2001 Ohio University Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwrights’ Festival
Guest Mentors
Ellen McLaughlin’s plays have received numerous national and international productions. They include Days and Nights Within, A Narrow Bed, and Infinity House. All three of these plays premiered at Actors’ Theater of Louisville and Days and Nights Within won the theater’s Great American Play Contest. A Narrow Bed was produced Off-Broadway by the New York Theater Workshop and was co-winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 1987. Iphigenia and Other Daughters was written for the Actors’ gang in Los Angeles and premiered there. It was produced Off-Broadway at the Classic Stage Company in February of 1995. Her play Tongue of a Bird, premiered at the Intiman Theater in Seattle and was subsequently produced by the Almeida Theater in London, the Mark Taper Forum in L.A., the Public Theater in NYC, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among other venues. It was published by Samuel French. McLaughlin is a recipient of a grant from the NEA and is a winner of the writer’s award from Lila Wallace-Readrer’s Digest Fund. McLaughlin is also an actor. She is most well known for having originated the part of the Angel in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, appearing in every U.S. production from its earliest workshops through its Broadway run.
Todd London is currently at the University of Washington’s School of Drama as Executive Director/Professor. Mr. London holds the newly established Floyd U. Jones Family Endowed Chair in Drama. Before that he spent 18 seasons as Artistic Director of New York’s New Dramatists, the nation’s oldest center for the support and development of playwrights, where he has worked closely with more than a hundred and fifty of America’s leading playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. Last year saw the publication of his two newest books, An Ideal Theater: Founding Visions for a New American Art (Theatre Communications Group), and a collection of Todd’s theatre essays, The Importance of Staying Earnest: Writings from Inside the American Theatre, 1988-2013 (NoPassport Press). He is also the author (with Ben Pesner) of Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (Theatre Development Fund), The Artistic Home (TCG), and The World’s Room, a novel (Steerforth Press), among others. “A Lover’s Guide to American Playwrights,” his column of tributes to contemporary playwrights, appears on howlround.com.
In 2009 Todd became the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) Visionary Leadership Award for “an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theatre field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.” A former managing editor of American Theatre, he has won the prestigious George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his essays and a Milestone Award for his novel. Under his leadership, New Dramatists received a special Tony® Honor and the Obie’s Ross Wetzsteon Award. His essays and articles have been translated for publication in Russia, North and South Africa, Scandinavia, Serbia, and Romania. Dr. London has taught at Harvard, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and, for the past eight years, at the Yale School of Drama. He’s a past Literary Director of the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard and Associate Artistic Director of CSC Rep off Broadway and New Playwrights Theatre in Washington, D.C. He holds an MFA in Directing from Boston University and a PhD in Literary Studies from American University. He is married to playwright Karen Hartman (UW School of Drama Senior Artist in Residence) and has two sons, Guthrie and Grisha.
Milan Stitt was born in Detroit and attended Cooley High School and the University of Michigan. Long associated with the Circle Repertory Company in New York City, which produced all of his plays including Back in the Race and The Runner Stumble with William Hurt. He wrote and directed “Labor Day” for company member Christopher Reeve. The Runner Stumbles was named Best Broadway Play of 1976 in the annual Best Plays book. It has been published in four American versions and translated into several languages. The film version with his screenplay was made by Stanley Kramer. Among his teleplays are The Gentleman Bandit, Kentucky Ride, and Long Shadows, which was nominated for an International Emmy for best film. As an educator, he was chairman of the Playwriting Program at the Yale School of Drama and also taught writing at Princeton, New York University, University of Michigan, and was Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Worchester State University. He founded The New American Theater School at the Women’s Project and Productions. He was also the Head of the Dramatic Writing Program at Carnegie Mellon University where he was awarded the Raymond W. Smith Chair in Dramatic Writing. His articles on theater and travel have appeared in The New York Times and Horizon magazine. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, he received writing grants from both the New York and Michigan Councils for the Arts and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Stitt passed away in March of 2009 at the age of 68.
2001 Festival Line Up:
May 24th
1:00PM She Calls Up the Sun by Addae Moon
3:00PM Closure… by Brian Lindecker
8:00PM The Motherline by Chantal Bilodeau
10:30PM Blood in the Water by Justin Boyd
May 25th
3:00PM Becoming American: A Gook Story Part Two by Qui Nguyen
8:00PM The Death of the Good Doctor by Stephen Svoboda
10:30 The Whooping Hour… by Sarah Zettler
May 26th
10:00AM Lila Cante by Mark B. Snyder
1:30PM His Eye is on the Sparrow by Erin Mansur-Smith
3:30PM Morning Coffee by Jennifer Ricciardi
8:00PM Killing El Cid by Dan Shea