Bren Dubay

Bren Dubay is a former Lillian Kaiser Lewis Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Rice University, Houston, Texas. The Foundation awarded a three-year residency grant to the University and Dubay in 1989 and renewed its commitment in 1992 for another three years. In addition, in 1991 Dubay received a five-year support grant from the Walter B. Sharp Memorial Fund and, from 1989 through 1992, received an LGR Travel Grant awarded annually to support the travel expenses of writers. To date, Dubay is the only writer to ever have received a multi-year grant from LGR Travel Grant. Dubay has been accepted at the 1993 Sewanee Writer's Conference and awarded a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship to attend. Dubay's full-length works Tom and Darla, Howling at the Moon Through Ice Cubes in a Glass, and Secrets have received special recognition. Tom and Darla was winner of the 1982 Texas Playwrights Festival at Stages Repertory Theatre. Howling... won the 1988 New Plays Series at the University of St. Thomas, and Secrets was considered for both the 1991 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Essentially Theatre, a London based theater company, plans to premiere Secrets in that city. Vincent Dowling, former artistic director and lifetime associate director of the Abbey Theatre, Dub-lin, Ireland, has tentatively scheduled a production of the play at his Miniature Theatre in Chester, Massachusetts for 1994. Currently, Dubay is completing a play entitled Rain on the Roof, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Irish Mist opened the Rice Players season in September, 1992 to favorable reviews and capacity crowds. This newest full-length play was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Bren Dubay has received commissions for eight one act plays and five of these plays have been or are in the process of being published. The most recent commission has come from Zachary Scott Theatre in Austin, Texas. Prior to 1987, when Dubay began to focus primarily on writing, she spent thirteen years in arts administration as associate producer of New Texas Theatre, associate producer of the Houston Shakespeare Festival, producer of the Children's Theatre Festival, director of development of Alley Theatre, and producing director of Stages Repertory Theatre. Dubay's extensive fundraising background includes tenure as a development officer for two universities - University of Houston and Rice University. During these years, Dubay continued to appear on stage and is a member of Actor's Equity as well as the Dramatists Guild. Dubay has taught seminars and workshops in fundraising, marketing, arts management, acting, and playwriting. She has taught creative writing through the Writers-in-the-Schools Program and presently teaches playwriting at both Rice University and the University of Houston. She was a member of a theater delegation visitingt the People's Republic of China in the fall of 1993.