Credit: Provided

Five accomplished alumni playwrights will return for a weekend of staged readings of new works and roundtable discussions on how to get started writing for the stage, Feb. 27-28 at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.

The Alumni Playwrights Reunion Weekend events, hosted by the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance, are all free and open to the public and are part of the Schwartz Center's 20th anniversary celebration.

The weekend begins with a staged reading of "A Kingdom of Salt" by Will Wiseheart '09, the winner of the department's annual Heermans-McCalmon Playwriting Contest, Feb. 27 at 4:30 p.m. in the center's Class of '56 Flexible Theatre. The one-act play, loosely based on the Book of Job, concerns three siblings re-telling the story of a hurricane from their youth.

Wiseheart, who studies English and theater in the College of Arts and Sciences, spent last spring in London at Queen Mary, University of London, and has spent two summers in New York City interning in film and theater.

The reading, directed by Sam Gold '00, will be followed by a reception to introduce the alumni playwrights and to honor Wiseheart and David Watts '10, the contest runner-up for his comedic play "Falling Short."

Feb. 28 will feature an afternoon of excerpts from the visiting playwrights' new works, followed by Q and A sessions with each author and a roundtable discussion with all the playwrights.

The participating playwrights are:

• Drew Brody '94, a writer and film producer whose production credits include "Desert Blood."
• Lauren Feldman '01, a playwright and performer from Miami, whose plays include "Grace, or the Art of Climbing," "Fill Our Mouths," "The Apocryphal Project," "When It Rains" and "Penguins." She has an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.
• Madeleine George '96, whose works have been developed and staged nationwide. Her play "The Most Massive Woman Wins" has seen more than 100 productions internationally and is included in the anthologies "Plays for Actresses" and "Best American Short Plays, 1997-98."
• Jennifer Maisel '87, an award-winning writer for the stage, television and films. The adaptation of her acclaimed play "The Last Seder" won Showtime's Tony Cox screenwriting award at the Nantucket Film Festival. Her full-length plays include "Mad Love," "Dark Hours," "Eden," "Birds" and "The Two Romeos."
• Sheri Wilner '91, whose plays, including "Father Joy," "Hunger," "Bake Off," Relative Strangers," "The End" and "Joan of Arkansas," have been performed at major regional and national theaters. Her work has been published in several anthologies including "New Playwrights: The Best New Plays of 1999" and "The Best American Short Plays 2000-01."

The playwrights will "share their career choices, their voices and their vision, with one another and the Cornell community at large," said weekend moderator Beth Milles, associate professor of acting/directing. "Each writer has made a significant, personal contribution to our theatrical landscape -- with more work to come."

For more information, call 254-ARTS or visit http://www.theatrefilmdance.cornell.edu.