Theater and Performance Studies Program Announces the Hire of Acclaimed Playwright Christine Evans to Faculty

Washington, D.C. — The Georgetown University Theater and Performance Studies Program is pleased to welcome esteemed playwright Christine Evans as its newest faculty member. Holding the prestigious Briggs-Copeland Lecturer position at Harvard University since 2007, where she initiated, coordinated, and directed the now-annual Harvard Playwrights Festival, Evans holds an M.F.A. (Playwriting) and a Ph.D. (Theatre and Performance Studies) from Brown University. Originally from Australia, she is an internationally produced playwright whose work has been called “hauntingly poetic” (Sydney Morning Herald), featuring “powerful visuals and wrenching personal drama” (Oakland Tribune).

Evans’ forthcoming anthology “War Plays” will be published by NoPassport Press in 2012 and includes three of her remarkable works on war and its aftermath: “Trojan Barbie,” “Mothergun,” and “Slow Falling Bird.” “Trojan Barbie” will be presented next April as part of the Theater and Performance Studies Program’s 2012-13 season at the Davis Performing Arts Center. Called “explosive” (Talkin’ Broadway) and “as hard-edged and eloquent as slam poetry” (Edge Boston), the work won the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award in 2007 and had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in 2009. Evans described the play to the Boston Globe as “a modern car-crash encounter with Euripides’ ‘Trojan Women.’”

As Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, Evans will teach two courses at Georgetown in the fall semester, “Play Analysis” and “Real Things Onstage: Theaters of War and Witness.”

Prof. Maya E. Roth, director of the GU Theater and Performance Studies Program, says “We’re thrilled to have Christine join us. She rose in a highly competitive national search thanks to her depth and range of teaching; her exceptional creative research trajectory; her strong scholarly profile; her match with core values in our program; and her international, as well as interdisciplinary, reach. Hiring Christine is a coup for Georgetown — and for DC.”

In November 2010, the Georgetown Theater and Performance Studies Program presented a workshop of Evans’ interactive-media theatre work-in-progress “The Underpass” — now titled “You Are Dead. You Are Here.” — which is in development towards full production in 2012-13 through HERE Arts Center (NYC) Resident Artists program. Based on research into the use of virtual reality environments to both train soldiers for battle and in experimental rehabilitation of those who return with post-traumatic stress disorder, the work incorporates animated landscapes projected from “Virtual Iraq,” a virtual-reality program used in veterans’ P.T.S.D. therapy. Evans’ development of the piece at Georgetown included intensive involvement of students, faculty, and staff, as well as research at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Evans’ plays also include “Weightless,” “My Vicious Angel,” “Pussy Boy,” “All Souls’ Day,” “Alice,” and “Fishbowl.” Her work has been produced and developed at the Playbox Theatre, U.K., New Vic (London), Belvoir St. Theatre (Sydney), the Adelaide International Festival of the Arts, Deck Chair Theatre, Vitalstatistix, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Magic Theatre, Theater Simple, Live Girls!, Kitchen Dog Theatre, hotINK Play Festival, Bricolage Theatre, Synchronicity Theatre, Perishable Theatre, New Jersey Rep, Crowded Fire, Ohio Theatre (NYC), The Irish Rep (NYC), Boston Playwrights Theater, Rattlestick Theatre, the Women’s Project and Cutting Ball.

Additional honors include an Australia Council for the Arts New Work Award, a Rockefeller Bellagio Center Fellowship, two MacDowell Colony Fellowships, a Millay Colony Fellowship, the 2009 Playwrights Theatre “Plays for the 21st Century” Award; the 2009 Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship; a Fulbright Award in Visual and Performing Arts; the Rella Lossy Playwriting Award; the Monash National Playwriting Award (Australia); the Weston Award in Dramatic Writing; and Perishable Theatre’s Women’s Playwriting Award (2000 and 2001).

Multi-talented, Evans is a saxophonist who earlier in her career also performed as an acrobat in an Australian women’s circus.

Georgetown University Theater and Performance Studies Program integrates creative and critical inquiry, emphasizing artistic excellence, interdisciplinary learning, a commitment to social justice, and the spirit of collaboration. With a dynamic major in Theater and Performance Studies, the Program features a nationally recognized faculty, including leading scholar/artists, and many of the region’s leading professional theater practitioners. One of the country’s only undergraduate programs in Theater and Performance Studies, this fast-growing program has rapidly attracted significant national attention for its distinctive curriculum, reflecting the political and international character of Georgetown, and for its high-quality, cutting-edge student production seasons. Through the Davis Center, the Program foregrounds new work development, classics re-visioned, interdisciplinary programming, and collaboration across faculty, students and guest artists.