Carnegie Mellon Dramaturgy

Carnegie Mellon Dramaturgy The undergraduate Dramaturgy Option at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. Check back here to stay in touch and follow us on Twitter !

The Carnegie Mellon model of dramaturgy is a muscular, critically engaged, artistically vibrant approach to dramaturgy that requires thorough historical understanding, theoretical training broad and deep, and a passionate dedication to creating powerful, relevant performance of all types.

Continuing my thoughts about the August Wilson American Century Cycle Experience, currently on stage at Pittsburgh Playw...
08/19/2025

Continuing my thoughts about the August Wilson American Century Cycle Experience, currently on stage at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company: with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom having now opened in PPTCO’s brand-new cabaret space at Madison Arts Center, I’m struck by another common thread that links the three plays currently in production. All of them seem to be positing a theatrical response to Langston Hughes’s 1951 poem “Harlem.”...

Continuing my thoughts about the August Wilson American Century Cycle Experience, currently on stage at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company: with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom having now opened in PP…

In the lobby of the August Wilson house you can read a letter that Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company’s founder and ...
08/14/2025

In the lobby of the August Wilson house you can read a letter that Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company’s founder and artistic director Mark Clayton Southers wrote to August Wilson in 2002, describing his intent to establish a theater in Pittsburgh that would offer Black audiences stories that spoke to their history and lived experience. Wilson’s work, Southers writes, would be central to that mission: the first season in 2003 would feature a production of…...

In the lobby of the August Wilson house you can read a letter that Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company’s founder and artistic director Mark Clayton Southers wrote to August Wilson in 2002, descr…

We live in cynical times, Dear Reader. And there is perhaps no playwright whose work captures, with dark wit, the many d...
08/11/2025

We live in cynical times, Dear Reader. And there is perhaps no playwright whose work captures, with dark wit, the many dimensions through which contemporary cynicism expresses itself than Irish-British writer Martin McDonagh – author of, among others, the plays The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Pillowman and the films In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. In Hangmen,...

We live in cynical times, Dear Reader. And there is perhaps no playwright whose work captures, with dark wit, the many dimensions through which contemporary cynicism expresses itself than Irish-Bri…

The title of this festival is pretty much all you need to know about its content: on tap is a collection of plays that c...
08/04/2025

The title of this festival is pretty much all you need to know about its content: on tap is a collection of plays that celebrate – and poke gentle fun at – the weird and idiosyncratic traditions and customs of our fair city. The project – spearheaded by Ensemble Actors Studio artistic director Jaime Slavinsky – tasked ten local playwrights with writing Pittsburgh-themed short plays in about a week’s time; six local directors then had another week to stage the plays, with actors cast from Slavinsky’s acting studio....

The title of this festival is pretty much all you need to know about its content: on tap is a collection of plays that celebrate – and poke gentle fun at – the weird and idiosyncratic traditions an…

If you were to ask me what I love most about Chekhov as a writer, I’d probably say that it’s his ability to reveal – thr...
07/29/2025

If you were to ask me what I love most about Chekhov as a writer, I’d probably say that it’s his ability to reveal – through dialogue and situation – how most people are wrapped up in their own little dramas, a circumstance that makes them (us?) both comically and tragically oblivious. Take, for example, the character of Irina Prozorov in his play ...

If you were to ask me what I love most about Chekhov as a writer, I’d probably say that it’s his ability to reveal – through dialogue and situation – how most people are wrapped up in their own lit…

Your Tatler has been out of town for much of the summer; the ‘burgh has welcomed her back not only with oppressive heat ...
07/28/2025

Your Tatler has been out of town for much of the summer; the ‘burgh has welcomed her back not only with oppressive heat (ugh) but also a rich offering of theater, music, and art in the coming weeks. Here’s a preview – can’t promise you’ll see me at all of these (more travel is on the calendar), but if yinz are in town, get out and enjoy some shows!...

Your Tatler has been out of town for much of the summer; the ‘burgh has welcomed her back not only with oppressive heat (ugh) but also a rich offering of theater, music, and art in the coming weeks…

The time: 1974. The place: a fishing boat bobbing in the ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The situation: the me...
06/01/2025

The time: 1974. The place: a fishing boat bobbing in the ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The situation: the mechanical shark (aka “Bruce”) being used to film Jaws has malfunctioned - yet again - and the movie’s three principal actors – Richard Dreyfuss (Hooper in the film), Roy Scheider (Brody), and Robert Shaw (Quint) – find themselves needing to fill time while the crew gets their temperamental co-star up and running again....

The time: 1974. The place: a fishing boat bobbing in the ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The situation: the mechanical shark (aka “Bruce”) being used to film Jaws has malfunctioned & #8211…

Front Porch Theatricals has once again rummaged around in the attic of theater history and dusted off a forgotten musica...
05/23/2025

Front Porch Theatricals has once again rummaged around in the attic of theater history and dusted off a forgotten musical. This time, it’s Baby - originally produced in the early 1980s with a book by Sybille Pearson, music by David Shire, and lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr. – which tells the story of three couples coping with the challenges of surprise pregnancies....

Front Porch Theatricals has once again rummaged around in the attic of theater history and dusted off a forgotten musical. This time, it’s Baby – originally produced in the early 19…

Embers is a play that’s easy to describe but difficult to categorize. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from a novel by Hun...
05/23/2025

Embers is a play that’s easy to describe but difficult to categorize. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from a novel by Hungarian writer Sandor Marai, the play depicts the reunion, after 41 years, of two men who had once been the closest of friends. As the play opens, Henrik (Sam Tsoutsouvas) awaits the arrival of Konrad (Jack Wetherall) with some nervous apprehension: he tells his housekeeper Nini (Susie McGregor-Laine) that this is his opportunity to finally know “the truth” of a past incident in their shared lives....

Embers is a play that’s easy to describe but difficult to categorize. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from a novel by Hungarian writer Sandor Marai, the play depicts the reunion, after 41 years, of …

Reader, let me get your first concern out of the way: even though basketball – and, particularly, basketball legend LeBr...
04/29/2025

Reader, let me get your first concern out of the way: even though basketball – and, particularly, basketball legend LeBron James – are important to its characters, you yourself really do not need to be a basketball fan – or even know the first thing about basketball – to be swept up into the world of Rajiv Joseph’s King James…...

Reader, let me get your first concern out of the way: even though basketball – and, particularly, basketball legend LeBron James – are important to its characters, you yourself really do not need t…

This weekend, CorningWorks premiered its new dance theater production Stand By – an allegory, which was conceived and ch...
03/31/2025

This weekend, CorningWorks premiered its new dance theater production Stand By – an allegory, which was conceived and choreographed by CorningWorks’ artistic director Beth Corning (who also performs in the show). The theme of this work is “our” relationship to mortality – that is (as the text intoned at the opening observes) the notion that “because we don’t know when we will die we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well” and take our time on earth for granted....

This weekend, CorningWorks premiered its new dance theater production Stand By – an allegory, which was conceived and choreographed by CorningWorks’ artistic director Beth Corning (who al…

I need to start this post by getting something out of the way. Having read Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia ...
03/25/2025

I need to start this post by getting something out of the way. Having read Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – likely more than once in the three decades I’ve been teaching drama – and having seen some (if not all) of the 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (memory’s a bit hazy on that front), I did not feel my life was missing something for never having seen a staged production....

I need to start this post by getting something out of the way. Having read Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – likely more than once in the three decades I’ve been teach…

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