Tennessee Repertory Theatre announced Thursday that acclaimed and prolific playwright Steven Dietz has accepted the 2011-2012 Ingram New Works Fellowship.
Dietz’s Yankee Tavern was a critical and audience favorite last season at Tennessee Rep. His play Becky’s New Car had a successful run at Actors Bridge Ensemble this summer.
Dietz will write a new play during the fellowship that will premiere at the Ingram New Works Festival (May 30 – June 9, 2012). He will also work with emerging playwrights that participate in the Ingram New Works Lab.
“I am thrilled to have Steven Dietz as our 2011-12 New Works Fellow,” Tennessee Rep’s Producing Artistic Director René D. Copeland said in a released statement. “He is one of the most produced playwrights today by regional professional theatres because he writes plays that leave audiences talking.
“Dietz’s body of work spans a variety of genres, from comedy to drama, and all are compelling and smart and witty and I have admired his work for some time,” she said. “Also, Dietz is a teacher, director, and leading thinker on new play development. This makes him an especially exciting New Works Fellow since he will be mentoring the emerging playwright members of the Ingram New Works Lab.”
Recent plays include Fiction (produced Off-Broadway by the Roundabout Theatre Company) and Last of the Boys (produced by Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago). His adaptations include Honus and Me (from Dan Gutman), and Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure (from William Gillette and Arthur Conan Doyle).
Mr. Dietz’s plays and adaptations have been seen in more than one hundred regional theatres throughout the United States and Off-Broadway in New York City. In 2010, Dietz was one of the most produced playwrights in America (excluding Shakespeare), placing eighth on the Theatre Communications Group’s Top Ten Most Produced Playwrights in America list (tied with Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee for number of productions in the 2010-11 season). International productions of his work have been mounted in England, Japan, Germany, France, Australia, Sweden, Russia, Slovenia, Argentina, Peru, Singapore and South Africa.
Past Ingram New Works Fellows include multiple-award-winning playwrights David Auburn (Proof) and John Patrick Shanley (Doubt). Auburn presented a reading of his new play The Columnist during his stay in Nashville; that work will premiere on Broadway in 2012 starring Tony and Emmy winner John Lithgow.
