Ohio University Master of Fine Arts Playwriting Faculty News & Info
Charles Smith, Head, Ohio University
MFA Playwriting Program
Charles Smith is Head of the Professional Playwriting Program at Ohio University, a member of the Playwrights Ensemble at the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, and is a recipient of the 2008 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. His plays have been produced off-Broadway and around the country by theaters such as Victory Gardens, The Acting Company, Indiana Repertory Theatre, People’s Light & Theatre Company, The Goodman Theatre, Penumbra, Ujima Theatre Company, St. Louis Black Rep, New Federal Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and Berkeley Repertory Theater. His work has also been produced for the HBO New Writers Project, the International Children's Theater Festival in Seattle, and the North Carolina Black Arts Festival. His most recent play, Denmark, was the inaugural World Premiere production of the newly renovation Victory Gardens at the Biograph Theater. His play Pudd’nhead Wilson enjoyed a twenty-two city national tour and his plays Takunda and City of Gold enjoyed tours of the west coast. His other plays include Knock Me a Kiss, Freefall, Les Trois Dumas, The Sutherland, Sister Carrie, Black Star Line, Jelly Belly, Young Richard, Cane, and Free Man of Color which recently premiered in Australia after being awarded a Joseph Jefferson Award and John W. Schmid Award, both for Outstanding New Work. He is also author of two Emmy Award-winning teleplays, Fast Break to Glory and Pequito. A graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Smith has received commissions from Victory Gardens, The Goodman, Seattle Rep, Indiana Rep, The Acting Company, and Ohio University. He is an alumni playwright of the Tony Award-winning New Dramatists in New York and taught playwriting at Northwestern University for seven years. His most recent work currently in development, The Cattail Memoirs, was a commissioned by Indiana Rep and is the result of a Joyce Award. His plays may be obtained through Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing, Northwestern University Press, Smith & Kraus, Meriwether Publishing Ltd. For more information about his plays, visit
http://www.csplays.com.
Erik Ramsey, Faculty, Ohio University
MFA Playwriting Program
Associate Professor of Playwriting Erik Ramsey is Head of BFA Playwriting and teaches in the MFA Playwriting Program. His plays have been produced around the country, and Samuel French and Dramatic Publishing have published several of his short works. His recent play, LIONS LOST has been developed at numerous regional theaters including Cleveland Public Theatre, American Stage, Victory Gardens, and Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre. Currently, he is writing a trilogy of historical dramas about the surprising turn of events that boosted Joseph Smith from life as a small time con-artist to Prophet of the Mormon Church; the first in the series, titled SMITH UNEARTHED, has been read or featured at the International Society of Contemporary Literature and Theatre Conference (Estonia: 2007), the Gwen Frostic National Reading Series at Western Michigan University (Nov, 2008), and at Brick Monkey Theater Ensemble (Dec, 2008) and PICT (Jan.,2011). His two textbooks,
The Art of Theatre: Then and Now and
The Art of Theatre: A Concise Introduction are in their second edition from Wadsworth (2010), and are in use at over 100 colleges and universities nationwide. In 2007 Erik was named a Kennedy Center Faculty Fellow for his work as a new play development specialist and in 2010 he was appointed as Director of Innovation and Research Theory for WordBRIDGE Playwrights' Laboratory after many years of developmental dramaturgy nationwide working with both professional and emerging playwrights. This past September he taught master classes in playwriting and play development techniques at Lubimovka Playwrights Laboratory in Moscow, Russia.
