson Moore (Conference Coordinator) has been involved in the Last Frontier Theatre Conference since 1995, when he was one of six Alaska playwrights presenting their work in the first Play Lab. He presented in the Lab for the next five years, also participating as an actor. When awards were still being given out, he won them for both his writing and acting. He received his BA in Theatre from UAA in 1997, then moved to California. He spent one year in Los Angeles, where he was a story analyst for Skylark Films. A family emergency forced him to move to San Francisco in 1999, where he became very active in the theatre community. He served as literary manager for Eureka Theatre, and was one of two founding artistic directors of Three Wise Monkeys Theatre Company (www.threewisemonkeys.org), a company dedicated to producing work by Bay Area writers. Their Bay One-Acts Festival is currently in its fourth year. In addition to publishing the plays from this collection in an anthology each year, a number of the plays presented there have gone on to productions in Bologne, Italy, with Theatro del Naville, including Moore’s Bile in the Afterlife and Living with the Savage. In Anchorage, Moore is responsible for creating the Alaska Overnighters, a bi-yearly series of plays fully created and realized in 24 hours. The series has been called ‘some of the best theatre of the year’ in the Anchorage Daily News, and to date has produced 48 premieres by Alaska playwrights. Moore’s other produced plays include LibidOFF, The War of Virginia and Alabama, Domestic Companion, Welcome to the Future, Happy Loving Couples are a Thing of the Past, Laundry Time, Secret Stuffing, The Making of Eye Contact, The Tie, Sand & Granite On Liberty, Oh, Nancy!, Burning, and In a Red Sea, which recently won awards for performance, direction and the script at the Turnip 15-Minute Play Festival in New York City.
Gregory Lawrence Pulver is currently the Assoc Professor at Western Washington University in Costume Design. He teaches courses in Beginning Costuming, Costume Design I & II, Costume History, Millinery, Introduction to Design Communication, Movement for Actors and Puppetry. He is also an active director/choreographer in the Northwest and Northern California. His recent titles include The Suppliant Women, The Impossible Marriage, Nunsense I, II and IV (really…), and Bye, Bye Birdie. Mr. Pulver holds an MFA in Costume Design and Choreography from Humboldt State University, CA. He is the 1993 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) National Costume Design Winner for his work on Three Penny Opera. Gregory is currently the KCACTF Regional Chair of Design for the Northwest Region VII – Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming. He is currently working to develop a new work by graduate playwright Sheri Akers, and director Deb Currier at Western Washington University, which will include the use of Bun Raku Puppets and live action.
Ronald Rand (Actor, Playwright) recently appeared with Marian Seldes, Elizabeth Ashley, Jayne Atkinson, Libby Skala , Donald Margulies, and Rosemary Harris in a program he created for The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series at The Jewish Museum in New York City. He began his acting career appearing in over 250 plays at a professional children's theatre in Florida. His Off-Broadway debut in Julius Caesar at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Richard Dreyfuss and George Rose, was followed by numerous New York appearances including Hamm in Endgame ,directed by Joseph Chaikin; the lead in Goldoni's The Liar; as the First Gravedigger in Hamlet; leads in several of Bernard Shaw's plays; and all three male roles in Perfect Crime for two years. Mr. Rand also toured for five months throughout Europe as the Fool in King Lear. Mr. Rand appeared as Sturdyvant in a sold-out run in The Classical Theatre of Harlem's production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by Arthur French. His television appearances include: Milton Sterns in A Marriage - O'Keefe and Steiglitz on American Playhouse, opposite Jane Alexander & Christopher Plummer; Homeless with Yoko Ono; Law & Order; Saturday Night Live (for many seasons); and all of New York City's daytime serials. His extensive film work include roles in The Emperor's Club; In & Out; Jerky Boys; Another You; Rude Awakening; and Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford. He studied with Stella Adler for over 5 years, receiving a B.F.A. in Acting at NYU's School of the Arts, and was also fortunate to have studied with Harold Clurman. He counts among his mentors: Jerzy Grotowski, Joseph Chaikin, Richard Schechner, John Strasberg, Sabra Jones, and Bobby Lewis. He also studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. As a playwright, Mr. Rand's plays also include Ode to the Moon; Ziz, King of the Birds; The Site of Human Life; and The Group! about the life of The Group Theatre (World Premiere at Northern Illinois University, February, 2004). The Group! also received the distinction of being chosen to appear in the York Theatre's New Play Series, as well as The Cherry Lane Theatre New Play Festival, and has also been seen at The Actors Studio, The Harold Clurman Theatre, Lambs Theatre, Stella Adler Theatre, Neighborhood Playhouse, and The Century Center. Mr. Rand is the Founder and publishes The Soul of the American Actor, now in its seventh year of circulation. It is the only free newspaper in America dedicated to the art and craft of the actor and the art of the theatre. Over the past three years Clurman has received acclaim in New York City: Off Broadway in an exclusive three week run at The Century Center , at The Players, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Maggie Flanigan Studios, Sande Shurin Theatre, Penny Templeton Studio s, Actors Movement Studio (for William Esper ’s students), Episcopal Actors’ Guild of America, and at New York University. Across the nation Clurman has also received standing ovations at the Governor’s School for the Arts (Norfolk, Virginia), Northern Illinois University (Dekalb, Illinois), University of the Arts & Villanova University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Vaudeville Muse Theatre (Des Moines, Iowa), and as a special presentation at The New England Theatre Conference’s Annual Convention (NETC) in Bedford, New Hampshire.
Elaine Romero participated in the 2004 Sundance Institute’s Playwright’s Retreat at the Ucross Foundation. Her plays Barrio Hollywood, ¡Curanderas! Serpents of the Clouds, Day of Our Dead, and If Susan Smith Could Talk have been presented at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Borderlands Theater, Women’s Project and Productions, INTAR, Kitchen Dog Theatre, the Working Theatre, San Diego Repertory, The Phoenix Theatre, Invisible Theatre, and the New Theatre. She has been published by Vintage Books, Samuel French, Smith & Kraus (Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2000), Poems & Plays, UA Press, and has new publications by Heinemann Press, Samuel French, and the University of Iowa Press. Playwright-in-Residence at the Arizona Theatre Company, Romero runs the National Latino Playwrights Award. Romero has been a Guest Artist at the Mark Taper Forum and South Coast Repertory. Her funders include the TCG/Pew National Theatre Artist in Residency Program, the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, and the Ford Foundation. She has served on panels for the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, the TCG/MetLife Extended Collaboration Grant, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and the Gerbode Foundation. She served as Playwright-in-Residence as part of the William Inge Theatre Festival and at the Cornucopia Arts Center in Lanesboro, Minnesota. Learn more about Elaine on her website: www.elaineromero.com.
Laura Shamas, Ph.D., is a playwright, professor, and cultural mythologist. Her playwriting awards include a Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation grant, a Fringe First Award for Outstanding New Drama (Edinburgh), a Drama-Logue Award, and the Warner Brothers Award. She has written twenty-eight plays. Some of her published plays are The Other Shakespeare, Picnic at Hanging Rock (adaptation), Amelia Lives, Lady-Like, Living Doll, Saucer City, and Portrait of a Nude. Her monologue "Too Cool" will be published in 2005 in New Monologues For Women By Women, Volume Two (Heinemann). Twenty of her plays are included in the Alexander Street Press database collection of “Women Playwrights, 1700 - Present.” Her political comedy Re-Sourcing ran at the NoHo Arts Center this past fall. Her plays have been produced at various theaters around the country, including the Philadelphia Theater Company, Walnut Street Theater, Denver Center Theater Company, Grove Street Playhouse, and in L.A. at West Coast Ensemble. Some of her plays have been read/developed at the Geva Theater, the Old Globe, the Utah Shakespearean Festival, ASK, and the Midwest Playlabs. Her dissertation, “We Three”: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters, will be published in 2006 by Peter Lang USA Publishing. She teaches at Pepperdine University. She is the Creator/Editor of Headline Muse.com; she works as a myth consultant to two major corporations. In May 2005, a play she co-wrote with Paula Cizmar, entitled Venus in Orange opens at the Victory Theater, Los Angeles. In August 2005, another show written by Cizmar and Shamas entitled Mistresspiece will open at West Coast Ensemble, L.A. For more information on Laura, please visit [url=http
://www.laurashamas.com]www.laurashamas.com[/url].
Kate Snodgrass is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Elliot Norton Award-winning Boston Theater Marathon and Artistic Director of Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott’s Boston Playwrights' Theatre. The author of the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award-winning and much-anthologized play Haiku, her film co-adaptation premiered at the 1995 Boston Film Festival. Her plays have been translated and performed all over the world along with her short works (L’Air Des Alpes, last seen in Boston’s Centastage/Underground Railway Theatre’s 1998 “Women On Top” Festival, Que Sera, Sera and Critics’ Circle, seen in the First and Third Annual Boston Theater Marathons, respectively) which have been anthologized by Bakers Plays, Dramatic Publishing Company, Samuel French, Applause Theatre Books, and Viking Press. Kate’s full-length play Observatory, winner of the 1998 Provincetown Theatre Company’s Playwriting Award Competition and produced by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, was awarded the 1999 IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Best New Play. Her play The Glider was produced at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in November, 2004 and nominated for the American Theatre Critics Assn.’s Steinberg Award and a 2005 IRNE Award. As an actor, Kate studied at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art and in NYC with disciples of Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner; she has appeared at Lincoln Center, in regional theatres, and on national television. She lectures in Playwriting in the Boston University Graduate School, and her teaching credits include Wichita State University, Michigan State University, Brandeis University, Harvard University Extension School, American Repertory Theatre Institute, Boston College, and Wellesley College, among others. Kate is a member of A.E.A., A.F.T.R.A., and the Dramatists' Guild, Vice President of StageSource, Inc., in Boston, and a board member at North Shore Music Theatre. She is the National Chair of Playwriting at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.
Aoise Stratford has received many awards for her plays, which have been performed in the USA, Australia, Canada and Italy. Somewhere In Between (or) The Ghost of Molly Malone has been awarded a Pinter Review Prize Silver Medal (2004), the Yukon Pacific Playwright Award (2000) and an American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award nomination (2002). The ten-minute play Elephants and Coffee has won several awards including the Alan Minieri Award (2003), a Five and Dime Playwriting Award (2002), and was a finalist for the Heideman Award (2003). Will and The Ghost, a one-act play co-written with Conal Condren, won the New Britain Repertory One-Act Contest (2002) and the Pennsylvania Playhouse Contest (2002), and Love And A Wide Moon has been a finalist for Stage Three, the Eric Bentley Award, and The Nancy Weil New Play Search. Ms. Stratford has been a writer in residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, is a founding member of Three Wise Monkeys Theatre Company (where she now serves as advisor in chief), has served as a respondent for KC/ACTF, is a member of the Dramatists Guild, and of the Australian National Playwrights Centre, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Playwrights' Center of San Francisco. She also has an MFA in fiction and has won awards for her short stories, and been published in various literary journals.
Jayne Wenger is a director, dramturg and producer whose primary focus is on original material. Throughout over 25 years of professional theater experience, she has been dedicated to the development, direction and production of original plays and solo performances. She is the past Artistic Director of the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation (1995-2000) and was the Artistic Director of Women's Ensemble of New York for eight years. As Artistic Director of the Playwright's Foundation she developed the emerging work of playwrights such as Naomi Izuka, Nilo Cruz, Ann Galjour, Holly Hughes, Brighde Mullins, Deke Weaver and Brenda Wong Aoki. Her direction of the world premiere of Claire Chafee's Why We Have a Body at the Magic Theater was recognized with numerous awards including a Dramalogue Award for Best Direction and a Cable Car award for Best Achievement in Theater. She won a Dramalogue Award for her direction of the Los Angeles premiere of Body. She collaborated with Chafee on Practical Guide for the Night Sky, a commission for Berkeley Rep with musician Beth Custer, and served as the dramaturg for her Darwin's Finches last year at the Encore Theater in San Francisco. Some past collaborations include Sara Felder's June Bride and Schtick, which both tour throughout the country; and Virtually Yours by Kate Bornstein, a pioneering lesbian transsexual performer and author. With Tom Ross, the Artistic Director of the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, she produced Reno in Reno at Josie's and the West Coast premieres of David Cale's Lillian and Somebody Else's House. Directing new work is her passion, and she has extensive experience working closely with playwrights in the development of new plays.
John Yearley’s most recent play, Leap, won the Mickey Kaplan New American Play Prize. It was produced at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in February. John has also won the Samuel French Award for short plays each of the last two years, first for A Low-Lying Fog in 2003 and then for All in Little Pieces in 2004. Other awards include the John Gassner Award for his play Ephemera, which was workshopped by the LAByrinth Theatre Company, and the Panelist’s Choice Award at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference for his play Angel Baby. In 2002, John was playwright-in-residence at Abingdon Theatre in New York, which produced his play Bruno Hauptmann Kissed My Forehead. John’s short plays include Hating Beckett, which debuted at the Long Wharf Theater. An evening of John’s short work, entitled The Unrepeatable Moment, was produced in New York last year under the direction of Joe Calarco. He also co-wrote the downtown hit (and Time Out Pick-of-the-Week) Gratuitous Nudity with friend Roland Tec. John is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the William Esper Studio. He is a member of the Blue Roses Theatre Company, the Writers Guild of America, and the Dramatists Guild.
Y York has written lots of plays for children and their adults, many of which are published by Broadway Play Publishing and Dramatic Publishing. Awards and Honors and Festivals: AT&T Onstage Award, 2004, (The Forgiving Harvest); TCG-Pew Charitable Trust artist-in-residence at Honolulu Theatre for Youth, 2001-2003, (Nothing is the Same); AATE Charlotte Chorpenning Award for body-of-work, 2002; AATE best adaptation, 2001, (Afternoon of the Elves); New America Play Festival, San Jose Rep, 1998, (Krisit); Berrilla Kerr playwriting award, 1997, (The Secret Wife); Sundance Institute, 1989, (Gerald’s Good Idea), 1996, (The Last Paving Stone); Joe Calloway award from New Dramatists, 1992; Mark Taper Forum New Works, 1993, (Gerald’s Good Idea); New Visions/New Voices Kennedy Center, 1993 (...Elves), 2004, (Nothing is the Same); New Harmony Project, 1996, (The Game of Light); ASK Theatre Projects, 1996, (TSW), 1998 (TGOL), 2000, (The New Dark Clarity); Arena Stage New Works, 1996, (TSW); Provincetown Playhouse New Play Festival, 2002 (The Forgiving Harvest), 2005 (River Rat and Cat). Y’s plays have also received support from the NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, and King County and Seattle Arts Commissions, both in Washington State. Y is a proud alumna of New Dramatists, member of the Dramatists’ Guild, and she still lives with Mark Lutwak to whom many things are still dedicated
information from PWSCC Theatre Conference 2005 - Featured Artists
from backstage.com
read more...Last Frontier Confab Rides On
Minus Albee and Other Names, Theatre Gathering Still Draws Talent
By Catherine Stadem
Anchorage, Alaska -- Despite changes in leadership and co-founder Edward Albee's lack of participation this year, Alaska's premier theatre event, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference -- known informally since 1993 as "the Albee conference" -- will be held again in Valdez, June 18–25.
2006 Theater Conference
Patricia Neal awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Alaska. Dick Reichman's Play, "War" is performed. Alaskans Arlitia Jones and P. Shane Mitchell, as well as Connecticut playwrite J. Sibley Law write an "overnighter", where a groups writes and performs a play in 24 hours. And the Anchorage International Film Festival shows highlights from last year's festival.
Read all about it at the Valdez Star:
Read all about it at the Valdez Star:
- read more at The Valdez Star NewspaperBy Ron Holmstrom
Special to the Star
Dawson Moore, Coordinator for the 14th Annual Last Frontier Theatre Conference reports that attendance for this year’s event is even higher than last year. And there is growing local support and attendance to sweeten the pot.
Opening weekend brought an installment of the popular ‘Overnighters,’ wherein playwrights meet at seven at night and are assigned a premise for a play, a director and a cast. The writer then goes off to write a complete play by 8:00 a.m. the next morning. It is then turned over to the director and cast.