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Doug Grissom

Associate Professor, Playwriting

Address
211 Drama Bldg.
Charlottesville, VA

Biography
Doug received his M.F.A. in playwriting from Brandeis University whose plays have been widely produced at many venues around the country. His plays Deep Down and Elvis People were mounted in major Off-Broadway productions and subsequently produced at regional theatres across the country. Other plays of his have been produced at Mill Mountain Theatre, the Source Theatre, Theatre Virginia, Venture Theatre, Main Street Theatre, and many others. Elvis People and several other plays of his have been published by Dramatic Publishing Company and Playscripts, Inc.

Doug has won several playwriting awards, including the Virginia Playwriting Award, Mill Mountain New Play Competition and the Outstanding New Play Award at the Washington Theatre Festival. His educational theatre piece on acquaintance rape, But I Said No (co-written with Margaret Baldwin), has received national acclaim, has toured extensively on college campuses around the country, and is still performed on a regular basis. He has written two educational plays commissioned by the Charlottesville Sexual Assault Resource center: I Never Saw It Coming, addressing teen assault, toured high schools in Virginia and was seen by over 20,000 students; Ear of the Beholder, addressing sexual harassment in middle school, played extensively in middle schools in central Virginia. Grissom has twice been the Chair of the Playwriting Division of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and has been the Regional Playwriting Chair and the National Playwriting Vice Chair for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He is a co-founder of Offstage Theatre in Charlottesville, Virginia, a theatre devoted to the performance of original works in site-specific venues.