Award-winning playwright Jon Robin Baitz joins Pippin Parker and Robert LuPone of The New School for Drama in a Town Hall meeting to discuss his career and experiences as a playwright for both film and television. Baitz is the distinguished Artist-in-Residence at The New School for Drama for the 2009-10 academic year.
Bio
Jon Robin Baitz
Jon Robin Baitz will be the distinguished artist-in-residence for the 2009-2010 academic year at The New School for Drama. Baitz is a Pulitzer finalist, a Guggenheim and NEA fellow, and winner of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.
A founding member and former artistic director of New York's Naked Angels theater company, Baitz has written a number of acclaimed plays, including The Film Society, The Substance of Fire, Three Hotels, A Fair Country, Ten Unknowns, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, a new version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (produced on Broadway in 2001), and The Paris Letter.
Playwrights Horizons, the Roundabout Theatre Company, Lincoln Center Theater, and the Second Stage Theatre have produced Baitz's work in New York. His new play, Love and Mercy, will be produced next season on Broadway.
Robert LuPone
Robert LuPone, a member of The Actors Studio, appeared on Broadway in True West, A Thousand Clowns, A View from the Bridge, Late Nite Comic, Zoya's Apartment, Swing, St. Joan, Nefertiti and as Zach in A Chorus Line. Off-Broadway credits include Pericles, Clothes for a Summer Hotel, Black Angel, Lennon, and Snow Orchid.
In regional theater, he has performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Hartford Stage, Yale Rep, Arena Stage, Berkshire Theater Festival, Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey, Williamstown Theater Festival, and the Goodman Theater, where he won the Jefferson Award for his performance in The Tooth of Crime.
Television credits include Law & Order, Crossing Jordan, Swift Justice, Guiding Light, Mia-Child of Hollywood, American Tragedy, Palookaville, Sex and the City, and as Dr. Cusimano in The Sopranos. He received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Zach Grayson on All My Children.
Film credits include Nick of Time, Dead Presidents, The Doors, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Door in the Floor, and the upcoming Indocumentos.
Mr. LuPone is President of the Board of ART/NY, as well as artistic director of MCC Theater in New York City.
Pippin Parker
Pippin Parker is chair of the Playwriting Department at The New School for Drama. Parker works as a writer in theater, film, television, radio and interactive media. He is a founding member and former Artistic Director of Naked Angels Theater Company in New York City and a founding member of Writer Group, a collective of dramatic and fiction authors, whose members include Nicole Burdette, Frank Pugliese and Kenny Lonergan.
With Naked Angels, Mr. Parker helped originate their Tuesdays@9 cold reading series, which has for the past 15 years brought together emerging playwrights and actors for weekly presentations of works-in-progress. He also co-conceived the company's signature Issues Projects, for which he has had the opportunity to collaborate with Amnesty International, The Center for American Progress, Project A.L.S. and The Culture Project.
His short play A Gift was produced in New York and Los Angeles and subsequently adapted for radio for NPR's The Next Big Thing, featuring Lily Taylor. He has been a staff writer for shows including the animated series The Tick, and developed work with producer Tom Fontana.
Current projects include his new play, Assisted Living, which has been presented at Naked Angels and at New York Stage and Film, and an original television series now in development at HBO. In an advisory capacity, he has worked as a dramaturge for the Drama Department and consultant for numerous plays and screenplays. Mr. Parker is an active member of several committees of the Writers Guild of America, East.
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