Artists Spotlight: Myra Donnelley
Myra Donnelley, producer and playwright
Recipient 2007 RACC Project Grant
Myra Donnelley is a theatre producer and playwright who currently works with Master Artist Thomas Kellogg, founder and Artistic Director of the Mentor Artists Playwrights Project (MAPP).
Since January 2005 Myra, with Tom, has coordinated writing residencies with Native young people in urban centers and on reservations in California, Oregon and Idaho, and co-produced public staged readings of original one-act plays in a variety of venues. With the help of a RACC Project Grant, Mentor Artists Playwrights Project (MAPP) will present professional staged readings of six new one-act plays by teenagers from the Native American Youth and Family Center at three different Portland venues from March 18-20, 2007. (See the website for details).
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| Myra Donnelley (center) with participants in Native American Youth and Family Center Readings |
The work of the young Native Playwrights Project is an exciting synthesis of her early career work in New York with young people, her professional experience in Portland producing and directing plays for Stark Raving Theatre, and her ongoing commitment to playwrighting and the development of new works for the stage. She is particularly interested in the challenges of integrating indigenous language into Tom Kellogg's extraordinary writing methodology and looks forward to her ongoing work in community, particularly on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in Idaho, and her adopted hometown of Portland.
Myra grew up near Chicago, went to college in New York and in 1989 moved to Portland. She oversaw the construction of Stark Raving's second space (now the Back Door Theatre) on SE Hawthorne and later partnered with Don Horn and triangle productions! to develop the Theater! Theatre! Building on SE Belmont. She counts herself fortunate to have worked over the years with many of Portland's finest playwrights, actors, directors and designers.
The production she is probably proudest of, however, is her daughter, Lily Joslin, a graduate of Grant High School and first year student at Sarah Lawrence College.
Contact Information:
website: www.mentorartists.org
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RACC Staff to Contact
Mary Bauer
Communications Associate
503.823.5426
mbauer@racc.org
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