Name:
C. Denby Swanson
Year Graduated:
2000
Degree:
M.F.A. Creative Writing
Influential Professors or Classes:
David Mark Cohen's lessons on etudes.
Suzan Zeder's deep investigations of myth.
Sherry Kramer's invective to rewrite and then move on.
Steve Harrigan's generosity in workshop.
Professor Ghanoonparvar's class on Iranian film.
Current Hometown:
Austin
Current Profession:
Playwright
Biography:
Since graduating from the Michener Center for Writers at UT in 2000, Swanson has been a William Inge Playwright in Residence, and a Jerome Fellow and a McKnight Advancement Grant recipient. Her work has been commissioned by the Guthrie Theater; featured in the Southern Playwrights Festival, the Women Playwrights Project, the Estro-Genius Festival, and PlayLabs 2002; and world-premiered at Salvage Vanguard Theater, The Drilling Company, and 15 Head a Theater Lab. She is published by Smith & Kraus, Heinemann, Accompany Publishing, and Playscripts, Inc.
In the fall of 2003, she was a guest playwright at Macalester College in St. Paul, working with director Harry Waters, Jr. on an original script culled from oral histories by Macalester students, called The Family (re)Union Project, which was produced in October 2003. She was also in residence at St. Stephen's High School in Austin, Texas, where, in collaboration with Doug Rand and the performance ensemble Troupe St. Stephens, she created a new play called Everything So Far, adapted from the 9th grade biology textbook. Swanson wrote articles about the process of developing this piece for the Austin Chronicle and Teaching Theatre Journal, both published in February 2004.
She is an alumna of the Lark Theater in New York where her play The Death of a Cat was featured in Playwrights Week 2005. In 2006, she had a residency at New York Stage & Film, through Page 73 Productions, to work on a new play called A BRIEF NARRATIVE OF AN EXTRAORDINARY BIRTH OF RABBITS. She was also in residence later in the year at Cornell College in Iowa as part of an NEA/New Plays on Campus grant through the Playwrights Center, to work on the same play. In October 2006, her play ATOMIC FARMGIRL was included in the Culture Project's IMPACT Festival in New York.
Currently, she is a Core member of the Playwrights Center, Artistic Director of Austin Script Works, and on the faculty of Southwestern University.
www.pwcenter.org/profiles.asp
www.playscripts.com
www.scriptworks.org
