The University of New Mexico

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Contact: Laurie Mellas, 277-5915

April 3, 2006

UNM Student Playwrights To Be Honored At Kennedy Center Festival

Three students in the University of New Mexico Dramatic Writing Program will receive Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards during the 2006 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, held April 17-23 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Student playwrights Lou Clark, Terry Davis, and Rebecca Orchant will attend the festival where selections from their winning plays will be read. Each will receive a cash prize and invitation to attend the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive. Winners also receive a fellowship to attend New Visions/New Voices, a national conference designed to help writers develop plays for young audiences.

The UNM student plays were originally performed this past November in UNM's Words Afire Festival, produced by the Dramatic Writing Program in the College of Fine Arts Theatre and Dance Department.

Lou Clark will receive the Theatre for Youth Award for “I Sea,” a play about a thirteen-year-old girl struck with rage. The young woman runs to the beach for comfort and soon learns that things are not always as they seem. As the magic of nature combats nearly unspeakable acts of mankind, the girl struggles to hear, to see, to speak.

Terry Davis will receive the Jean Kennedy Smith Award for “The Family Frost,” centered on a young man who has no choice but to return home to care for his Alzheimer's-stricken father. Ghosts of his past flow as fast and deep as the river out front and as inevitably as the disease that claims his father.

“Secrets And Other Indulgences” by Rebecca Orchant is one of five finalists for the John Cauble Short Play Award. Each of the finalists will attend the festival. The play was also one of two short play winners at the Kennedy Center's Region VI Festival held in Tulsa Oklahoma in March. The play follows David and Ellis who meet and fall in love. Whose secrets will come out first? Do they sift through the debris and rebuild together? Or do they pack up the wreckage and add to their emotional baggage? A story about whether who you are is enough to jeopardize who you become.

 


The University of New Mexico is the state's largest university, serving more than 32,000 students. UNM is home to the state's only schools of law, medicine, pharmacy and architecture and operates New Mexico's only academic health center. UNM is noted for comprehensive undergraduate programs and research that benefits the state and the nation.

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