• Carson Kreitzer (Flesh and the Desert) has completed her MFA at UT’s Michener Center for Writers and is soon to depart Austin, but in her final weeks here she received word that she’d been selected as a resident playwright of New Dramatists, a national membership organization that provides support for playwrights. It’s an honor extended to only a handful of writers each year and entitles Kreitzer to seven years of play readings, workshops, and career support, at no cost. She joins sometime Austinites Lisa D’Amour and Daniel Alexander Jones on the list of current resident playwrights. For more information, visit www.newdramatists.org.
• Greg Romero (The Shelter), another Michener Fellow who also just wrapped up his MFA in Playwriting, was in New York two weeks ago – and missing his commencement ceremony – for a workshop production of his The Most Beautiful Lullaby You’ve Ever Heard as part of City Attic Theatre’s playwriting competition, C.A.T. Tales. Lullaby was one of five finalists out of 150 entries. The winner will be staged by City Attic Theatre during its 2006-2007 season.
• C. Denby Swanson (The Death of a Cat) has a summer residency at New York Stage & Film this July that will allow her to work on her play A Brief Narrative of an Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits with NYC theatre company P73. Later in the year, Swanson will take the play to Cornell College in Iowa for another residency through the New Plays on Campus program of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. She’s one of just three playwrights to receive a residency with the program this year.
• Steve Barney will be making a return trip to the New York International Fringe Festival this August with his FronteraFest favorite, Puppet Government. Last year, he flew solo, as it were, with his one-man show, Wade. This year, he’ll be accompanied by director Chris Humphrey, four puppeteers, and a host of appliances that play members of the Bush administration. For more information, visit www.fringenyc.org.
This article appears in June 2 • 2006.