Last Frontier Theatre Conference
Encyclopedia
The Last Frontier Theatre Conference is an annual conference on American Theatre
held in Valdez
, Alaska
that focuses on playwright
ing. Continually held each year since 1993, the conference puts out a call for play submissions, requesting playwrights from around the country to send one-act plays and full-length plays for consideration. Selected plays are read by actors in front of an audience, then each play is critiqued by professionals, academics in theatre, and audience members.
The Conference provides a series of workshops, symposia, theatrical productions, and panels at which participants have the opportunity to study with award-winning playwrights, directors, producers, and actors, as well as scholars and critics. The Call for Plays is the first step toward the conference’s mission to develop new voices and provide students with the opportunity to interact in a workshop setting with some of the greatest luminaries in the American Theatre
.
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
held in Valdez
Valdez, Alaska
Valdez is a city in Valdez-Cordova Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 4,020. The city is one of the most important ports in Alaska. The port of Valdez was named in 1790 after the Spanish naval officer Antonio Valdés y...
, Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
that focuses on playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
ing. Continually held each year since 1993, the conference puts out a call for play submissions, requesting playwrights from around the country to send one-act plays and full-length plays for consideration. Selected plays are read by actors in front of an audience, then each play is critiqued by professionals, academics in theatre, and audience members.
The Conference provides a series of workshops, symposia, theatrical productions, and panels at which participants have the opportunity to study with award-winning playwrights, directors, producers, and actors, as well as scholars and critics. The Call for Plays is the first step toward the conference’s mission to develop new voices and provide students with the opportunity to interact in a workshop setting with some of the greatest luminaries in the American Theatre
Theater in the United States
Theater of the United States is based in the Western tradition. Regional or resident theatres in the United States are professional theatre companies outside of New York City that produce their own seasons.- Early history:...
.
List of notable playwrights honored and attended
- Edward AlbeeEdward AlbeeEdward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
- Robert Woodruff AndersonRobert Woodruff AndersonRobert Woodruff Anderson was an American playwright, screenwriter, and theater producer....
- Scott Elliott
- Horton FooteHorton FooteAlbert Horton Foote, Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television...
- Gary GarrisonGary GarrisonGary Lynn Garrison is a former American football wide receiver who played professional football in the American Football League and the National Football League . He attended San Diego State University from 1964-1965...
- Jack GelberJack GelberJack Gelber was an American playwright best known for his 1959 drama The Connection, depicting the life of drug-addicted jazz musicians. The first great success of the Living Theatre, the play was translated into five languages and produced in ten nations...
- Jessica GoldbergJessica GoldbergJessica Goldberg is an American playwright, screenwriter and television writer.-Life:Jessica is a graduate of the Dramatic Writing Program at New York University, and The Juilliard School...
- John GuareJohn GuareJohn Guare is an American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body...
- Jon Klein
- Tony KushnerTony KushnerAnthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...
- Romulus LinneyRomulus Linney (playwright)Romulus Zachariah Linney IV was an American playwright and professor.-Life and career:Linney was born in Philadelphia, the son of Maitland Clabaugh and Romulus Zachariah Linney III. His great-grandfather was Republican Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney. Linney was raised in Boone, North...
- Emily MannEmily Mann (director)Emily Mann, born April 12, 1952, is the multi-award–winning Artistic Director and Resident Playwright of McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, where she has overseen over 85 productions....
- Terrance McNally
- Scott McMorrowScott McMorrowScott McMorrow is an American playwright and actor. McMorrow's plays have been translated into Italian, and they have been produced extensively throughout the United States, including Off-Off Broadway. His award-winning plays and poetry have been widely anthologized, and McMorrow has published...
- Arthur MillerArthur MillerArthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
- Dawson Moore
- August WilsonAugust WilsonAugust Wilson was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama...
- Lanford WilsonLanford WilsonLanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
- Paula VogelPaula VogelPaula Vogel is an American playwright and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, How I Learned to Drive.-Early years:...
List of notable actors honored and attended
- Angela BassettAngela BassettAngela Evelyn Bassett is an American actress. She has become well known for her biographical film roles portraying real life women in African American culture, including singer Tina Turner in the motion picture What's Love Got to Do with It, as well as Betty Shabazz in the films Malcolm X and...
- John Heard
- Laura LinneyLaura LinneyLaura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...
- Shane MitchellP. Shane MitchellP. Shane Mitchell is an American actor, playwright and director. He became the Artistic Director of TBA Theatre Company in Anchorage, Alaska in 2003.Mitchell was born in Toole, Utah, the youngest of four sons: Brad, Troy, and his twin D...
- Wayne MitchellD. Wayne MitchellD. Wayne Mitchell is an American actor, playwright and director.He became the Educational Director of TBA Theatre Company in Anchorage, Alaska in 2003.Mitchell was born in Toole, Utah, the third of four sons: Brad, Troy, and his twin P...
- Patricia NealPatricia NealPatricia Neal was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still , wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's , middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud , for which she won...
- Chris NothChris NothChristopher David "Chris" Noth is an American actor. He is known for long-running television roles as Det. Mike Logan on the police procedural and legal drama television series, Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and as Big on Sex and the City. For the latter role, he has been...
- Lloyd RichardsLloyd RichardsLloyd George Richards was a Canadian-American theatre director, actor, and dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1991, and Yale University professor emeritus.- Biography :...
- Ron Rand
- Marian SeldesMarian SeldesMarian Hall Seldes is an American stage, film, radio, and television actress whose career has spanned six decades and who was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.-Life and career:...
- Libby Skala
- Courtney B. VanceCourtney B. VanceCourtney Bernard Vance is an American actor. He was formerly a regular on the NBC/USA television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent as Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver. He was also a series regular on the ABC series FlashForward. As of 2011, he appears on the TNT series The Closer as Chief...
External links
- Main Website
- NPR coverage of the conference from 2002
- Review of the conference by an attendee
- More info from UAA