Kennedy Center Taps Two TDPS Faculty for Playwriting Festival

The Kennedy Center has announced that two faculty members from the UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) have been selected to participate in their New Visions/New Voices May 2014 program. Assistant professor Faedra Chatard Carpenter has been chosen to be the lead dramaturg of the Festival and professor Scot Reese will be the director of Oliver of Brazil, a Brazilian take on the Dickens classic Oliver Twist.

The festival is a week-long biennial program for playwrights and theaters to stimulate and support the creation of new plays and musicals for young audiences and families.

Carpenter has been a professional dramaturg for over 35 plays. She is particularly interested in studying “intersections”—the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in performance and everyday life, as well as the intersections between theatrical practice, critical reflection, and theory.

Reese's focus is on directing, Black theater and performance, and musical theatre. His theatre credits include Colossal, Embrace, Etudes for the Sleep of Others, and Blues Journey at the Kennedy Center; and the premiere’s of The Waiter and Blackballin' at Arena Stage.

Oliver of Brazil explores the plight of street children in the favelas, or shanty towns, of contemporary Rio de Janiero.  The musical celebrates Carnival, Samba and Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that incorporates elements of dance, music and acrobatics.

The festival is a week-long biennial program for playwrights and theaters to stimulate and support the creation of new plays and musicals for young audiences and families. Since 1991, the New Visions/New Voices has assisted the advancement of 88 new plays, musicals, and operas from 78 playwrights and 35 composers working with 57 U.S. and 8 international theater companies.