Steven Dietz - Professor
E-mail: sjdietz@mail.utexas.edu
Office: WIN 1.124
Phone: 512-232-5311
Time: Tu 11am-2pm
Room: CMA 3.108
Steven Dietz is one of America's most widely-produced and published contemporary playwrights. Since 1983, his twenty-plus plays have been seen at over one hundred regional theatres in the United States, as well as Off-Broadway. International productions have been seen in England, Japan, Germany, France, Australia, Sweden, Austria, Russia, Slovenia, Argentina, Peru, Singapore and South Africa. His work has been translated into seven languages.
Mr. Dietz is a two-time winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, for FICTION (produced Off-Broadway by the Roundabout Theatre Company), and STILL LIFE WITH IRIS. He received the PEN USA West Award in Drama for LONELY PLANET; the 2007 Edgar Award for Drama from the Mystery Writer’s of America for his widely-produced SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE FINAL ADVENTURE (adapted from William Gillette and Arthur Conan Doyle); and the 1995 Yomuiri Shimbun Award (the Japanese "Tony") for his adaptation of Shusaku Endo's novel SILENCE. Other widely produced plays include INVENTING VAN GOGH, GOD'S COUNTRY, PRIVATE EYES, THE NINA VARIATIONS, TRUST, ROCKET MAN, HALCYON DAYS, TEN NOVEMBER, FOOLIN' AROUND WITH INFINITY and MORE FUN THAN BOWLING. Other award-winning stage adaptations include FORCE OF NATURE (from Goethe), OVER THE MOON (from P.G. Wodehouse), THE REMEMBERER (from Joyce Simmons Cheeka), PARAGON SPRINGS (from Ibsen), DRACULA (from Bram Stoker), and, with Allison Gregory, GO, DOG. GO! (from P.D. Eastman).
Mr. Dietz's work as a director has been seen at many of America's leading regional theatres. He has directed premiere productions of new plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, Northlight Theatre (Chicago), ACT Theatre (Seattle), San Jose Repertory Theatre, City Theatre Company (Pittsburgh), Westside Arts (Off-Broadway), and the Sundance Institute, among many others. He was a resident director for ten years at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, where he also served as Artistic Director of Midwest PlayLabs.
Mr. Dietz’s widely-reprinted articles about the creation of new plays, most of which were first seen in American Theatre Magazine, include “Doom Eager: Writing What We Need to Know”, “Developed to Death”, “An Audience Manifesto”, and the recent “A Modest Proposal: On Training Directors for the New Century.”
Recent work includes the Pulitzer-nominated LAST OF THE BOYS (Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago); the acclaimed adaptation of Dan Gutman’s baseball novel, HONUS AND ME; and three newly-commissioned plays that will be developed/produced in the coming year: CITY OF GHOSTS (McCarter Theatre, Princeton), NEAR ABERDEEN (Steppenwolf, Chicago) and BECKY’S NEW CAR (ACT, Seattle). Additionally, Mr. Dietz is currently at work on new plays commissioned by the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis) and the Denver Center Theatre Company.
