Theatre Department Chair’s Play To Receive Equity Staged Reading

A play by Dr. Lynne Conner, chair of the Department of Theatre, will receive an Actors’ Equity Association Staged Reading at the Henry Heymann Theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA, on June 22 and 23. The play, The Mother, is a 2018 Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center National Playwright’s Conference semi-finalist. It explores the turmoil of a woman five years after her son carried out a horrific school shooting.

Dr. Conner is a theater and dance historian, cultural policy theorist and playwright. She received a Ph.D. in theatre history and performance studies from the University of Pittsburgh, where she subsequently served on the faculty from 1999-2008. Her plays and adaptations have been produced at Theatre Project (Brunswick, Maine), Main Street Theatre (Houston), Theatre-Hikes (Chicago), the Actors’ Guild of Lexington (Kentucky), Gemini Theatre (Pittsburgh), Prime Stage (Pittsburgh), Carnegie Mellon University, Smith College, William and Mary College, Loyola Marymount, Slippery Rock University, Point Park University, and the University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre (among others). Learn more about her work here.