ROBERT SCHENKKAN

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING PLAYWRIGHT & SCREENWRITER

News

Schenkkan’s “Building the Wall” kicks off strong fall season of theater

August 30, 2017

Robert Schenkkan’s “Building the Wall” Opens 7:30 p.m. Aug. 30, with various dates and times through Sept. 10. $15-$26. Oscar G. Brockett Theatre, 300 E. 23rd St. theatredance.utexas.edu/event/building-wall. From Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan — who was the creative mind behind “All the Way,” a recent Zach Theatre production — comes this incendiary political thriller to open the University of Texas Department of Theatre and Dance’s season. To read more, click here.

Robert Schenkkan’s ‘Building the Wall’ races from page to Austin stage

August 30, 2017

As timely as the latest political scandal, “Building the Wall” issued like a blaze of lighting from the mind of Robert Schenkkan, the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who grew up in Austin. 

The 90-minute, two-person drama about America after an envisioned impeachment of President Donald Trump has its regional premiere at the University of Texas on Thursday and runs through Sept. 10. A public conversation will take place on Sept. 7 at the Brockett Theatre. To read more, click here.

The Border Comes To Borderlands: BUILDING THE WALL by Robert Schenkkan

August 30, 2017

A famous playwright's play that just opened in New York this summer is coming to Tucson's internationally recognized Borderlands Theater. And you would have a difficult time finding a bigger name than the author, Robert Schenkkan, who has won a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize. What if President Trump is impeached after a failed plan to declare martial law following a terrorist incident in New York? It is 2019 and a history professor interviews a former detention center supervisor and Trump supporter now imprisoned. To read more, click here.

LA Production of BUILDING THE WALL closes 5 month Run!

August 28, 2017

Last night, The Fountain Theater closed their production of BUILDING THE WALL. Theirs was the first production of a National New Play Network rollout, driven by the passion and enthusiasm of Artistic Director Stephen Sachs, Producer Simon Levy, and director Michael Michettii. The original cast was Bo Foxworth and Judith Moreland, later replaced by Victoria Platt. The show was extended three times and eventually played for five months, or 80 performances for 6300 patrons. Since its LA opening in February, it has had 14 other domestic productions and has an additional thirteen currently scheduled for the near future, plus productions in Europe. Words matter. Make your voice known. Resist with what you have.

From Schenkkan to Shakespeare, the same urgent warning

July 4, 2017

One play was written more than 400 years ago, the other last October. Both written by playwrights worried about the future of their countries. One author took months to pen his work, the other took one week.  One writer has been dead 400 years, one is very much alive, chronicling the current political crisis of his time with a dire new play now playing on our Fountain stage. Both authors and their plays have been in the news in recent weeks, igniting a firestorm of national conversation on the role of theatre to express political outrage, and its fundamental right and responsibility to do so. The Fountain Theatre is a voice in that debate.  To read more, click here.

Imagining Trump's Border Plan as a Guantánamo for 'Illegals'

July 4, 2017
  • The new play, "Building the wall" envisions mass deportations and unlawful detainment as Greek tragedy. His play Philoctetes, Sophocles tells a story of deceit: The Greek commander Odysseus wants to convince the titular exiled war hero to fight again, and he enlists Neoptolemus, a young, impressionable boy to lie for him. "I know, my boy, it isn't part of your nature to tell untruths or resort to double-dealing," he says to Achilles's son, "but victory's a prize worth gaining." Neoptolemus is persuaded, and the plot centers on his uneasiness with these double-dealings, and on the growing trust between him and Philoctetes. In the end, Neoptolemus's compassion and integrity override the Greek interest, and he comes clean, confessing Odysseus's scheme to Philoctetes. The play represents the failure of rhetorical manipulation in the face of one's own natural moral intuitions, our own sense of right and wrong. To read more, click here.

WWII hero Desmond Doss honored with two commemorative markers in Lynchburg

July 4, 2017

 A local war hero's efforts from decades ago are back in the spotlight. Desmond Doss was honored Monday with two new commemorative markers. The Lynchburg native was the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor after he saved more than 70 men during the battle of Okinawa in World War II. His story made headlines last year and put Lynchburg at the national forefront with the movie "Hacksaw Ridge." To read more, click here.

The Vital Role of Political Theater

July 4, 2017

Diane Paulus, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Robert Schenkkan discuss how the Public Theater’s recent production of Julius Caesar fits into a grand artistic tradition. To read more, click here.

Aspen Ideas Fest staging Robert Schenkkan’s Trump dystopia ‘Building the Wall’

July 4, 2017

Witnessing Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric about immigrants last year and its normalization as Election Day neared, playwright Robert Schenkken felt America had crossed a line. The Pulitzer and Tony winner channeled his dismay and fear onto the page and, in a week, wrote what would become "Building the Wall." To read more, click here.

They Were Ruled by Those Who Hated Them

July 4, 2017

“Is my race a problem for you?”

It’s one of the very first things Gloria says; we learn quickly that she will pull no punches. She is a black university professor, and she is interviewing Rick, a white inmate in a prison in El Paso. The year is 2019. Rick has done something horrible, presumably stemming from his militant and nationalist views. As Gloria goes through a string of questions, the nature of his crimes comes to light, and the deep divide between the characters alternately opens and closes as we listen. To read more, click here.

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