The Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival honors new American plays that provide dynamic performance opportunities for college-aged actors and runs from May 26 to June 1, 2024.
The festival endeavors both to recognize playwrights for their outstanding work and to provide a resource for universities across the country to identify dynamic plays with robust roles for college-aged actors for production at their institutions. The festival features both a full-length and short play division.
Featured guest speakers this year include: Emily Bohannon, playwright/actor; Timothy Davis, actor/screenwriter; Mikael Burke, director/new play developer; and Rachel Levens, Concord Theatricals.
On this episode of 'Exposition', we spoke with Emily Bohannon, (“Adding Value to the Room: What Playwrights and Directors Look for from Actors in the New Play Development Process”) who is a playwright, screenwriter, and actress originally from Sandersville, Georgia.
She is a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School, received an AB Drama from the University of Georgia, and was a Rockwell Scholar at the Einhorn School of Performing Arts, where she studied with Tanya Barfield, Julian Sheppard, Cusi Cram, Keith Bunin, and Dael Orlandersmith, among others.
Her work has been supported by the Lark Play Development Center, Academy of Dramatic Art, and the New York Foundation of the Arts. Most recently, she had world premieres with AboutFACE Theatre Company in Dublin, Ireland and with the Dobbins Conservatory at Southeast Missouri State University where her play The Romantic Movement won the inaugural Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival.
You can currently view the film adaptation of her play Virtue on Broadway on Demand.
