Press Release: Playwright Jacqueline E. Lawton returns as mentor for VSA's 2013 Playwrights Discovery Award Program
Playwright Jacqueline E. Lawton returns as mentor for the 2013 Playwrights Discovery Award as part of The Kennedy Center's Department of VSA and Accessibility.
The VSA Playwright Discovery Program is an annual competition that invites middle and high school students to take a closer look at the world around them, examine how disability affects their lives and the lives of others, and express their views through the art of playwriting. Young playwrights with and without disabilities can write from their own experience or about an experience in the life of another person or a fictional character. The program began in 1984, and has continued annually since.
The VSA Playwright Discovery Script Writing Intensive brings a select group of 5-10 student-writers, grades 9-12 (or equivalent), with a disability to Washington, DC for a weekend of pre-professional activities. The Script Writing Intensive includes script workshops, roundtable discussions, staged readings, performances, and more.
"I'm excited and honored to be a part of the VSA's Playwright Discovery Program again this year," Playwright and program mentor Jacqueline Lawton said. "Last year's event was so inspiring and worthwhile. I loved working with the student plawrights so much so that I blogged about it here and here. I can hardly wait to meet and work with my new student and to celebrate the culmination of their hard work on Sunday, September 1st at the Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage Festival."
About VSA
VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, was founded more than 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to provide arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increase access to the arts for all. VSA is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, www.vsarts.org.
About Education at the Kennedy Center
As the national center for the performing arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is committed to increasing opportunities for all people to participate in and understand the arts. To fulfill that mission, the Kennedy Center strives to commission, create, design, produce, and/or present performances and programs of the highest standard of excellence and of a diversity that reflects the world in which we live—and to make those performances and programs accessible and inclusive.
The VSA Playwright Discovery Program is an annual competition that invites middle and high school students to take a closer look at the world around them, examine how disability affects their lives and the lives of others, and express their views through the art of playwriting. Young playwrights with and without disabilities can write from their own experience or about an experience in the life of another person or a fictional character. The program began in 1984, and has continued annually since.
The VSA Playwright Discovery Script Writing Intensive brings a select group of 5-10 student-writers, grades 9-12 (or equivalent), with a disability to Washington, DC for a weekend of pre-professional activities. The Script Writing Intensive includes script workshops, roundtable discussions, staged readings, performances, and more.
"I'm excited and honored to be a part of the VSA's Playwright Discovery Program again this year," Playwright and program mentor Jacqueline Lawton said. "Last year's event was so inspiring and worthwhile. I loved working with the student plawrights so much so that I blogged about it here and here. I can hardly wait to meet and work with my new student and to celebrate the culmination of their hard work on Sunday, September 1st at the Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage Festival."
About VSA
VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, was founded more than 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to provide arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increase access to the arts for all. VSA is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, www.vsarts.org.
About Education at the Kennedy Center
As the national center for the performing arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is committed to increasing opportunities for all people to participate in and understand the arts. To fulfill that mission, the Kennedy Center strives to commission, create, design, produce, and/or present performances and programs of the highest standard of excellence and of a diversity that reflects the world in which we live—and to make those performances and programs accessible and inclusive.
Jacqueline E. Lawton was named one of 30 of the nation's leading black playwrights by Arena Stage’s American Voices New Play Institute. Her plays include: Anna K; Blood-bound and Tongue-tied; Deep Belly Beautiful;The Devil’s Sweet Water; The Hampton Years; Ira Aldridge: the African Roscius; Lions of Industry, Mothers of Invention; Love Brothers Serenade (2013 semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference), Mad Breed, and Our Man Beverly Snow. Lawton’s work has been developed and presented at the following venues: Active Cultures, Classical Theater of Harlem, Folger Shakespeare Library, theHegira, Howard University, Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival, Rorschach Theater Company, Savannah Black Heritage Festival (Armstrong Atlantic State University), Shakespeare Theatre Company, Source Theatre Festival, Theater J, and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. She is published in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project (University of Texas Press). Ms. Lawton received her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She participated in the Kennedy Center’s Playwrights’ Intensive (2002) and World Interplay (2003). She is a 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color award recipient and a National New Play Network (NNPN) Playwright Alumna. She has been recognized as a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference and the Playwright's Center PlayLabs, and as a SheWrites Festival finalist. A member of Arena Stage's Playwright's Arena and the Dramatist Guild of America, Ms. Lawton currently resides in Washington, D.C.