UAlbany Grad Stephen Guirgis Wins Pulitzer

Stephen Adly Guirgis, who graduated from the University at Albany in 1990 with a major in Theatre, is the 2015 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his new play "Between Riverside and Crazy."

The Pulitzer jury called the work, "a nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death."

Guirgis visited the New York State Writers Institute on April 12, 2010.

More about his visit here:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/guirgis_stephen10.html

An interview with Guirgis posted on the Institute's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFR2iMDmcFE

Guirgis studied theatre with NYS Writers Institute Fellow and UAlbany Professor W. Langdon Brown and with the late Jarka Burian of the Theatre Department who-- together with his wife Grayce Burian-- established and endowed the Institute's annual Burian Lecture on the art of the theatre.

More on the Burian Lecture here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/burian_lectures.html

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Praise for John Lahr's new book

John Lahr, who visits the Writers Institute this Wednesday, Oct. 1st,  receives high praise from some notable admirers for his new biography, Tennessee Williams:  Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (2014).

More about Lahr's upcoming visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/lahr_john14.html

‘Splendid beyond words. It would be hard to imagine a more satisfying biography.’Bill Bryson
 
‘Could this be the best theater book I’ve ever read? It just might be. Tennessee Williams had two great pieces of luck. Elia Kazan to direct his work and now John Lahr to make thrilling sense of his life’John Guare, author of Six Degrees of Separation, House of Blue Leaves, Atlantic City

This is a masterpiece about a genius. Only John Lahr, with his perceptions about the theater, about writers, about poetry and about people could have written this book. What a marvelous read, with brilliantly detailed research.’Helen Mirren

‘John Lahr’s magnificent biography…gathers material from a vast array of sources, including Williams’s diaries, poems, letters and the recollections of countless friends and colleagues,to trace how the personal and the creative lives interweave throughout the whole span of Williams’s oeuvre. The result is at once sensitive and magisterial, and it fulfils the ultimate test for a literary biography by convincing you that the works cannot be understood without it. Once you have read it, it becomes part of their meaning.’John Carey, lead review, Sunday London Times

‘This is by far the best book ever written about America’s greatest playwright. John Lahr, the longtime drama critic for the New Yorker, knows his way around Broadway better than anyone. He is a witty and elegant stylist, a scrupulous researcher, a passionate yet canny advocate… Hebrings us as close to Williams as we are ever likely to get.’J.D. McClatchy,Wall Street Journal

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Christopher Durang to Play Vanya

Broadway comedy king Christopher Durang, who visited us on March 10, will perform in a regional production of his 2013 Tony Award winning play.

From the New York Times:

The playwright Christopher Durang, who wrote “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” is set to star as Vanya in a coming production at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa., the producers announced. The comedy, which takes place in Bucks County and won a Tony last year for best play, is scheduled to run from July 17 to Aug. 10. Marilu Henner (“Taxi”) has been cast as Masha, a role played by Sigourney Weaver in the Off Broadway and Broadway productions. Vanya was originally played by David Hyde Pierce. The production is to be directed by Sheryl Kaller (“Mothers and Sons”).

More about Durang's Albany visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/durang_chris14.html

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New Event-- Staged Reading of a New Play

HOW IT REALLY HAPPENED     
A play by Eszter Szalczer

Followed by Q&A with playwright, director and cast

Directed by W. Langdon Brown

A staged reading with cast members Janet Hurley Kimlicko, Steve Madore, Gary Maggio, Patrick McKenna, Barbara Richards, Eileen Schuyler and Don Paul Shannon

April 8 (Tuesday)

Dramatic Reading – 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], Science Library 340, Uptown Campus

Whose story is the true story? How can one grasp control of the narratives of one’s own life? Working on her new book, writer Karin Smirnoff (1880-1973) struggles to come to terms with her past in an attempt to challenge the notorious stories of her overbearing father, the world-renowned author and dramatist August Strindberg.

Eszter Szalczer is a dramaturg, theatre historian, and scholar of modern drama. Her recent book August Strindberg (Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists, 2010) focuses on the Swedish playwright as one of the most radical innovators of the modern stage. It was when working on her previous book, Writing Daughters: August Strindberg's Other Voices (Norvik Press 2008) that Eszter became interested in exploring the creative processes of writing, the role of memory, the fine line between fiction and non-fiction, and how the same story could be told differently from several different perspectives.

Langdon Brown is a Fellow of the Writers Institute, UAlbany English professor and director of Authors Theatre. He has worked as a producer, arts administrator, director and dramaturge in the London Fringe, Off-Broadway, regional theatre, and on a variety of university campuses.

Cast

Janet Hurley Kimlicko. A member of Actor’s Equity, she has performed in Chicago, Dallas, Austin, Houston, and New York City. She was last seen in How Water Behaves (CapRep), The Little Foxes, Arms and the Man and Ah! Wilderness with Theater Voices, and Right You Are (Theater East).

Steve Madore received his MA in Theatre History and Dramatic Criticism from the State University of New York at Albany and has completed several years of coursework as a doctoral student in the Department of Theatre and Drama at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Gary Maggio, semi-retired, works part-time as a standardized patient at Albany Medical College. Recently he's acted in productions of Harvey, The Boys Next Door, and Our Son's Wedding (Curtain Call Theatre) Proof and Faith Healer (Albany Civic Theater), and The Vanek Plays (Theater Voices).

Patrick McKenna has performed on Capital Region stages for the past 30 years. Favorite roles include Tom in The Glass Menagerie; Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses; Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest; the Narrator in Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood and Dylan Thomas in A Child's Christmas in Wales.

Barbara Richards is a graduate of the University at Albany's Theatre Department. She has had a career in theatre and arts administration in New York and Albany, and has worked extensively as an actress with Curtain Call Theatre in Latham for the past 15 years

Eileen Schuyler is delighted to return to UAlbany, where she taught acting for nine years. She has performed at Soho Rep, Studio Arena Theater, Fulton Opera House, Capital Rep, Stageworks/Hudson, Proctors Theater, HRS Showcase Theatre, Queens Theater in the Park, NYSTI, Hubbard Hall and the Kennedy Center. 

Don Paul Shannon began his acting career in Philadelphia doing Shakespeare, Chekhov, O'Neill, and DeGhelderode. At Lasalle Summer Theater he had starring roles in several musicals: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, My Fair Lady, Allegro, and more.

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Christopher Durang in the Times Union

Steve Barnes profiles playwright and humorist Christopher Durang in Sunday's Times Union. Durang visits the Writers Institute today!

Picture: Durang accepting his 2013 Tony for "Best Play" at the Tony Award ceremonies.

From the Times Union: 

The playwright Christopher Durang had an epiphany while making up new lyrics for a nursery rhyme in his 1983 play "Baby with the Bathwater."

"When I finished, I realized they were," he says, pausing, "nice I thought, 'Oh, that's oddly positive for me.'"

Durang, who's written comedies including "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You" (1979), "The Actor's Nightmare" and "Beyond Therapy" (both 1981), "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" (1985), "Laughing Wild" (1987) and "Betty's Summer Vacation" (1999), isn't known for nice. He's known for outrageous and absurd and biting, for sure, but nice? That surprised him.

More in the TU:  http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/It-s-all-worked-out-quite-nicely-5294553.php#photo-5988188

More about Durang's visit today:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/durang_chris14.html

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McEneny Wins Prestigious Award at Edinburgh Fringe Festival

The son of Jack McEneny, retired New York State Assemblyman, notable local historian and friend
of the Writers Institute, has received an important playwriting award at Scotland's Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

From a Times Union article by Amy Biancolli:

A play written and directed by John McEneny, son of the recently retired Albany state assemblyman, has won a prestigious Bobby Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The winning play: “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” an adaptation of the H.G. Wells tale of an island occupied by a madman and his half-human, half-animal monstrosities. It originated at Brooklyn’s Piper Theatre, where McEneny serves as artistic director, and includes an original score performed live by composer Lucas Syed.

More:  http://blog.timesunion.com/localarts/play-by-john-mceneny-the-younger-wins-award-at-edinburgh-fringe/29481/

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Broadway Star Colman Domingo's Visit

Colman Domingo received more than one standing ovation at UAlbany on Monday for his inspirational message to students and clips of his riveting performances, not to mention his pledges to revive the soon-to-be-cut UAlbany Theater Department.

Domingo talked about his inner city boyhood in West Philadelphia, his improbable success on stage and screen, his indefatigable pursuit of his personal goals as an actor and playwright, his role in the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, and his friendship and close working relationship with beloved former UAlbany Theater faculty member Lisa Thompson, whom he called his "soul sister."

Domingo last visited the Institute in February 2007 to direct excerpts from Thompson's plays, prior to many of his recent triumphs.

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A Present for Martin Luther King's Birthday, 1986

From the New York Times, Dec. 29, 1985:

When Toni Morrison, author of the best seller ''Tar Baby'' and winner of a National Book Critics award for ''Song of Solomon,'' accepted the Albert Schweitzer Professorship of the Humanities at the State University of New York at Albany, she expected to lead the proverbially quiet life of an academic - teaching writing and writing fiction. Instead she found herself deeply involved in the theater, as a playwright.

Her drama, ''Dreaming Emmett,'' commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY-Albany and directed by Gilbert Moses, will have its world premiere Saturday at the Market Theater there. It will be produced, in conjunction with the Writers Institute and SUNY's Capital District Humanities Program, by the Capital Repertory Company, a resident theater founded by Peter Clough and Bruce Bouchard. More.

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Dava Sobel vs. Dava Sobel

Dava Sobel battles herself about whether or not it is legitimate to write an original play about Copernicus (which she did) in order to fill a two-year gap in the known facts of his life, and embed it in her new biography of Copernicus (which she also did). The piece appears in the Huffington Post.

Sobel visits the Writers Institute Nov. 10th.

The dramatis personae are Dava Sobel Author (DSA) and Dava Sobel Playwright (DSP).

DSP: But one could imagine the dialogue.
DSA: Imagine?
DSP: Based on what's known of the facts, of course....
DSA: You mean make it up?
DSP: To recreate the yeastiness of the situation.
DSA: I wouldn't touch that. I've based my entire career as a journalist on not making up things.
DSP: As long as I'm candid about calling the work a play, who's to fault me? More.

The published play, “And the Sun Stood Still,” was presented as a staged reading by the Writers Institute in April 2008, and has continued to be developed over the course of the past few years in consultation with playwright, director, UAlbany professor and New York State Writers Institute Program Fellow W. Langdon Brown, among others.

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Horton Foote: A Remembrance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4tDSFfwcag

We are saddened by the passing of Horton Foote, whose uniquely American voice defined a lyricism in drama that is irreplaceable.

We remember the quiet, gentle power of his persona. During his visit to the Writers Institute in 2006 we presented a reading of his one act play, "Blind Date." We were so anxious to please a writer we admired that our initial rehearsal was clumsy and he soothed us in a calm, melodious voice, reminding us to relax and trust the material. Horton was all about trust. He trusted his roots, his muse, and all the lives around him that he transformed into stories that embraced the complete range of human value on the canvas of small- town American life. He asked the timeless philosophical questions: How do people carry on? Why are they so keen to survive? Why doesn’t life break the human spirit? What’s the difference between those who survive and those who don’t? His art was a quest to explore those questions and celebrate how we suffer catastrophic change and soldier on. His writing allowed us to observe our struggle at a distance, to appreciate it, laugh at it, and weep over it. We miss his voice especially as we attempt to cope with his absence.

It is rare for someone in the world of theatre and at his level of success to be universally acknowledged for personal grace, compassion, sincerity and generosity towards his fellow artists. He has never lost touch with his own apprenticeship and unfailingly showed his genuine interest in and support for those attempting to follow in his impossibly large footsteps. It was, quite simply, a privilege to be in his presence.

- Langdon Brown, Writers Institute Fellow and Director of Authors Theatre

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