Playwright/Author Biographies - from MMSC's Fall '04 Season
Biographies of Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley Poetry 2004 winners
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Barbara Adams
The
Ordinary Living
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| 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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Michael Bonet
The Letters
Vanguard Voices Project
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| Michael Bonet is one of four playwrights whose work was selected from the State University of New York at New Paltz's Dramatic Writing Program for inclusion in MMSC's Third Annual Vanguard Voices Project. Michael graduated in May 2004 from SUNY New Paltz. He graduated with a degree in English and Creative Writing. He has been writing stories and plays since his sophomore year in college. Michael says that he has dreams to continue writing and hopefully to make some money in it. But if not, he adds, at least he can continue to please audiences. |
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Laurence Carr
Scrabble
and Tabouli
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| 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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Christopher Dumm
Marching Home Again
Vanguard Voices Project
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| Christopher Dumm is one of four playwrights whose work was selected from the State University of New York at New Paltz's Dramatic Writing Program for inclusion in MMSC's Third Annual Vanguard Voices Project. Christopher has been writing since the second grade, with serious concentration during his high school and college years. Marching Home Again is Chris's first produced piece of dramatic work, but hopefully not his last. Chris has also written Karl and the Devil as well as The Gateless Gate. Though he thinks that writing dramatic work has its appeals, Chris remains dedicated to writing creative fiction. He has written a number of short stories in the realistic and speculative fiction genres. He is currently working on a novel entitled The City at Night as well as an accompanying musical album and a collection of short stories revolving around the book. Chris currently resides in Baltimore, doing contract writing for the Federal government. |
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Jamie Gerardi
Publisher's Block
Vanguard Voices Project
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| Jamie Gerardi is one of four playwrights whose work was selected from the State University of New York at New Paltz's Dramatic Writing Program for inclusion in MMSC's Third Annual Vanguard Voices Project. Jamie is a graduate of the SUNY New Paltz Creative Writing Program and he has had six plays produced in the past three years. Several of his works have been featured in NYC theater showcases as well as in upstate New York play festivals as well as being performed at professional theater company auditions. His first play, a one-act absurdist comedy called Under the Rug, was produced in 2001 in NYC as part of a SUNY New Paltz acting and writing showcase Green Eggs and Rain. It was subsequently produced at the Shandaken Theater Play Fair in Pheonicia, NY in 2002. Three of his works have been produced by "The Michael Chekhov Project." Word Match, a play about two professional wrestlers choreographing an important match, was premiered by Mohonk Mountain Stage Company in 2002. This is Jamie's second experience working with Mohonk Mountain Stage Company's Vanguard Voices Project. |
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Jeffrey Hatcher
Three Viewings |
| Jeffrey Hatcher is, most recently, the adapter of Tuesdays with Morrie, based on the best-selling book by Mitch Albom. In spring 2002, City Theatre in Pittsburgh commssioned and produced his play Mercy of a Storm. Compleat Female Stage Beauty received the New Play Citation Award from the American Theatre Critics Association and was produced at Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego; his screen adaptation of the play was released in 2003. Other recent plays include Hanging Lord Haw-Haw, What Corbin Knew and Sockdology, which won the 1998 New Dramatists Whitfield-Cooke Prize. He recently collaborated with Eric Simonson on the critically acclaimed Work Song, and with Bill Russell and Henry Krieger on the award-winning musical Everything's Ducky. Other plays include Three Viewings, whose numerous productions include Manhattan Theatre Club and the New End Theatre in London, and Scotland Road, winner of the 1993 Lois and Richard Rosenthal New Play Prize. Scotland Road had its New York premiere at Primary Stages and has received numerous other productions, including the Old Globe Theatre and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. He is currently working on film adaptations of the bestseller Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire for Magnolia Mae Films and of his play Three Viewings. He has received numerous awards and fellowships from the National Playwrights Conference (five times), Midwest PlayLabs, the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the NEA, the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, the American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Awards, the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund and New Dramatists, to name a few. |
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Henry James
The Short
Stories of Henry James
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| American-born writer, gifted with talents in literature, psychology, and philosophy, Henry James wrote 20 novels, 112 stories, 12 plays as well as a number of literary criticism essays. His models were Dickens, Balzac, and Hawthorne. James once said that he learned more of the craft of writing from Balzac "than from anyone else."
Henry James was born in New York City into a wealthy family. His father was one of the best-known intellectuals in mid-nineteenth-century America, whose friends included Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne. James made little money from his novels.
Between 1906 and 1910 James revised many of his tales and novels for the so-called New York Edition of his complete works. It was published by Charles Scribner's Sons. His autobiography, A SMALL BOY AND OTHERS (1913), was continued in NOTES OF A SON AND BROTHER (1914). The third volume, THE MIDDLE YEARS, appeared posthumously in 1917. The outbreak of World War I was a shock for James, and in 1915 he became a British citizen, both to demonstrate his loyalty to his adopted country and in protest against the US's refusal to enter the war. James suffered a stroke on December 2, 1915. James died three months later in Rye on February 28, 1916. Two novels, The Ivory Tower and THE SENSE OF THE PAST (1917), were left unfinished at his death.
Although James is best-known for his novels, his essays are now attracting audiences outside scholarly connoisseurs. In his early critiques, James considered British and American novels dull and formless and French fiction 'intolerably unclean.' His advice to aspiring writers avoided all theorizing, "Oh, do something from your point of view." H.G. Wells used James as the model for George Boon in his BOON (1915). When the protagonist argued that novels should be used for propaganda, not art, James wrote to Wells, "It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process. If I were Boon, I should say that any pretense of such a substitute is helpless and hopeless humbug; but I wouldn't be Boon for the world, and am only yours faithfully, Henry James."
James's most famous tale is 'The Turn of the Screw,' which was first published serially in Collier's Weekly, and then with another story in THE TWO MAGICS (1898). |
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Charlotte
Jones
Humble
Boy
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Plays: Humble Boy, The Dark, Martha, Josie & the Chinese Elvis, In Flame, Airswimming; currently working on a commissioned play for the Royal Court Theatre and writing the book for Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical, an adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, expected in the West End in September 2004.
Radio Plays: The Sounds of Solitary Waves, Magpie Tales, Ruby on a Tuesday, Blue Air Love and Flowers, Sea Symphony for Piano and Child, A Seer of Sorts, Future Perfect, Mary Something Takes the Veil.
TV/film: Bessie and the Bell, Mother's Ruin, Ruby on Tuesday (Passion Pictures), Dogstar (Ruby Films and Miramax).
Other credits: worked as an actress for six years before she turned to writing.
Awards: Winner of the People's Choice Best New Play Award (2001), Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play (2001) and the Susan Smith Blackburn Award (2001) for Humble Boy; winner of Best New Play Award, Pearson Television Best New Play Award for Elvis.
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Arthur Miller
The Price |
| Arthur Miller's first success came in 1947 with All My Sons, for which he won the New York Drama Critics Circle award. Although it lacked the originality of some of his later works, this family drama, which told the story of a factory owner who caused the death of several American pilots during World War I by selling defective parts to the government, dealt with issues of guilt and dishonesty that Miller would revisit and expand upon in some of his more memorable plays.
His next play, Death of a Salesman, stunned audiences with its brilliance and was quickly earmarked as a classic of the modern theatre. It also sparked heated debates over the true nature of tragedy. Some critics criticized Miller for infusing the play with a deep sense of pity for the commonplace salesman, Willy Loman. They insisted that Willy was a "little man" and therefore not worthy of the pathos reserved for such tragic heroes as Oedipus and Medea. Miller, however, argued that the tragic feeling is invoked whenever we are in the presence of a character, any character, who is ready to sacrifice his life, if need be, to secure one thing--his sense of personal dignity. And the "little" salesman was determined to do just that, no matter what the cost.
Arthur Miller was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for Death of a Salesman. He has come to be considered one of the greatest dramatists in the history of the American Theatre, and his plays, a fusion of naturalistic and expressionistic techniques, continue to be widely produced. |
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Eliza Murray
Minor Details
Vanguard Voices Project
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| Eliza Murray is one of four playwrights whose work was selected from the State University of New York at New Paltz's Dramatic Writing Program for inclusion in MMSC's Third Annual Vanguard Voices Project. Eliza is a recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz, where she received a B.A in English/Creative Writing. She is currently living in her hometown of Los Angeles, California. Though raised by an intensely theater-oriented family, she has only recently begun to explore the world of dramatic writing. She plans to take a year off in Portland, Oregon and continue writing. |
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David Rambo
God's Man In Texas |
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David Rambo was born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania
in 1955 and raised in nearby Spring City, developing a lifelong
interest in literature and art that is due in no small part
to having had a mother and grandmother who were librarians.
He moved to New York at 19 and appeared in musicals and plays.
He supported himself by taking office work and gigs as a cabaret
pianist. Seeking TV and film work, David moved to Los Angeles
and started selling real estate as a means to support a theatre
career.The sales career took off, the acting career did not.
He began spending the hours at idle Open Houses sketching
ideas for plays on the backs of property sales brochures.
The tinkering led to a first play, then another, and another.
On a snowy February, 1998 evening David typed
the words "End of Play" to God's Man In Texas.
It was given its world premiere a year later at the 23rd Humana
Festival of New American Plays. Productions followed at theatres
all over the country, including The Old Globe, Geffen Playhouse,
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and The Alliance Theatre.
By 2002 God's Man In Texas ranked as one of the most
produced plays in U.S. regional theatres.
David's new play, The Ice-Breaker,
a two-character love story/science play, co-commissioned by
The Geffen Playhouse and A.S.K. Theater Projects, has been
developed by The Huntington Theatre Company and Denver Center
Theatre Company. David's stage adaptation of the classic Joseph
L. Mankiewicz screenplay All About Eve benefitted
The Actors Fund of America, followed a year later by his adaptation
of the screenplay Sunset Boulevard.
Currently, David has written a new book for a revival of
the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical Paint
Your Wagon and he is also at work on The Lady With
All The Answers, a one-woman play based on the life and
letters of Ann Landers. David is a member of the Dramatists
Guild, ASCAP, and Writers Guild of America West.
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