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My goal is to write good stories that make sense at a gut level. Built into this goal is the desire to connect with the audience emotionally and to leave them with something to think about so that their experience of the play doesn’t end when the house lights come back up. I often attempt to do this through comedy, particularly dark comedy, because there is something in laughter that suddenly makes everything real and immediate. Even when I am writing a grim drama like Hotel Desperado, I find myself reaching for the kind of insights that laughter can sometimes deliver.
I’m also drawn to realities that are not completely naturalistic. My characters tend to live in worlds where life is somehow heightened or askew, as in The Ascension of Carlotta where a convenience store clerk falls in love with a stranger who came to rob her store, or in Love and Drowning where a woman’s anxiety can cause light bulbs to explode. My hope is that, through the contrast such worlds provide, we may see the everyday world outside of the theatre in a new light and gain some new understanding of not only ourselves, but also those around us.
Will Dunne is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists where he currently develops plays and teaches workshops. Local productions of his work include: The Ascension of Carlotta at 16th Street Theatre, How I Became an Interesting Person at Chicago Dramatists, and Deep Gardens at Second City. His new play The Roper recently received a public staged reading in the Chicago Dramatists Saturday Series. In addition, Mr. Dunne is the author of The Dramatic Writer's Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories published by the University of Chicago Press.
His plays Hotel Desperado, Love and Drowning, and How I Became an Interesting Person were each selected for development and presentation at the US National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center. Interesting Person also received a Charles MacArthur Fellowship founded by Helen Hayes and awarded by the O'Neill for comedy. The play was later presented at the Australian National Playwrights Conference in Canberra, New South Wales, and n Croatian translation at the National Theatre of Istria. Hotel Desperado was presented in Russian translation at the Moscow Theatre Union's annual festival of new plays and also was a finalist for the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab.
West coast productions of his plays Eleventh Hour, Between Quakes, The Bridge, and I Married a Werewolf earned four Bay Area Theatre Circle Awards, two DramaLogue Playwriting Awards, and a Best-of-Year mention from the San Francisco Examiner. His toll-taker play The Bridge was selected as a project of the 50-Year Celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge. His plays Moonrise and Good Morning, Romeo were finalists for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Mr. Dunne is a member of the Dramatists Guild. |
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