Bobcat playwrights find success through prestigious awards post-graduation.
In one year, Bianca Sams submitted 105 plays for festivals, workshops, awards and more.
“I had this idea if I can get one out of 10, it would be amazing because it meant 10 new things,” said the playwright who graduated from the Ohio University Master of Fine Arts Playwriting Program in 2014.
One of her works finding success is Rust On Bone, a full-length play about a psychologist trapped in her office that looks at the costs of war, the stigma of therapy and the ripple effects of mental illness.
The drama had a public reading in New York City this summer, earned Sams second place in the Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award and was the piece she used to win the Ingram New Works Project this fall.
Rust On Bone will also give her the opportunity to go to Florida. The play is part of the New Works Festival at the Gulfshore Playhouse in Naples with a staged reading on Thursday.
And it all began at OU. Rust On Bone was the play she wrote for her third year in the MFA Playwriting Program and was one of the featured productions in the 2014 Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival, where playwrights show off their year-long work.
Though the drama was written for the program, it’s one of the more recent examples of an OU playwrights’ work living on outside of school, which Sams said is what is meant to happen.
“What we’re creating is meant to be part of our portfolio,” she said. “It’s not just turning in a paper for a grade. It’s really honing your voice to utilize it as a resume or portfolio.”
David Robinson, a 2010 playwright alumnus, said he learned so much from his peers’ plays because the program pushes the writers to produce high quality work.
To gauge the prominence of OU’s playwriting program, Charles Smith, head of the playwriting program, said one must look at the Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta selects 36 of what it considers “the country’s leading graduate playwriting programs.” OU has had four placements in the nine years of the competition, a record only two other schools surpass: The Julliard School and University of Texas at Austin. OU is tied with Yale University, NYU-Tisch and University of California, San Diego.
Robinson won the competition in 2011 with his play Carapace, another play that had its roots in OU but has had a successful life outside of the school.
“You work on this in school and yes it’s a school project, but all you’re doing is working on your craft and trying to get better every day,” said Thomas Daniels, a third-year graduate actor who originated the role of Jim in Rust On Bone. “At the end of it, because you concentrated on your craft, you have this concrete useful tool for furthering yourself in your chosen field.”
Robinson emphasized the success his peers have gone on to have after OU, citing productions in Washington D.C., New York and Chicago.
“OU students have an opportunity to see that stuff first,” he said. “It’s like when you go to a film festival and you see something before a major theatrical release.”
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