School of Performing and Visual Arts
Blaine Quarnstrom Playwright Series
Page Content
January 30-31, 2025
USM English and theatre students will spend three days learning the ropes from this
year's Playwright-in-Residence, Lisa D’Amour, as part of the Blaine Quarnstrom Playwrights
Series.
D’Amour will host:
- Two public Q&A sessions on the playwright's working methods and on industry trends;
- A public staged reading of a scene from the playwright’s work.
The playwright will also host writing workshops for students in the Departments of
English & Theatre. We encourage student participants of all levels with interests
in creative writing for theatre to sign-up. If interested in attending, please contact
Dr. David Coley at david.coleyFREEMississippi.
Playwright-In-Residence
Meet Lisa D’Amour
Lisa D’Amour is a playwright, educator and interdisciplinary collaborator from New
Orleans. Her plays have been produced in the U.S. and across the globe. Lisa's play Detroit was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Her play Airline Highway ran in the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway in 2015.
Recent work with her company PearlDamour includes Ocean Filibuster, a genre-crashing human-ocean showdown (currently touring), MILTON, a performance rooted in 5 U.S. towns named Milton, and How to Build a Forest, an 8-hour performance installation.
Lisa is the recipient of an Alpert Award for the Arts, a Steinberg Playwright Award and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. Lisa received her MFA in Playwriting from UT Austin, and her BA from Millsaps College in Jackson, MS. She is currently the Distinguished Professor of Playwriting at the University of Houston.
Schedule
Thursday 1/30
| Time | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 7:30-9:30 p.m. |
Opening Q&A The opening Q&A will focus on the playwright's working methods and will be moderated
by a faculty member. |
TAD Building - Hartwig Theatre |
Friday 1/31
| Time | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 10-11 a.m. |
Q&A on State of American Theatre A detailed Q&A session moderated by a faculty member with the Playwright-In-Residence. |
TAD Building - Hartwig Theatre |
| 7:30-9:00 p.m. |
Staged Readings with Q&A The playwright will host staged reading of her work, along with a Q&A Session. |
TAD Building - Hartwig Theatre |
About the Series
Founded in 2006, The Blaine Quarnstrom Playwrights Series fosters the writing of dramatic literature by students from both the Theatre and English programs. The goal of the Series is to foster student writing through Q&A sessions and creative writing workshops led by a leading American playwright. Over a single weekend, the playwright in residence structures four consecutive writing workshops derived from personal writing methods and techniques. In the past these sessions have focused on format writing for ten-minute plays, crafting expressive dialogue, and conceiving and developing effective structure and engaging characters.
Acknowledgement
This event is made possible through the generous support of the following sponsors: Mr. and Mrs. James Simrall, Jr. Arts Endowment, and the Robert N. Kinnaird, Jr. and Lucille Ehlers Kinnaird Memorial Endowment.