Dramatic Writing Student Earns Spot in Playwright’s Workshop at Kennedy Center

      Erica Lipez, a 2009 alumna of the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts, is among eight playwrights selected from 57 Master of Fine Arts students who will participate in the fourth annual MFA Playwrights Workshop, hosted by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
       Lipez’s play Bottled Up is set in a small town in Maine and examines one family divided over a fight for water and the old wounds that erupt when that water is taken from the ground beneath them. The workshop will take place July 25-Aug. 2 and is being held in association with the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival, National New Play Network, and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford.
       The eight playwrights will be in residence at the Kennedy Center to develop their work in collaboration with a director and dramaturg from key American theaters and actors from Washington, D.C. In addition to providing resources to the playwrights, a key goal of the workshop is to introduce and welcome the playwrights to the community of national theaters dedicated to new voices.
       
      —Richard Pierce