Cornell receives $3,000 NEA grant to develop new play

MOUNT VERNON – Cornell College’s theatre and communications studies department has received a $3,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant to workshop and develop a new play, with work on the production occurring in Term 3 of 2006-2007.

The grant, provided through the New Plays On Campus program of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, will help fund the residency of playwright C. Denby Swanson. She will work this fall with select students under the supervision of Mark Hunter, chair of theatre and communications studies, to develop her new play, A Brief Narrative of an Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits, and potentially stage it at Cornell the following academic year.

Swanson is a graduate of Smith College and the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers. Her play The Death of a Cat received 18 nominations for local awards after its premiere in Austin, Texas. She has been commissioned twice by the Guthrie Theater to write short plays for young actors and has become a popular guest artist and teacher on the thespian festival circuit. She is on the faculty at Southwestern University.

Cornell was one of three institutions awarded $3,000 NEA grants through the Playwrights’ Center; the others were the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Puget Sound ( Wash.).