New Mentors at Boston Playwrights' Theatre

A NEW GENERATION OF PLAYWRITING MENTORS AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY

After twenty-six years of teaching in and steering Boston University’s graduate playwriting program, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott is retiring to his home in the Caribbean. The Playwriting program he built in tandem with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre has brought Boston and the nation some of the brightest young playwrights. John Kuntz, Karen Zacarias, Russell Lees, Joyce Van Dyke, John Shea, Kate Snodgrass, Wesley Savick, Ginger Lazarus, Janet Kenney, Sinan Unel, and Dan Hunter are only a few of the over 130 playwrights he mentored.

Professor Walcott continues to write in his home on the island of St. Lucia in the Lesser Antilles.

Of Derek Walcott, Kate Snodgrass, his former student and the Artistic Director of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, says, “Nobody’s as generous in the classroom as Derek, and we want to continue his legacy. Derek wanted to bring the playwright into closer contact with the actor, and he knew the collaboration would be successful. But he had no idea how many first rate playwrights would lift the program’s visibility over the years. We’ve been as lucky in our students as we have been in our founder.”

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre is happy to announce that Ronan Noone and Melinda Lopez have joined our faculty. Two of Professor Walcott’s brightest students, nationally known for their award-winning plays, will now teach his Master Classes. Ms. Lopez will teach The Writing of Plays this Fall, and Ronan Noone will continue to teach the class next Spring. Rounding out Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s faculty are award-winning playwrights Kate Snodgrass and Richard Schotter.

Melinda Lopez, a playwright and actress, was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a “promising new voice in American Theatre.” Her play Sonia Flew, which was developed and premiered by the Huntington Theatre Company, won the Elliot Norton Award for Best New Play and two IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Awards for Best Play and Best Production. It has subsequently been produced at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Laguna Playhouse, Ariel Tepper’s Summer Play Festival (NY), the Milagro Theatre (Portland, OR), and the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. The play has been broadcast on NPR’s “The Play’s The Thing!” in a production by L.A. Theatre Works with a cast that included Elizabeth Peña and Hector Elizondo. Most recently, her play Gary was produced at Steppenwolf Theatre’s First Look Play Festival in Chicago and, in March 2008, at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre where it was nominated for an Elliot Norton Award by the Boston Theatre Critics Association.

Playwright Ronan Noone won the Michael Kanin National Playwriting Award, a university competition that involved 1,200 productions and 20,000 students nationwide, with his The Lepers of Baile Baiste. The Lepers… was then performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 2002, just as Ronan was completing his graduate work at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. That play and The Blowin of Baile Gall, the second play in his Irish trilogy, shared the 2002 IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Best New Play. In May 2003, he received the Boston Theatre Critics Association’s Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Play for The Blowin of Baile Gall, also nominated for the American Critics Association’s Steinberg New Play Award. His recent plays Brendan and The Atheist (starring Campbell Scott) were premiered at the Huntington Theatre Company in 2007, and in April 2008, Brendan was named Best New Play at the IRNE Awards. In June 2008, The Athiest (with Campbell Scott) opened at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and will make its Off Broadway New York debut at the Cultural Project/Barrow Street Theatre in October of this year.

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