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ON CAMPUS Cuban-American Playwright Joins Theatre Arts Division in School of the Arts
By Kim Brockway uban-American playwright Eduardo Machado has been named head of the playwriting program in the Theatre Arts Division at Columbia's School of the Arts, announced Dean Robert Fitzpatrick. He will teach first, second and third-year graduate students, as well as a class in the Undergraduate Writing Program.
"We are delighted that our students will have the opportunity to develop their emerging talents with Eduardo Machado, one of our country's most critically-acclaimed playwrights," said Fitzpatrick. "An accomplished artist who takes a genuine interest in his students, Machado will bring a fresh and engaging voice to an already stellar program." Machado is the author of more than twenty-five plays and several translations, including "Why To Refuse," "Once Removed," and "Rosario and the Gypsies," among others. In 1995 the Mark Taper Forum produced his "Floating Islands," a two-evening cycle of four plays about the rise and fall of capitalism as seen through the eyes of two families. His plays have been produced in regional theaters across the country and in London, and are published by Theater Communications Group. Machado recently directed his first feature film, "Racing Blind," from his own screenplay; it is now being edited. His play "Stevie Wants to Play the Blues" will open at the BAT Theatre Company in Tribeca on Dec. 15. Over the last two years, Machado has been commissioned to write plays for the Public Theater, the Roundabout Theater, and Wind Dancer Productions. In 1995 Machado received the National Theater Artist Residency to serve as playwright-in-residence at the Mark Taper Forum. He has received additional grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the City of Los Angeles. Machado has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, N.Y.U., the Mark Taper Forum, the Public Theater and the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. The School of the Arts' Theatre Arts Division, chaired by Arnold Aronson, is a professional training program leading to the M.F.A. degree in acting, directing, dramaturgy/criticism, theatre management, and playwriting. In addition to in-depth courses in their particular specialization, students are required to take a range of courses across all theatre disciplines and to participate extensively in production work. The curriculum emphasizes the interdependence of text, theater history and theory, performance, staging, and technical production.
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