News

This spring, the second edition of “Playwriting with Purpose: A Guide and Workbook for Writers” will be released by Routledge and her new play “Backwards Forwards Back” will be seen in NYC.

Jacqueline Goldfinger’s revised and expanded second edition of “Playwriting with Purpose: A Guide and Workbook for Playwrights” is being released by Routledge this spring. This book incorporates craft lessons, theatre history, scenes for study, and concrete guidance in both the art and business of playwriting. Thoroughly revised, new features to this edition include: 

• Vastly expanded sections on structure, world building, business of playwriting, writing for television and film, and more.
• New writing exercises and pro tips from working playwrights in each chapter.
• An exploration of art and craft through a new selection of international plays.
• Shorter chapters with more subject headings to make it easier to find the exact craft lesson or writing prompt you want when you want it.

Learn more: https://www.routledge.com/Playwriting-with-Purpose-A-Guide-and-Workbook-for-Playwrights/Goldfinger/p/book/9781032825908

Email her to receive a free proof perusal copy: jacqueline.goldfinger@gmail.com.

In addition, her play “Backwards Forwards Back” about soldiers returning home with PTSD and the new virtual reality therapy that helps them regain control of their lives will be a part of League of Professional Theatre Women’s book club for Women’s History Month alongside “What the Constitution Means to Me” by Heidi Schreck, “Real Women Have Curves” by Josefina Lopez, “The Search for Intelligent Signs in the Universe” by Jane Wagner, “Amerikin” by Chisa Hutchinson, and “Stick Fly” by Lydia Diamond. Subscribe to this Substack (for free) to get more information: https://elanagartner.substack.com/p/women-playwrights-a-celebration-reading You can see “Backwards Forwards Back” in performance in NYC at United Solo this spring and fall. Read it on New Play Exchange.

Bess Rowen, Assistant Professor of Theatre at Villanova University, recently returned from leading a summer study abroad program for graduate students in Ireland. The course, called the Irish Summer Studio, involved leading students through a week of archival research in Galway and then two weeks of coursework at The Lir Academy in Dublin, including her own course on Irish Theatre and Nationalism. Additionally, she got to take students to shows at the historic Abbey and Gate theaters and on excursions to the Cliffs of Moher, Glendalough, and other exciting places. This course is primarily composed of Villanova students, but is open to other MA and PhD students, too! In addition to this wonderful trip, she has had a busy summer of publications, including an interview with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins about Eugene O’Neill’s influence on him (“Something Very Formal and Weird: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins on Eugene O’Neill” in The Eugene O’Neill Review), a chapter on María Irene Fornés and Paula Vogel in Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities, an article about staging teenage girlhood in Theatre Survey (“An Endless Capacity for Dissembling: Representing Teenage Girls on the American Stage from The Children’s Hour Through If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka“), and a Gale Cengage educational resource on The Glass Menagerie. 

Mark Cosdon spent the fall 2023 semester teaching a course on contemporary US theatre at Sicily’s University of Palermo.  This past year, Cosdon was invited to make presentations at the University of Rome – Sapienza and the University of Bergamo. Cosdon was awarded a spring 2024 Fulbright to Egypt, but ultimately declined the honor.  Cosdon continues as Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Allegheny College.  In spring 2024, Cosdon directed the musical Head Over Heels.  This past May/June Cosdon taught his tenth month-long travel course in Italy, with destinations including Amelia, Rome, Florence, and Naples.  

Amy Huang received a 2024-2025 short term Balch Institute Fellowship at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to support her project, Further than Firsts: Theatre History and Early Asian American and Diasporic Theatre Artistry, which focuses on several artists who could be considered among the first Asian diasporic theatre artists to work in the United States and Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Huang examines how these historical “firsts” worked to conceptualize temporality and history. 

Dorothy Chansky was a Fulbright Fellow in Poland during the spring 2024 semester.  She taught two classes in American drama at the University of Lodz and also gave guest lectures at universities in Paris, Thessaloniki, Krakow, and Nafplio.

Welcome to Vicki Hoskins, our new Liaison for coordinating ATDS sessions at the annual Modern Language Association conference! To contact Dr. Hoskins with your inquiries and proposals, e-mail her at vh@sfsu.edu. Thank you to our previous MLA Liaison, Bess Rowen, for the tremendous programming over the past few years.

Welcome to Cătălina Florina Florescu, the incoming Associate Editor of Theatre Annual! She will be working with Peter Reed for the next couple of issues before transitioning to the lead Editor role. To reach Dr. Florescu with questions, pitches, and articles, e-mail her at fflorescu@pace.edu. For information about Theatre Annual, visit https://theatreannual.atds.org/.

Congratulations to our members for winning awards from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and let us note that they also won the matching ATDS awards!

Outstanding Books

Ryan Donovan, Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity, Oxford University Press, 2023

Outstanding Books: Distinction for Scholarly Achievement

Esther Kim Lee, Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era, University of Michigan Press, 2022 

Tina Post, Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression, NYU Press, 2023

Outstanding Article 

Jade Power-Sotomayor, “Un Llanto Colectivo: A PerformaProtesta,” Theatre Journal 75.2 (2023): 121-141.