Tony Award Winning Playwright, Terrence McNally: April 25-26
April 8, 2014
Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences
and
College of Performing Art
are hosting a special event with Tony Award winning playwright, Terrence McNally, “The Terrence McNally Festival,” on Friday, April 25 – Saturday, April 26, 2014.
Friday, April 26:
Theatre students will be performing five of McNally’s one-act plays throughout the festival (
Bringing It All Back Home
,
Botticelli
,
Andre’s Mother
,
Hidden Agendas,
and
The Wibbly, Wobbly, Wiggly Dance that Cleopatterer Did).
McNally will attend the performances on Friday at 7:30 p.m. and conduct a talk-back with students following the performance in Moulton Hall 149. (One-acts will also be performed on Thursday, April 25 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 27 at 9 p.m.). All of these performances are free and open to the public.
Saturday, April 26:
There will be a symposium in Arygors Forum 208 at 1:15 p.m. where students will present their research on McNally’s work to him. This event will conclude with a keynote lecture by Raymond-Jean Frontain, arguably the nation’s leading academic authority on McNally’s work. Dr. Frontain’s lecture is entitled “Something about Grace: Terrence McNally and the Redemptive Power of Theatre.” Admission to the symposium and lecture is free and open to the public.
Later that day, McNally’s will give a lecture titled, “A Writer’s Life in the Theatre” in Waltmar Theatre at 7:30 p.m. The event is open to the public; general admission is $10, Chapman students, staff, and faculty are free, but tickets are required.
About Terrence McNally
: Chapman University’s Wilkinson College in collaboration with the College of Performing Arts is proud to sponsor four-time Tony Award winning playwright Terrence McNally to campus April 25-26. In addition to a public lecture where he will talk about his plays and modern theatre, McNally will work directly with students in literature, creative writing, and theatre. Staged performances of his one act plays will offer students the opportunity for feedback from the author, while a symposium of student papers and creative works presented to McNally will enable students to expand their critical and creative skills. The symposium will include a keynote lecture by the nation’s leading McNally scholar, Dr. Raymond-Jean Frontain. The Chapman University community will gain an unparalleled experience with the chance to engage with an individual who has significantly contributed to the shaping of contemporary American art and culture. Terrence McNally Playwright Terrence McNally was born in 1938 in St. Petersburg, Florida, and grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas. Listening to radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, McNally developed an early love of the opera that would surface in his work, most notably in The Lisbon Traviata (1989) and Master Class (1996), for which he received a Tony Award for Best Play. His love of music also inspired him to collaborate on several musicals, including The Rink (1984), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993), Ragtime (1996), and The Full Monty (2000), and three operas, including The Food of Love (1999), Dead Man Walking (2000), and Three Decembers (2008). Both Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime earned him Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical. Equally comfortable writing drama or musical theatre, McNally both gratifies and challenges his audiences. His treatment of such topics as love, fear, sexuality, and AIDS illuminates the ways people connect or fail to connect in a world in which human relationships are essential to survival. His drama written for PBS about a mother coping with the death of her son from AIDS, Andre’s Mother (1990), earned an Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Miniseries or Special, and his study of the integrity of love and friendship in Love! Valour! Compassion! earned McNally his fourth Tony Award as well as the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best American Play. The play was made into a movie with Jason Alexander, John Glover, and Justin Kirk. In his exploration of human relationships, McNally asks his audiences to explore new territories. Corpus Christi (1999) dramatized a homosexual version of Jesus Christ, drawing mobs of angry protesters and occasioning death threats to him from groups in the United States and England. McNally is often considered one of the most versatile and prolific modern playwrights. Some of his other notable credits include The Ritz (1975), Frankie and Johnny at the Claire de Lune (1987) made into a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino, The Lisbon Traviata (1989), and Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), which received a Drama Desk Award Best New Play. More recent works include Unusual Acts of Devotion (2008), Golden Age (2009), Some Men (2006), And Away We Go (2014) and Mothers and Sons which will open on Broadway in March 2014. In addition to four Tony Awards and an Emmy, McNally has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, a Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A member of the Dramatists Guild Council since 1970, he has served as vice president since 1981.
