B.U.'s Playwriting Program Loses Walcott
Gains Lopez and Noone

After twenty-six years of teaching in and steering Boston University's graduate playwriting program, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott is retiring to his home in the Caribbean (where he will continue to write).

The Playwriting program he built in tandem with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre has brought Boston and the nation exposure to some of the country's brightest young playwrights. Among the more than 300 playwrights Walcott mentored are John Kuntz, Karen Zacarias, Russell Lees, Joyce Van Dyke, John Shea, Kate Snodgrass, Wesley Savick, Ginger Lazarus, Janet Kenney, Sinan Unel, and Dan Hunter.

Kate Snodgrass, Walcott's former student and the Artistic Director of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, commented, “Nobody’s as generous in the classroom as Derek, and we want to continue his legacy. Derek wanted to bring the playwright into closer contact with the actor, and he knew the collaboration would be successful. But he had no idea how many first rate playwrights would lift the program’s visibility over the years. We’ve been as lucky in our students as we have been in our founder.”

As Walcott departs, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre has announced that Ronan Noone and Melinda Lopez have joined their faculty. Two of Professor Walcott’s brightest students, nationally known for their award-winning plays, Lopez and Noone will now teach his Master Classes. (Ms. Lopez will teach The Writing of Plays this Fall with Ronan Noone continuing the class in the Spring.) Rounding out Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s faculty are award-winning playwrights Kate Snodgrass and Richard Schotter.

Lopez was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a “promising new voice in American Theatre.” Her play "Sonia Flew," which was developed and premiered by the Huntington Theatre Company, won the Elliot Norton Award for Best New Play and two IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Awards for Best Play and Best Production. It has subsequently been produced at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Laguna Playhouse, Ariel Tepper’s Summer Play Festival (NY), the Milagro Theatre (Portland, OR), and the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. The play has been broadcast on NPR’s “The Play’s The Thing!” in a production by L.A. Theatre Works with a cast that included Elizabeth Peña and Hector Elizondo. Most recently, her play "Gary" was produced at Steppenwolf Theatre’s First Look Play Festival in Chicago and, in March 2008, at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre where it was nominated for an Elliot Norton Award by the Boston Theatre Critics Association.

Noone won the Michael Kanin National Playwriting Award, a university competition that involved 1,200 productions and 20,000 students nationwide, with his "The Lepers of Baile Baiste." "The Lepers…" was then performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 2002, just as Ronan was completing his graduate work at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. That play and "The Blowin of Baile Gall," the second play in his Irish trilogy, shared the 2002 IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Best New Play. In May 2003, he received the Boston Theatre Critics Association’s Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Play for "The Blowin of Baile Gall," also nominated for the American Critics Association’s Steinberg New Play Award. His recent plays "Brendan" and "The Atheist "(starring Campbell Scott) premiered at the Huntington Theatre Company in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Last month, "The Atheist " (with Scott) opened at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The play will make its Off Broadway New York debut at the Cultural Project/Barrow Street Theatre in October.

-- OnStage Boston