Thursday
May142020

Cassandra Launches on Alter

My scary short Cassandra is now streaming on Alter.  Please enjoy! 

Note the film has violence/references to abuse.

Awards/festivals for Cassandra: winner of Best Thriller Short and Best Editing at Women in Horror Film Fest, Best Director of a Crime Short at Anatomy International Crime & Horror Film Fest, nominated for Best Actor in a Short at Nightmares Film Fest, currently Nominated for Best Production Design and Best Horror Short at Oxford International accepted to Pasadena International, Mecal Barcelona International, Blackbird, and Paracinema.

My Q&A can be found here.

#scarymovie #thriller #filmmaker #horror #memoryrecovery #shorts

Tuesday
May052020

Congrats to Will Arbery, Pulitzer Finalist

My ex-student and alum of NU's MFA in Writing for Screen+Stage which I co-direct. Proud prof.

https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/will-arbery

 

 

 

Wednesday
Apr222020

Variety includes Northwestern in its list of top Film Schools

Happy to see our inclusion in Variety's top film schools article and especially that they mention our new downtown performance and media center which I helped to imagine as part of our design committee as well as our innovations in playwriting, television writing, and comedy, which of course are central to the MFA in Screen+Stage program,which I co-direct.

 

Sunday
Apr192020

Cert/Trophy for my film Cassandra

Already announced news but had to go to the office where these had arrived in the mail/hadn’t seen - my film Cassandra named best thriller short and best editing (festival-wide). A much needed smile amidst all the fest cancelations.

 


Sunday
Apr122020

Erin Courtney To Join the MFA in Writing for Screen+Stage Program

Excited that Erin Courtney will be joining my department, NU's Dept of Radio-TV-Film, as an assistant professor, and will becoming core faculty of the program I co-direct, the MFA in Writing for Screen+Stage.   

 

Erin Courtney's play A MAP OF VIRTUE, produced by 13P and directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, was awarded an Obie and described as "one of the most terrifying plays of the past decade” by Alexis Soloski in the New York Times. A MAP OF VIRTUE was nominated for a GLAAD award and has had numerous productions across the country.  Her  play I WIlL BE GONE, directed by Kip Fagan, premiered at Actors Theater of Louisville, Humana Festival in 2015. She is writing a new play, ANN, FRAN, MARY ANN which is a Playwrights Horizons commission. 

She has written two operas with Elizabeth Swados, THE NOMAD and KASPAR HAUSER: both were commissioned and produced by The Flea Theater. The musical THE TATTOOED LADY that she is writing with composer and lyricist Max Vernon has been developed with support from  The Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, the Kimmel Center, The Goodspeed Opera House and Joe’s Pub at the Public. Her other plays, produced by Clubbed Thumb, include ALICE THE MAGNET,  directed by Pam MacKinnon, and DEMON BABY, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll.  She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, a member of the Obie award winning playwright collective -13P, as well as the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writer’s Space. She earned her MFA in playwriting at Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman, and her BA from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. She is a member of New Dramatists since 2012, a MacDowell Colony fellow, a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center, a member of the Working Farm at Space on Ryder Farm and she was awarded a Guggenheim in 2013. She is an Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College and is the program coordinator of the MFA Playwriting Program.

 

#femaleplaywrights #Northwestern