The UVA Department of Drama invites you and a guest to A Conversation with Donald Margulies on Friday, March 31, 2017 at 4:00 p.m. in the Ruth Caplin Theatre. Pulitzer Prize and Obie Award-winning playwright Donald Margulies, UVA Drama’s 2017 Keenan Lecturer, is a prolific playwright whose plays have been commissioned by and performed on and off Broadway and at major theatres across the United States including Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, Geffen Playhouse, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, New York Shakespeare Festival, Primary Stages, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Long Wharf Theatre, and in cities all over the world. His play Dinner with Friends won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2000 and was made into an Emmy-nominated film for HBO. Seating is limited. Please RSVP by March 29, 2017 to judym@virginia.edu.
UVA Drama is presenting Mr. Margulies' play Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis De Rougemont (As Told By Himself) March 30 - April 8 in the Ruth Caplin Theatre. Directed by UVA Drama Associate Professor Marianne Kubik, young and old will enjoy this tale of Victorian-era adventurer Louis De Rougemont who tells us about the adventures of his youth sailing to exotic islands, meeting native peoples, and dealing with a giant octopus complete to a “soundtrack” created by the actors. To purchase tickets for Shipwrecked! please click here.
The film The End of the Tour, for which Mr. Margulies wrote the screenplay, will be screened on April 1, 2017 at 2:00 p.m. in the Ruth Caplin Theatre followed by a moderated discussion with UVA Drama Assistant Professor Katelyn Wood. Margulies adapted David Lipsky’s memoir Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace into the screenplay for the film which depicts the five day interview of David Foster Wallace by then “Rolling Stone” reporter Lipsky. Seating for this free screening is first come first served.
“We are honored to have Mr. Margulies as our Keenan Lecturer and guest artist,” said UVA Drama chair Colleen Kelly. “Our students will be able to meet with him in classes and our audiences will be able to gain insight into his work as both a playwright and screenwriter through the lecture and the film screening. There will also be a Q&A with Mr. Margulies and the cast of Shipwrecked! following the performance on April 1.”
Mr. Margulies residency is support by the Keenan Lecture Fund and an Arts Enhancement Grant from the Office of the Provost & the Vice Provost for the Arts.
Lawrence R. Keenan, UVA class of ‘66, a lawyer and a playwright, died in 1999 from complications of bone cancer. In his honor, his friends and family established the Keenan Lectureship in UVA’s Drama Department.
A UVA Drama alumnus, Mr. Keenan received an M.F.A. in playwriting in 1992. His play The Spot” was a based on the White Spot restaurant on the Corner and won first place in the West Virginia Play Festival. Keenan began his legal career in 1972 as an assistant commonwealth’s attorney for Fairfax County. He was a Falls Church City attorney from 1974 to 1976 and a trial lawyer with a private practice in Fairfax from 1977 to 1985. Turning his attention to writing, he moved to California in 1985 and joined the Actor's Alley Theater and Tracy Roberts Theater. In addition to writing, he served as a consultant on the staging of courtroom dramas. He practiced law in California for two years before pursuing graduate studies at the University of Virginia in the early 1990s.
Parking for all of these events if free in the Culbreth Road Garage adjacent to the Drama Building.
Photo by Ethan Hill