Playwright/Author Biographies
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| Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner With Friends (Variety Arts Theatre (New York), Comedie des Champs-Elysees (Paris), Actors Theatre of Louisville, South Coast Repertory, American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, Lucille Lortel Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk nominee).
His many plays include Brooklyn Boy (Manhattan Theatre Club/Biltmore Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Comedie des Champs-Elysees, American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award finalist); Sight Unseen (Manhattan Theatre Club/Biltmore Theatre [2004], Manhattan Theatre Club/Orpheum Theatre [1992], South Coast Repertory, Obie Award, Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, Drama Desk nominee, Pulitzer Prize finalist); Collected Stories (Theatre Royal Haymarket (London), South Coast Repertory, Manhattan Theatre Club, HB Studio/Lucille Lortel Theatre, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle/Ted Schmitt Awards, L.A. Ovation Award, Drama Desk nominee, Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Drama Desk nominee); God of Vengeance (based on the Yiddish classic by Sholem Asch, ACT Theatre (Seattle), Williamstown Theatre Festival); Two Days (Long Wharf Theatre); The Model Apartment (Los Angeles Theatre Center, Primary Stages (New York), Obie Award, Drama-Logue Award, Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award finalist, Drama Desk nominee): The Loman Family Picnic (Manhattan Theatre Club, Drama Desk nominee); What's Wrong With This Picture? (Manhattan Theatre Club, Jewish Repertory Theatre, Brooks Atkinson Theatre); Broken Sleep: Three Plays (Williamstown Theatre Festival); July 7, 1994 (Actors Theatre of Louisville); Found A Peanut (Joseph Papp/New York Shakespeare Festival); Pitching to the Star (West Bank Café); Resting Place (Theatre for the New City); Gifted Children, Zimmer and Luna Park (Jewish Repertory Theatre). His plays have been performed at major theatres across the United States and around the world. Theatre Communications Group has published five volumes of his work. Mr. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He was the recipient of the 2000 Sidney Kingsley Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Theatre. In 2005 he was honored with an Award in Literature given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture's Literary Arts Award. Mr. Margulies is an alumnus of New Dramatists and serves on the council of The Dramatists Guild of America.
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John Mighton |
Playwright and teacher of mathematics, John Mighton was born in Hamilton, Ontario October 2, 1957. His early work as a writer was in poetry, inspired by the self-taught poet, Sylvia Plath. At the age of 28, while helping a friend solve a mathematics problem, he rediscovered the joy of numbers and studied for his doctorate in mathematics at the University of Toronto. He was awarded an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship for research in mathematics at the Fields Institute, and has lectured in philosophy at McMaster University. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto. He created the Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies (JUMP) Project with a group of volunteers to help children learn mathematics, and published The Myth of Ability on the same subject. The interplay between imaginative and scientific impulses is a recurring theme in his work. He has twice won the Dora Mavor Moore Award: for Scientific Americans (premiered at Theatre Passe Muraille 1988, directed by Kathleen Flaherty); and for A Short History of Night (Dark Horse Theatre, Vancouver, 1989, dir. David Wilson). He also won the Chalmers Award for A Short History of Night; and the Governor General's Award for the published text of Possible Worlds & A Short History of Night (Playwrights Canada Press, 1992), and for Half Life (Playwrights Canada Press 2005). Possible Worldspremiered at Canadian Stage in 1990, directed by Peter Hinton . The protagonist believes that he lives in many worlds at the same time, and falls in love with different incarnations of the same woman, as detectives attempt to discover who is responsible for the murders of a series of intelligent individuals, and removed their brains. "Possible worlds" is also a metaphor for the many possible incarnations of lives through theatre. In 2001 the play was produced at the Finborough Theatre, London. It has been made into a film directed by Robert Lepage (2000). Body and Soul premiered at Passe Muraille in 1994 and was directed by Diana Cave. The Little Years, first produced at Theatre Passe Muraille in 1995, explores the frustrations of a scientific girl prodigy. Half Life portrays the relationship of an elderly man and woman in a nursing home, and the way in which this relationship affects their respective middle-aged son and daughter. It considers how memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease redefines character and identity. A visiting Reverend provides thoughtful, often darkly humorous, philosophical choric commentary. The play premiered at the Tarragon Theatre in 2005, co-produced by Necessary Angel Theatre Company, directed by Daniel Brooks , with Eric Peterson as Patrick and Carolyn Hetherington as Clara. The Necessary Angel North American tour of Half Life included Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Ottawa, Theatre D'Ailleurs in Quebec, and Festival de theatre des Ameriques in Montreal. In Scotland, the company produced the play at the Tron in Glasgow, and the Perth Theatre. Mighton's plays have been performed across Canada, in Britain, Europe, Japan and the United States. In 2005 he won the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre, presented to a professional playwright who advances Canadian theatre through a body of work and influences emerging theatre artists. The jury cited the profound combination of intellect and heart embodied in Mr. Mighton's work. His voice has grace, delicacy and a gently humanity. Mr. Mighton also brings tremendous depth to his plays, taking complex, sophisticated ideas and making them playable in a truly theatrical manner. |
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Bios of the playwrights featured in the new Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley
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Beth Henley |
| Beth Henley (Playwright) grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, as the daughter of an attorney and an actress. She earned a B.F.A. at Southern Methodist University in 1974, where she wrote her first play, a one-act called Am I Blue. Her first full-length play, Crimes of the Heart, won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play and the co-winner of the Great American Play Contest sponsored by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. The film version released in 1986 starred Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard. The movie received three Academy Award Nominations including Ms. Henley for Best Adapted Screenplay. Her second play, Miss Firecracker Contest, opened in the spring of 1984 at the Manhattan Theatre Club and has been produced in several regional theatres in the United States and in London at the Bush Theatre. Ms. Henley adapted the play into the film Miss Firecracker, which starred Holly Hunter, Mary Steenburgen, and Tim Robbins. Other plays she’s written include The Wake of Jamey Foster, The Debutante Ball, The Lucky Spot, Abundance, Impossible Marriage, and Revelers. Her newest play, a Hollywood-set drama entitled Exposed, was recently presented at Hartford Stage’s Brand:NEW Fest. In addition to playwriting, Ms. Henley has written several television and movie screenplays, including Survival Guides with Budge Threlkeld for PBS, the films Nobody's Fool, and True Stories, on which she collaborated with Steven Tobolowsky and David Byrne. | |
