Playwright/Author Biographies
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Barbara Adams Selected and edited by Ms. Adams |
| Barbara Adams has written The Enemy Self; Poetry and Criticism of Laura Riding; Double Solitare, A Chapbook of Poems; Hapax Legomena, and, most recently, The Ordinary Living. Her stories, poems and essays have appeared widely in magazines since 1972. God's Lioness and the Crow: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, a one-act play, was produced in 2000 by Mohonk Mountain Stage Company. Adams received her Ph.D. from NYU. She recently retired as Professor of English at Pace University in order to write full time. She has four children and two grandchildren. She lives in Newburgh, NY | |
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Laurence Carr |
| Laurence Carr wears many hats for and with MMSC: actor, Playwright-in-Residence and Dramaturg, as well as serving as head of the Dramatic Writing Program for the State University of New York at New Paltz. Carr's plays and theatre pieces have been produced in NYC and throughout the US for nearly thirty years. His play, Vaudeville, recently opened the season at Virginia Stage Company and continues to be produced regionally. Kennedy At Colonus was produced Off-Broadway and was cited in the Burns Mantle Best Play Series. A short play, Baklava, was commissioned by Airworks for National Public Radio. Mr. Carr has taught dramatic and creative writing at the State University of New York at New Paltz since 1995. A member of the Dramatists Guild since 1975, he has received playwriting grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the NY State Council on the Arts. | |
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Caryl Churchill |
Playwright Caryl Churchill was born on 3 September 1938 in London and grew up in the Lake District and in Montreal. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read English. Downstairs, her first play, was written while she was still at university, was first staged in 1958 and won an award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival. She wrote a number of plays for BBC radio including The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1967) and Abortive (1971). The Judge's Wife was televised by the BBC in 1972 and Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year. She was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974-5) and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working with the theatre groups 'Joint Stock' and 'Monstrous Regiment'. Her work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), written with David Lan. Three More Sleepless Nights was first produced at the Soho Poly, London, in 1980. Top Girls brings together five historical female characters at a dinner party in a London restaurant given by Marlene, the new managing director of 'Top Girls' employment agency. The play was first staged at the Royal Court in 1982, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. It transferred to Joseph Papp's Public Theatre in New York later that year. Serious Money was first produced at the Royal Court in 1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. More recent plays include Mad Forest (1990), written after a visit to Romania, and The Skriker (1994). Her plays for television include The After Dinner Joke (1978) and Crimes (1982). Far Away premiered at the Royal Court in 2000, directed by Stephen Daldry. She has also published a new translation of Seneca's Thyestes (2001), and A Number (2002), which addresses the subject of human cloning. Her latest play is a new version of August Strindberg's A Dream Play (2005), premiered at the National Theatre in 2005. Caryl Churchill lives in London. |
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Garson Kanin |
Garson Kanin began as a young successful New York actor and the right hand man of Broadway impresario George Abbot. He adored the theatre and directing films wasn't a "big deal." "The theatre is my love and my life the movies are a mistress," he declared. He honored his first love by directing many of Broadway's best, including The Diary of Anne Frank, A Hole in the Head, The Rat Race, The Live Wire, Do Re Mi, Funny Girl and, of course, Born Yesterday. |
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Suzanne Logan |
| Suzanne Logan has a BA and a Masters Degree in art history from the University of California at Berkeley. Her masters thesis in art history was published by Cambridge University Press in 1985. She has also written a childrens book , Kids Can Help (GP Putnam) and for various national publications including Hope magazine and the Christian Science Monitor. Her first play, Knowing Women, had it’s world premiere with Mohonk Mountain Stage in New Paltz, New York in October 20002, with a repeat performance in February of 2003. Knowing Women was also staged at the Cornelia Street Café in New York’s Greenwich Village in the spring of '05. A work still in progress, the newest version of Knowing Women will be performed again this fall in the Parish Hall at Ascension Church in West Park. Ms. Logan lives in Sharon, Connecticut. She is the mother of two grown daughters and the very proud grandmother of her first grandchild, Lena Logan Linsley. | |
Heather McDonald |
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(MFA, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, 1984) a professional director and playwright, Ms. McDonald has taught Playwriting for the Theater Department of George Mason University for seven years. In the spring of 1999, she directed the GMU Players production of her 1986 play, Rivers and Ravines, which was commissioned by the Arena Stage. McDonald received the National Arts Club's prestigious Kesselring Award for Best New American Play in 1999, and was nominated for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. Her play, An Almost Holy Picture was named Best New Play of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and opened on Broadway at The Roundabout Theatre in February 2002. Additionally, Heather was a guest at the 2001 Sundance Festival. Heather's play When Grace Comes In premiered at The La Jolla Playhouse in the summer of 2002 and was produced by at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in September 2002. McDonald's other works include Faulkner's Bicycle, Dream of a Common Language and the libretto for the opera The End of the Affair. McDonald and the Cleveland Playhouse were recently awarded a collaboration grant from the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights. She also recently acceped a commision from Madison Repertory Theatre to adapt Gerda Lerner's memoir Firewood.
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Will Nixon |
Will Nixon has published two chapbooks, When I Had It Made (Pudding House Press) and The Fish Are Laughing (Pavement Saw Press). Locally, his poems have appeared in Chronogram, The Country & Abroad, Prima Materia, and Hunger. His personal essays about the Catskills are at www.mycabinfever.com. He lives in Woodstock, NY |
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