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The Write Direction Tell us a bit about yourself. I transferred to MKA as a sophomore in high school, and it was at MKA that I began to become interested in theatre. As a senior, I performed in The Zoo Story and it was as a direct result of that experience that I am pursuing a career in playwriting. I graduated from Macalester College with honors in creative writing and a minor in religious studies. I am currently pursuing my MFA at The Lir at Trinity College Dublin where my tutors have included Graham Whybrow and Conor McPherson. What do you consider some of your greatest professional accomplishments? I have had staged readings and productions of my work in Minneapolis, London and Dublin and have won several fellowships for my writing, including the 2010 NJ Young Playwrights Competition (to which I applied after a last-minute suggestion from Upper School performing arts teacher Nicole Hoppe). My biggest production so far has been in the 2012 Minnesota Fringe Festival in which I directed, produced and performed in an updated and expanded version of the script I had originally written for my May Term project. Right now, my focus is on completing my MFA, which, if all goes accordingly, I will do in September of this year. I am currently developing a musical with a director here in Dublin. What did you do for your May Term project? I wrote and directed two one-act plays, which J.C. Svec produced along
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with four one-acts from my classmate Julie Longthorne. Together, we put on this two-hour long evening of one-act plays which we collectively titled The May Plays. The two plays I wrote were entitled On the Balcony (which explored the relationship between a widower and his imaginary friend from childhood who has returned for a conversation on Christmas Eve) and To and From on the Earth (an imagined business meeting between God and Satan). They were my first attempts at playwriting and my first attempts at directing, and I owe the success of the May Term project entirely to the MKA actors (all underclassmen and juniors) who performed in them. What was the outcome of this project? Greatest successes? Obstacles? The outcome was several sold-out performances of a really solid production, fully produced with lights, sound, sets and costumes, and absolutely none of that is as a result of my script or really any work that I did personally. The entire process in May went off without any problems of note because of the resources and support MKA provided and because of the guidance and tutorship J.C. Svec offered during every step of the production. That’s what I think makes May Term such a vital time for MKA seniors: MKA is sponsoring your development not just as a student but as an independent creator.
M KA review / Mon tc l a i r K i m b e r l e y A c a de my
How did your May Term project help to prepare you for your future? May Term was my first experience as a director and my first experience seeing my work on stage. The lessons I learned during my project are lessons that I kept with me during nearly every other theatrical endeavor I’ve undertaken. During May Term I learned how to deal with actors while giving them rewrites, how to differentiate between what’s on the page and what’s on the stage and how to give control of the show over to the actors once it was time for the show to open. These were all lessons most playwrights don’t learn until very late in their careers, but as a result of May Term I learned them when I was eighteen, which I think provided me with a distinct advantage as a college student and now as a practitioner. What advice would you give current students? You would be a fool to waste this opportunity. May Term may seem at first like this annoying thing keeping you from going down the shore once you’re done with classes. It’s not. It’s a privilege. More importantly, it’s a privilege that you likely won’t get at any other time in your life. You can do anything you want. Literally anything, so long as you can prove that it is in someway educational or related to your interests or your planned career. You can do any project you can dream of, and MKA will give you more resources and time than you can ever hope to get as an undergraduate.