Tina Howe's most important plays include Birth and After Birth, Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, Approaching Zanzibar, One Shoe Off, Pride's Crossing, Rembrandt's Gift, Chasing Manet, and translations of Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano and The Lesson, in addition to a host of shorter plays. These works premiered at the Public Theater, the Kennedy Center, Second Stage, The Old Globe Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, The Actors Theatre of Louisville the Atlantic Theater Company and Primary Stages. Among her many awards are an Obie for Distinguished playwriting, a Tony nomination for best Play, an Outer Circle Critics Award, a Rockefeller Grant, two N.E.A. Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the Sidney Kingsley Award, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, two honorary degrees and the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre.
She is best known for her plays Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances; the latter received a Tony Award nomination for best play in 1987. Howe also penned English translations of Eugene Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano" and "The Lesson" which was produced at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2004. The Atlantic Theater Company produced her play "Birth After Birth" as part of its 2006-2007 mainstage season at the Linda Gross Theater. She has received a Rockefeller grant (1984), a Guggenheim fellowship (1990), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature (1993), New York Drama Critic's Award for Best Play (1997-1998), Madge Evans and Sidney S. Kingsley Award (1998), William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater (2005), and honorary degrees from Whittier College (1997) and Bowdoin College (1998).
She has also taught master classes at NYU, UCLA, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon and she currently teaches playwrighting at Hunter College in New York City and has been a member of the council of The Dramatists Guild of America since 1990.
Mel Marvin is a veteran of 40+ years in the theatre, with over a hundred musical, incidental and operatic scores to his credit. He received a Tony® nomination as a co-author of Tintypes and also wrote the music for the Broadway productions of Yentl and A History of the American Film. In addition to nine Off-Broadway\n shows, his regional credits include works with the McCarter Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, Lincoln Center Theatre, Arena Stage, the Guthrie Theater, American Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse and the Mark Taper Forum (where he was an associate artist and wrote the first original score for Angels in America). His opera, Guest From the Future, premiered in August, 2004 and plans are underway for a production in Russia in 2007. As a director, he has been involved in the development of and has staged many new works, including the opera Different Fields and, most recently in New York, The Scrimshaw Violin. He began as a guest mentor at the NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Program in 1989, became an adjunct composer and director in 1991, joined the full-time faculty in 1995, became Head Faculty Composer in 1998, and became Associate Arts Professor in 2004.
