It's time to apply for an MFA in dramatic writing from Carnegie Mellon.

Playwrights from the class of 2021 making the essential pilgrimage to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater near Pittsburgh

The Dramatic Writing MFA at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama is integrated into the oldest drama conservatory in the United States. Combining playwriting, screenwriting, and writing for television, this is a rigorous graduate program with a substantial workload. It fosters the courage to fail and try again; the integrity and flexibility needed for a collaborative practice; and curiosity, because curious people make better things. It is for the writer who revises relentlessly.

Students are encouraged to pursue their professional careers while enrolled in the MFA program, supported by initiatives that provide access to new play development and production opportunities in the field. Full-length plays by graduate playwrights receive workshop productions in the New Works Series. The Sloan/CMU Script Competition awards $35,000 in prizes to current CMU students each year for original screenplays and TV pilots. Graduate students have the opportunity to teach undergraduate courses in playwriting or screenwriting. Alumni have access to an established framework of professional connections.

Guest faculty are a vital presence in the program. Recent guests have included Clare Barron, Sheila Callaghan, Kia Corthron, Erin Courtney, Eisa Davis, Kristoffer Diaz, Jessica Dickey, Madeleine George, Lucas Hnath, Onalee Hunter Hughes, Aurorae Khoo, Carlos Murillo, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, Richard Nelson, Jean-Paul Nickel, Jiehae Park, J.T. Rogers, Cori Thomas, Andrea Thome, Francine Volpe, Anne Washburn, Mac Wellman, and A. Zell Williams.

Recent alumni include Liza Birkenmeier (DR. RIDE'S AMERICAN BEACH HOUSE), Gillian Beth Durkee (EST/Youngblood), Leviticus Jelks (Humanitas LA Play Festival, Playwrights Union), Lauren Wimmer (Ars Nova ANT Fest, Playwright's Center), Isabella D'Esposito (Playwrights Realm Fellow), Dan Giles (THE SECOND MAN at NYTW Next Door), Joshua Harmon (BAD JEWS, SIGNIFICANT OTHERS, SKINTIGHT), Mora V. Harris (SPACE GIRL), Daniel Hirsch (Tête à Tête opera festival, London), Whitney Rowland (PlayPenn), and Jordan Barsky (Law & Order SVU). Other alumni are writing for television, film, and new media, touring plays for Seder tables and punk rock clubs, and making wild puppet extravaganzas.

We are committed to an inclusive theater that resists bigotry and oppression. Our community is one of bold artists and bold citizens.

Applications are due January 1. Information at http://drama.cmu.edu/

Rob Handel
Associate Professor of Dramatic Writing
Carnegie Mellon University

Whitney Rowland '17 at the PlayPenn New Development Conference

Whitney Rowland (MFA '17) was selected as a 2019 Haas Fellow at the PlayPenn New Development Conference for her new play WAYFINDING. Jane is an emotionally-numbed new widow. Harrison is an inattentive, self-sabotaging husband. These two strangers collide - both literally and figuratively - tangling their life lines and setting them on a time-bending journey involving an intercontinental plane crash, a magical forest, and a choice that leads them both to an undexpected destination. Wayfinding received two public readings at The Drake Theatre in Philadelphia, summer 2019, as part of the PlayPenn program.

Lauren Wimmer '18 returns to Ars Nova on June 8

Last summer, Lauren Wimmer's (MFA '18) final CMU production THE DEATH OF HAYDEN WAVERLY, THE MOST POPULAR PERSON IN THE WORLD traveled to Ars Nova's ANT Fest. On June 8 she returns to ANT Fest with a new play created with The Bellwether Project, a new ensemble driven by CMU Drama graduates. In the not-so-distant future, after decades of natural decline, we can still count on one splashy spectacle of glamour: DR. REES ZITI’S PAGEANT FOR A BETTER FUTURE. Beauty contestants compete to determine who deserves to carry us forward in this zany variety-show-meets-harrowing-government-propaganda-machine. One night only!

SPACE GIRL by Mora V. Harris '16 now available

SPACE GIRL by Mora V. Harris (MFA '16), the story of a 16 year old girl named Arugula which is a normal name for a 16 year old girl, has been published by Playscripts Inc. Read it online, buy it, and check out this list of past productions.

Sankaram & Handel's THE INFINITE ENERGY OF ADA LOVELACE at Opera Ithaca

Five years in the making, THE INFINITE ENERGY OF ADA LOVELACE will be given its world premiere by Opera Ithaca this week. This collaboration between myself and composer Kamala Sankaram tells the surprising and mostly true story of mathematician Ada Lovelace, inventor Charles Babbage, and a visiting American named Harriet Beecher Stowe.

FEMININE OCTAGON by Amy Gijsbers van Wijk '16 in Long Island City

CMU Drama alums populate the cast and design team of FEMININE OCTAGON [OR. ARISTOTLE CAN EAT ME] by Amy Gijsbers van Wijk (MFA '16), a playwright often to be found making good trouble. The play examines what it means to be femme and feminine, and how that is commodified and curated, socially, economically, and online. See it this month at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center.

HORIZON THREE by Isabella D'Esposito '17

HORIZON THREE by Isabella D'Esposito (MFA '17) has landed in Boise in a new production from Homegrown Theatre. The play was developed in the New Works Series at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama (where it looked kind of fabulous, as you can see on director Ariel Zucker's site).