Each Monday night on the Waldron Stage of Mill Mountain Theatre, the Playwright’s Lab at Hollins University presents a talk by a prominent working professional theatre artist:
June 24 Guest Speaker: Jacqueline E. Lawton, 7:30 PM
Lawton – playwright, dramaturg, producer, advocate – is the Dramatist Guild of America regional representative for North Carolina. She received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She is a 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color award recipient and an alum of National New Play Network Playwright Alum, Arena Stage’s Playwrights’ Arena, and Center Stage’s Playwrights Collective. Currently, she is an assistant professor in the department of dramatic art at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company.
July 1 Guest Speaker: Kirsten Fitzgerald, 7:30 PM
Fitzgerald – actor, director, artistic director – is a proud member of the Artistic Ensemble and the current artistic director at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago. She received a Jeff Award for her performance in The Sea Horse at A Red Orchid and an After Dark Award for her performance in A Moon for the Misbegotten at Circle Theatre. On television, Fitzgerald plays Mac in Sirens (USA) and has been seen on Chicago Fire (NBC), ER (NBC) and Underemployed (MTV). She also teaches acting at DePaul University and Columbia College. She has a B.A. (theatre & film) from The University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS and an M.F.A. (acting) from The University of Iowa in Iowa City.
July 8 Guest Speaker: Becky Becker, 7:30 PM
Becker – playwright, director, dramaturg – is professor of theatre and chair of the department of performing arts at Clemson University. She has directed a wide range of established works, as well as such new works as Compañeras, The Old Ship of Zion, and Eddie’s Stone Song: Odyssey of the First Pasaquoyan. She is chair of the National Playwriting Program for Region 4 of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Her research interests include new plays, cross-cultural theatre, hidden histories, social justice, and embodied cognition. Becker completed an M.A. in theatre arts at the University of North Dakota and earned her Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University.
July 15 Guest Speaker: Carl Hancock Rux, 7:30 PM
Rux – playwright, librettist, composer, vocalist, poet – is the author of the novel, Asphalt (Simon Schuster), the OBIE Award winning play, Talk, and the Village Voice Literary prize-winning collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta. He is the former head of the M.F.A. Writing for Performance Program at the California Institute of the Arts (2006–09) and has taught or been in residence at the University San of California–Diego, Stanford University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Hollins University, the University of Iowa, and Brown University. He is the recipient of several awards including the Herb Alpert Prize, NYFA Prize, NYFA Gregory Millard Fellow, and NEA/TCG Artist-in-Residency Fellow. http://carlhancockrux.com/
July 22 Guest Speaker: Bob Moss, 7:30 PM
Moss – director, Playwrights Horizons founder – has been affiliated with Hollins Playwright’s Lab since 2009. He is lead faculty for the New Play Directing Certificate program and for the past five years has served as resident professional teaching artist for the M.F.A. program. He began his teaching career in 1983 at the Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, an affiliate program of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and was director of the school from 1990-97. He has taught at Syracuse University, Ithaca College and SUNY Cortland. Moss has been an artistic director for 37 years, continues to direct regionally, and was recently named a living legend of Off-Off Broadway.
