Whitfield Speaker Series Presents Internationally Produced Playwright

Head of School Penny Evins opened the Upper School assembly by noting the power of philanthropy and expressing her gratitude to Mr. Whitfield, who was in attendance, for providing students with the opportunity to hear writers of all genres.

Ms. Cowhig’s visit featured remarks about her upbringing in Asia as well as a discussion about her plays and the playwriting process in an onstage conversation with Upper School English teacher Will Dunlap. Mr. Dunlap was a fellow with Ms. Cowhig at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin from 2006-09. Students in the audience also had a chance to ask questions.

After the first play she wrote was produced in college, “I was hooked,” Ms. Cowhig said of her chosen career path. “I’d found something I could use to structure a life that felt meaningful, interesting and, if I chose my projects wisely and was picky about what ideas I tried to serve, perhaps even socially useful.”

Her plays, which feature the core theme of trauma and recovery, have been awarded the Wasserstein Prize, the Yale Drama Series Award, an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, the David A. Calicchio Award and the Keene Prize for Literature. Her work has been staged in the United Kingdom at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, Trafalgar Studios 2 and the Unicorn Theatre. In the United States, her work has been staged at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theater Club and the Goodman Theatre.

An associate professor of drama at the University of California Santa Barbara, Ms. Cowhig received a Master of Fine Arts in writing from the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas Austin, a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Brown University and a certificate in ensemble-based physical theatre from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.   

Before and after the assembly, Ms Cowhig visited two sections of Upper School English teacher Will Dunlap’s Modern Drama class. Juniors and seniors in the class had read two of her plays, 410[GONE] and Snow in Midsummer. Later in the day, Ms. Cowhig talked with seniors in Steve Perigard’s Honors Theater class.

“Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, a dramatist with an international reach, is a stellar example of a young writer whose work touches on a variety of places and cultures, from the United States to rural China to Guantanamo Bay,” said Mr. Dunlap. “Her vision of the world, one based within the interconnectedness of seemingly foreign cultures, is thus deeply relevant to Collegiate's ongoing commitment to global citizenship.”