MFA in Creative WritingPlaywrights Enrichment SeriesFall 2008 marked the start of the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program's Playwrights’ Enrichment Series, which was made possible by an anonymous gift from a program alumnus.
Writer, Director and Producer Todd Haynes has received numerous honors for directing and writing all of his films. “Far From Heaven” garnered Academy Award, Golden Globe and WGA nominations for Best Screenplay as well as nominations from the Chicago Film Critics Association, European Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards, Satellite Awards, and the Venice Film Festival. Haynes won Best Screenplay awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, Seattle Film Critics, Southeastern Film Critics Association, Phoenix Film Critics Society, and the Online Film Critics Society. For his direction of “Far From Heaven,” Haynes won an Independent Spirit Award, a Golden Satellite Award, an award from the New York Film Critics Circle. The film won the Honorable Mention – SIGNIS Award at the Venice Film Festival and three awards at the 2003 GLAAD Media Awards.Haynes’ film “Velvet Goldmine” won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Palme D’Or. For his direction of the film, he won the Channel 4 Director’s Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Haynes’ feature film debut, “Poison,” won the Grand Jury Prize – Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival, the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film at the Berlin International Film Festival, and was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards for Best Director and Best First Feature. Haynes’ film, “I’m Not There,” won the Robert Altman Award at the Independent Spirit Awards, two awards at the Venice Film Festival – the Cinemavenire Award for Best Film and the Special Jury Prize, and was nominated for a Gotham Award for Best Film. Haynes received Best Director and Best Screenplay nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards for his film “Safe,” which also won the American Independent Award at the Seattle International Film Festival and the FIPRESCI Prize--Special Mention at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Haynes' last project was a five-hour miniseries for HBO called Mildred Pierce, based on the novel by James M. Cain.
In 2009, Todd became the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) Visionary Leadership Award, for “an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theatre field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.” Todd is beginning his fifteenth season as artistic director of New Dramatists, the nation’s leading center for the support and development of playwrights, where he has worked closely with more than a hundred of America’s finest playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. A former Managing Editor of American Theatre magazine and the author of The Artistic Home, published by the Theatre Communications Group (TCG), he has written, edited, and/or contributed to a dozen books. This year saw the completion and publication of Theatre Development Fund’s (TDF) Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, a five-year study of new play production in America, for which Todd has served as project director and senior writer. Todd won the prestigious George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his essays in American Theatre and a Milestone Award for his first novel, The World’s Room, published by Steerforth Press. In 2001 he accepted a special Tony Honor on behalf of New Dramatists. Todd currently serves on the faculty of Yale School of Drama. He has two sons, Guthrie and Grisha, and lives in Brooklyn with playwright Karen Hartman.
Jane Anderson is a multi-award winning writer and director who has created some of the most thought-provoking theater, film and television in the last two decades. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway and in theaters around the country, including Actors Theater of Louisville, Williamstown, The McCarter Theater, Long Wharf and The Pasadena Playhouse. Her published plays: Looking for Normal, The Baby Dance, Defying Gravity, Food & Shelter, Smart Choices for the New Century, Lynette at 3 a.m. and The Last Time We Saw Her. Other works include The Pink Studio and Hotel Oubliette. Her most recent play, The Quality of Life, premiered at the Geffen Playhouse and produced at A.C.T. and was directed by Ms. Anderson. She wrote and directed The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio. She wrote and directed Normal for HBO which garnered six Emmy nominations (including best writing, directing and best made-for-TV film), three Golden Globe nominations, and Director’s Guild and Writer’s Guild nominations for best directing and writing. She wrote HBO’s ground-breaking The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom for which she received an Emmy, a Penn Award and Writers Guild Award for best teleplay. Her other television films include When Billie Beat Bobby and The Baby Dance for which she received a Peabody Award, a Golden Globe nomination and three Emmy nominations for best writing and made-for-TV film. She wrote and directed the first segment of If These Walls Could Talk II which starred Vanessa Redgrave and earned Ms. Anderson an Emmy nomination for best writing. Her other screenwriting credits include: How to Make an American Quilt and It Could Happen to You. Ms. Anderson resides in Los Angeles with her spouse Tess Ayers and their son, Raphael.
Gary Garrison was recently appointed Executive Director of the
Dramatist Guild of America – the national organization of playwrights,
lyricists and composers. For the past ten years he has filled the posts
of
Artistic Director, Producer and fulltime faculty member in the
Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch School
of the Arts. He has produced the last eighteen Festivals of New Works
for NYU,
working with hundreds of playwrights, directors and actors. Garrison’s
plays include Verticals and Horizontals, Storm
on Storm, It Belongs on Stage (and Not in My Bed), Crater, Old Soles,
Padding
The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make
A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With
Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou? and When A Diva
Dreams. This work has been
featured at the Boston Theatre Marathon, Primary Stages, The Directors
Company,
Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Fourth Unity, Open Door Theatre,
African
Globe Theatre Company, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New
York Rep.
He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The
Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of
Your Life, Perfect Ten: Writing
and Producing the Ten Minute Play, two volumes of Monologues for Men
by Men (all Heinemann
Press), and the KCACTF’s Best Student
Plays of 2006. He is a the program coordinator for the Summer
Playwriting Intensive for the Kennedy Center, the former National Chair
of
Playwriting for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival
and recipient of the Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting from the
Association of
Theatre in Higher Education.
Since 1997, Philip Himberg has been the Producing Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program which provides year-round support for playwrights and theatres artists on two continents. He expanded the program to include two new laboratories: The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at White Oak and Playwrights Retreat at Ucross. In addition, he has created the Sundance Institute Theatre “international initiative” aimed at including Eastern European and East African participation at the theatre labs. In 2010, Sundance Theatre will unveil three new satellite labs: The Theatre Lab at MASS MoCA (North Adams, Massachusetts), the Theatre Lab at Governors Island (New York City) and Sundance/East Africa - a three week Lab in Lamu, Kenya supporting artists from four East African countries. In addition to his work at Sundance, Philip has worked as a director at the nation’s leading regional theatres, including Playwrights Horizons, Huntington Theatre Company, Arena Stage, Philadelphia Theatre Co. and others. He is also a published essayist ("Family Albums" in Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, Dutton).
Christian Parker is the Associate Artistic Director at the Atlantic Theater Company, where he has worked since the fall of 2001. His world premiere production of Leslie Ayvazian’s Make Me will run from May-June, 2009 at Atlantic Stage 2. Most recently at Atlantic, he directed the New York premiere of Tina Howe’s play Birth and After Birth. In 2006, he produced, directed, and acted in 10X20, a festival of newly commissioned ten minute plays by writers previously produced at Atlantic, to inaugurate their new Stage 2 and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the company. For that festival, he directed plays by Tina Howe, Keith Reddin and Rolin Jones, and acted in Kevin Heelan's The Compassioneer. Also at Atlantic he directed Ken Weitzman's Arrangements and Jeff Whitty’s The Hiding Place. Other direction includes new works by David Lindsay-Abaire, Sheri Wilner, Eric Winick and Cusi Cram for the Chekhov Now! Festival, HB Playwrights Theatre, the 24 Hour Plays On Broadway, The Brick, and Atlantic 453/New Works Series. Prior to his tenure at the Atlantic, he spent several seasons as the Literary Manager at Manhattan Theatre Club. Christian has also dramaturged over fifty premieres of new American and British plays on, off and off-off Broadway. He currently runs the MFA Dramaturgy program at Columbia University, and holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from Columbia.
Marisa Smith is the owner and publisher (with her husband Eric Kraus) of Smith and Kraus Publishers in Hanover, New Hampshire. Smith and Kraus has over 500 theatre books in print and publishes 35 new theatre titles annually. Marisa is also a playwright; her plays have been produced at Yellow Taxi Productions, Parish Players, the Boston Theatre Marathon and Women’s Theatre Project, among others.
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Todd Haynes - Appearing at the Spring 2012 Port Townsend, Washington Residency - 2/22/12 
Todd London - Appearing at the Fall 2011 Plainfield, Vermont Residency
Jane Anderson
Gary Garrison
Philip Himberg 
Christian Parker 
Marisa Smith