Doug Huff, professor of philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College, has been selected as one of four winners of the 2009 Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Playwriting Contest based in New York for his play, A Far Shore.
Huff wrote A Far Shore during his 2008 sabbatical leave at the request of members of the Bangalore Little Theatre — the largest theatre in Bangalore, India. The play is based on the life and work of B.R. Ambedkar — a hero in his homeland of India where he served as a political leader, activist, philosopher, orator, writer, economist, and revolutionary. Ambedkar is also the chief architect of the Indian Constitution and is credited with having sparked the Dalit Buddhist movement.
Huff’s play was selected from more than 200 submissions and will now receive a staged reading at a festival in New York this August.
The Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Playwriting Contest was founded by its namesakes in 2004 and is coordinated by the Castillo Theatre in New York. The contest seeks plays that push the political and cultural envelope and that engage the political, social, and cultural questions impacting the world today. The purpose of the contest is to encourage the writing of such plays and to provide a stage for scripts that, due to their progressive, radical, and experimental vantage points, would not otherwise be produced.
Mario Fratti is the author of some 70 plays which together have received a total of more than 600 productions internationally. Fred Newman is a philosopher, psychotherapist, political strategist, and author of over 30 postmodern political plays and musicals. Newman is also the retired artistic director of the Castillo Theatre.
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