Renowned playwright Jeffrey Hatcher to write his next play for Carthage

Renowned playwright and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher, whose award-winning plays have been performed on Broadway and around the world, will write his next play exclusively for Carthage College.

Mr. Hatcher is the 2013-14 Guest Artist in Carthage’s New Play Initiative, an effort that connects acclaimed writers from around the country with Carthage students and faculty for new works.

Mr. Hatcher is best known for his playsTen Chimneys, Compleat Female Stage Beauty, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for which he received the Edgar Award for Best Play in 2009. He authored the book for the Broadway musical Never Gonna Dance. His Off Broadway work includesThree Viewings, The Turn of the Screw, and the stage adaptation of Tuesdays with Morrie, which he co-wrote with author Mitch Albom. He wrote the screenplays for the 2008 film The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes; the 2005 film Casanova, starring Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller, and Jeremy Irons; and the 2004 film Stage Beauty, an adaptation of his play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, starring Claire Danes and Rupert Everett.

“Mr. Hatcher is a tremendous playwright and screenwriter, with a great breadth of work. We are thrilled that our students will have the opportunity to work with him,” said Carthage Theatre Professor Martin McClendon, chair of the Carthage Theatre Department.

Mr. Hatcher will write a play titled No Name, based on a Victorian novel by Wilkie Collins. The book tells the story of a young woman who is left penniless — and revengeful — after a miserly relative usurps her inheritance. No Name will have its world premiere on the Carthage stage in March 2014.

Mr. Hatcher will make several visits to Carthage during Spring and Fall 2013, through the opening of the production at Carthage in March, to meet the play’s cast and work through scenes with the students and director Herschel Kruger, Chair of the Division of Fine Arts at Carthage.

“Carthage Theatre prides itself on being able to offer our students the opportunity to work closely with an author of this caliber on a production of a new work,” Prof. McClendon said.

Past guest artists in Carthage’s New Play Initiative have included Academy Award-winning and Tony-nominated writer/director Eric Simonson (Honest, 2009), and Emmy Award-winning writer/producer Rick Cleveland (The Rail Splitter, 2011). In 2012, Carthage students worked with Irish playwright Martin Maguire and Patrick Sutton, director of the National Theatre School of Ireland, on the new play A Clamour of Rooks. Students traveled to Dublin to perform its world premiere on the oldest stage in Ireland, before bringing the play home to Carthage in February 2013.

“For five years now, we’ve been supporting new works from prominent playwrights,” Prof. McClendon said. “We’re honored to be producing the next decade of American plays right here.”