Faculty | David A. Crespy
David A. Crespy
Ph.D.,City University of New York
Associate Professor of Playwriting, Dramatic Literature, Theatre History and Theory
Founder and Co-director, Writing for Performance Program
Founding Artistic Director of Missouri Playwrights Workshop, the Mizzou New Play Series, Mizzou on Broadway, and Summer Rep's Comedies-in-Concert Series
Director of Undergraduate Studies
phone: 573-882-0535
email: CrespyD@missouri.edu
office: 111 Fine Arts Annex
mailing address: 129 Fine Arts, Columbia MO 65211
web: http://web.missouri.edu/~crespyd/
 David Crespy founded MU's Writing for Performance program and serves its Co-Director. He is the founding Artistic Director of MU's Missouri Playwrights Workshop, the Mizzou New Play Series, Mizzou on Broadway, and Summer Rep's Comedies-in-Concert Series. His areas of research and teaching include playwriting, theatre history, new play development, dreamwork for playwrights, and dramatic literature. His published and produced plays include William and Bettie, Houseblend, Queens Orphans, Tekiya, Perfect Hair, Men Dancing, Beshert; or The Jewish Dating Cycle, and Violet Palimpsest among many others. His play Men Dancing was a 2001 national finalist for the David Mark Cohen Award and was selected for the 21st Century Playwrights Festival in New York City, and has been produced across the United States. He is the author of The Off-Off Broadway Explosion published by Back Stage Books with a foreword by Edward Albee. Published plays include Beshert in Michael Wright's Playwriting Master Class, and Perfect Hair in Gary Garrison's Perfect Ten, and a selection of Men Dancing in Monologues for Men by Men, edited by Gary Garrison and Michael Wright.
Crespy has served as the Chair of the ATHE Playwriting Program, Co-Chair of the Mid-America Theatre Conference Playwriting Symposium, and Chair of the National Playwriting Program for Region V of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He is the resident playwright for First Run Theatre, Inc. of St. Louis and has been a featured playwright and Director of the Play Lab for the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, Nebraska and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska. His articles have appeared in Theatre History Studies, New England Theatre Journal, Ollantay Theatre Journal, Slavic and East European Performance and www.glbtq.com. Recent articles have been featured in Angels in American Theatre, edited by Robert Schanke, and The Influence of Tennessee Williams, edited by Philip Kolin. His current project is He Had to Hock His House, Richard Barr, Edward Albee, and the American Playwright, a critical biography of Richard Barr, the producer of Edward Albee’s plays and former president of the League of American Theatres and Producers. Fellowships and Awards including an University of Missouri Summer Research Fellowship, a Provost’s Research Leave, and the University of Missouri Excellence in Education Award.
In addition, Crespy teaches in the Summer Seminars in Greece Program, a program of MU's Center for Literary Arts and MU's Creative Writing Program. In 2010, Edward Albee and Crespy will co-teach the playwriting segment. |
