Matthew Spangler
Matthew Spangler is an American playwright, director, and professor of performance studies.
Body of work
Matthew Spangler's plays have been produced by the San Jose Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Play House, San Diego Repertory Theatre, New Repertory Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Citadel Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse (staged reading), the Nottingham Playhouse, Liverpool Playhouse, Brighton Festival, the National Steinbeck Center, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the Avignon Theatre Festival, in addition to other theatres and festivals. He has written fourteen plays, but is best known for his adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, which received five San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards: Best Original Script, Best Overall Production for a 300+ seat theatre, as well as awards for Lighting Design, Set Design, and Sound Design.
His other plays include one-person shows of James Joyce’s Dubliners and Finnegans Wake; A Paradise It Seems, an adaptation of John Cheever’s short stories; Mozart!, a musical theatre adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s letters, and stage adaptations of John Steinbeck’s fiction, Ernest Hemingway’s short stories, Thomas Wolfe’s The Lost Boy, Clyde Edgerton’s Where Trouble Sleeps, and T.C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain, which received an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award and was a finalist for the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best New Play.
Some of Spangler’s recent directing credits include an adaptation of T.C. Boyle’s short story “Killing Babies” for Word for Word Performing Arts Company at the Z Space in San Francisco; Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore for San José State University; Judy’s Veramendi’s The Empty Chalices, a play based on the writing of Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini, which he co-directed at the Next Theatre in Evanston, Illinois; and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross for the San Jose Stage Company.
From 1999 to 2005, Spangler was Artistic Director of Wordshed Productions, a not-for-profit theatre company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, dedicated to presenting adaptations of literature, oral histories, and intercultural performances. During his time with Wordshed, the company received several year-end critics’ awards for its performances, and Spangler was a finalist for the Triangle Theatre Artist of the Year Award in 2002.
Selected awards
Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award for Tortilla Curtain; San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards: Best Original Script, Best Overall Production - The Kite Runner;[1] Mary MacMurtrie Award for Best Drama for The Kite Runner, Arizona Daily Star; Best Theatre Production for The Kite Runner, Tucson Weekly; Best Theatre Production Liverpool Post Arts Awards.
Education
Matthew Spangler holds a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in Performance Studies, an M.Phil. in Theatre from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[2]
Author credits
Matthew Spangler's writing has been published in Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, The James Joyce Quarterly, The New Hibernia Review, SIAR: The Journal of the Western Institute of Irish Studies, The South Atlantic Review, The Biographical Dictionary of Southern Writers, The Art of Elizabeth Bishop, and Performing the Crossroads: Critical Essays in Performance Studies and Irish Culture.
Current employment
Matthew Spangler is currently an Associate Professor of Performance Studies at San Jose State University in Northern California.[3]
References
- ↑ San Jose Rep receives 5 San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics' Circle Awards - Stark Insider
- ↑ "Bio | Matthew Spangler – Director and Playwright". Matthewspangler.org. 2012-04-08. Retrieved 2012-05-07.
- ↑ "SJSU Home : Faculty & Staff Web Pages : Matthew J. Spangler's Homepage". Sjsu.edu. Retrieved 2012-05-07.