James Still

Click for New Website: Quincy’s Lincoln Bicentennial Celebration

The Quincy Lincoln Bicentennial Commission sponsors playwright at Quincy University

Award-winning playwright James Still will be in Quincy February 23 and 24, to provide behind-the-scenes insight into his work.

A staged reading of Still’s The Heavens Are Hung in Black will be presented in Quincy University’s MacHugh Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Monday, February 23, QU theatre coordinator Connie Phillips will direct student performers in this free presentation, which will be followed by a reception.

On Tuesday, February 24, at 7:30 p.m., the theatre will be the site of a dialog with the author on his creative process and techniques of working with historical materials. Both events are open to the public without charge, thanks to major funding by Quincy’s Lincoln Bicentennial Commission with support by the Quincy University Division of Fine Arts and Communication.

A workshop for high school and college authors from throughout the area will be held on February 24. The young authors will receive guidance from Still on writing plays based on local history and will collaborate with Phillips and with local historian Iris Nelson, reference librarian at the Quincy Public Library. The finished works will be featured during a young playwright’s festival set for QU in May 2009.

Currently playwright in residence at the Indiana Repertory Theatre, Still is a winner of the William Inge Festival's Otis Gurnsey New Voices in American Theatre Award and the Charlotte B. Chorpenning Playwright Award for Distinguished Body of Work. Three of Still's plays have received the Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, and his work has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Still also works in television and film and has been nominated for five Emmys, has twice been a finalist for the Humanitas Prize, and has twice been nominated for a Television Critics Association Award.

Still was commissioned to write The Heavens Are Hung in Black to commemorate the grand reopening of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., following an eighteen month renovation. The play will debut at Ford’s Theatre on Feb. 3, 2009.

Quincy University’s theatre program staged Still’s And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank in 2001. Phillips comments that theatre students have spent the fall semester studying Still’s plays in a workshop format. They are eager to present his latest work, which explores the struggles within Lincoln’s mind in 1862 as he grieved the loss of his son Willie and prepared to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Additional information on the James Still residency is available from the QU office of fine arts and communication at 228-5432, extension 3690.

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