QC adding Playwright MFA degree

Queens College (QC) is joining forces with a highly-regarded theater company, to add a master’s degree in playwriting to its offerings.
Building on the success of its Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) program in creative writing and literary translation, QC is working with Manhattan-based The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) to launch the unique and innovative two-year MFA program.
The program allows would-be dramatists to have their scripts developed and performed by members of an acclaimed off-Broadway troupe, one of the few true repertory companies in the city.
Under the leadership of “Obie” award-nominated playwright Richard Schotter, who holds the Berman Prize in Playwriting, the program offers “a rare interplay of practical theatre experience and intensive workshop training.
“There’s nothing more useful and exciting for a young playwright than to see and hear his or her work performed by professional actors in a real-world theatrical setting,” Schotter said.
Participants will also have the chance to cross genres and study with members of Queens College’s distinguished MFA faculty in poetry, fiction and translation.
Led by director/playwright Scott Alan Evans and actors Cynthia Harris and Simon Jones, TACT is an ensemble of professional theatre artists which was founded in 1992.
Its members have collective credits in scores of Broadway shows, hundreds of Off-Broadway plays and over a thousand regional productions.
By dovetailing QC’s academic excellence with such faculty members as Schotter, novelist John Weir, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and Nicole Cooley, who directs the MFA program and has won the Walt Whitman Award in poetry, with the actor’s ability to bring the writing to life, the program breaks new ground, according to the school.
QC is highly rated by leading guidebooks—for example, it was named one of the nation’s 25 “hottest” and “most interesting” colleges by the 2008 Kaplan/Newsweek “How to Get Into College” guide and is consistently included in the Princeton Reviews of American colleges.
The deadline for application to this exciting new program for the 2009-2010 academic year is February 15, 2009.
For further information, visit the Queens College MFA Web site at www.qc.cuny.edu/Creative_Writing and The Actors Company Theatre’s Web site at www.tactnyc.org.