Faculty

Suzan Zeder

Suzan Zeder has been recognized nationally and internationally as one of the leading playwrights for young and family audiences in the United States. Her plays have been produced in all fifty states by professional, university and community theatres. Her work has also been seen in Canada, England, France, Switzerland, Greece, Israel, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Dr. Zeder is a four-time winner of the Distinguished Play Award by the American Alliance of Theatre and Education and has served as a panelist and site reporter for the National Endowment for the Arts and Theatre Communications Group. In 1998, she was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre and in 2002 she was elected to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at the University of Texas ay Austin. In 2004, she co-authored The Spaces of Creation: The Creative Process of Playwriting with her husband, Movement Specialist Jim Hancock, which subsequently won the Distinguished Book Award from the American Alliance of Theatre and Education. In 2007, she was recognized with the Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting Award from The Association of Theatre in Higher Education. Dr. Zeder heads the Playwriting Program at the University of Texas at Austin where she also holds an Endowed Chair in Theatre for Youth and Playwriting.

Steven Dietz

Steven Dietz is one of America's most widely-produced contemporary playwrights. Since 1983, his thirty-plus plays have been seen at over one hundred regional theatres in the United States, as well as Off-Broadway. International productions have been seen in England, Japan, Germany, France, Australia, Sweden, Austria, Russia, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Argentina, Peru, Singapore and South Africa. Mr. Dietz received the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award for his plays Fiction (produced Off-Broadway by the Roundabout Theatre Company), and Still Life with Iris; the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Play for Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure; the PEN USA West Award in Drama for Lonely Planet; and the 1995 Yomuiri Shimbun Award (the Japanese “Tony”) for his adaptation of Shusaku Endo's novel Silence. Recent and upcoming premieres include the Steinberg Award-nominated Becky's New Car (ACT Theatre, Seattle); Shooting Star (ZACH Theatre, Austin); and Yankee Tavern (Florida Stage). These plays are each scheduled for numerous LORT productions around the country in the 2009/10 season. Mr. Dietz's work as a director has been seen at many of America's leading regional theatres, including Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, and the Sundance Institute, among many others. He was a resident director for ten years at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, where he also served as Artistic Director of Midwest PlayLabs.

Kirk Lynn

Kirk Lynn is a Founder and Co-Producing Artistic Director of the theatre collective Rude Mechs in Austin, TX. With the Rudes, Kirk has written and adapted more than 25 plays including Lipstick Traces, The Method Gun, and most recently I've Never Been So Happy, one of only five plays to receive support from the National Endowment for the Arts New Play Development Program. Kirk has received four Rockefeller MAP Fund Awards and Four National Endowment for the Arts Key Artist Grants. Kirk is a Creative Capital grantee. His work has twice been selected for inclusion in the Under the Radar Festival and has been seen in NYC, Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles, D.C., Houston and Marfa, as well as Helsinki, Salzburg, Galway, and Edinburgh where his company, Rude Mechs was awarded a Total Theatre Award for Best Collaboration.