The Department of Theater Studies and the Creative Writing Program will collaborate to launch a new playwriting fellowship in fall 2014.
The position will be similar to existing fellowships in fiction and poetry in that it is a teaching position that lasts for two years until a new fellow is chosen. The first fellowship ends May 2016.
Applications for the position will be accepted through Dec. 2.
The new fellow will teach a playwriting workshop, a dramatic literature course and another course specific to his or her strengths and area of expertise, according to Director of the Playwriting Center of Theater Emory Lisa Paulsen.
The two departments have joined forces for many years now in playwriting classes, a student playwriting festival and the Playwriting major which combines elements from Creative Writing and Theater Studies, Paulsen said.
Senior Resident Fellow in Creative Writing Jim Grimsley wrote in an email to the Wheel that the new position would positively affect the two departments.
“We already have a strong relationship between the two units of the College, and the process of jointly selecting this person will solidify our work as partners,” he wrote.
Candidates must have received a Master of Fine Arts or a Ph.D. within the last five years.
According to Paulsen, this will yield a younger set of applicants with a different perspective than more experienced playwrights in the department because they have just come out of studying the craft and are about to embark on their careers.
“They’re in the process of honing their own writing skills as they’re mentoring somebody else,” Paulsen said.
She added that the fellowship is also a great learning experience for an emerging playwright looking to gain teaching experience.
The fellow will also develop a new work while at Emory that will be presented at the Brave New Works festival, Paulsen said.
According to Paulsen, a committee comprised of professors from the two disciplines will narrow the candidates down and will invite the top two or three applicants in the spring for the Brave New Works festival of new plays. The festival is a showcase that students and faculty use to test the dramatic impact of new works on the stage.
“I’ll be looking for a playwright who has a strong voice in her or his work, and who can also demonstrate a strong commitment to teaching,” wrote Grimsley, who will select the top candidates with Paulsen.
Grimsley added that the new position will enable the Creative Writing Department to teach more fiction, which is the area of greatest need.
Paulsen said the fellowship will bring something new to Emory.
“We want them to become part of our community here,” she said. “We’re looking for somebody that would be inclined to use the fact that they’re in a really dynamic university to effect and change their work.”
To fund the fellowship, the founders had to convince the University administration that playwriting fits in with Emory’s liberal arts pursuits, according to Paulsen.
“I feel quite strongly that as a study, [playwriting] is inherently cross-disciplinary,” Paulsen said. “The play is a skeleton, and there are other artists that come in and embody it, speak it, pace it, design it and do all kinds of other things that affect the meaning of it.”
Paulsen said she hopes the new position will be a beneficial model for majors and challenge and suggest improvements for the existing program.
College senior and Playwriting major Anna Millard agreed that the new fellowship will end up benefiting majors.
“I think it’s a fantastic way to provide more resources for the fledgling major while supporting an up-and-coming playwright,” Millard said.
– By Rupsha Basu
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I strongly object to a fellowship for playwrights which requires a terminal degree. Most of the great American playwrights didn’t have such a degree, and many of those writers who have degrees have scant professional credits and such limited experience in the world outside of home and university that they have little practical experience to draw on in their writing, so it tends to be cute and bloodless. (I’m not saying this is true of all, but there is a strong tendency.) This drive for degrees for playwrights I think is hurtful to the art. A pox on it.