Barbara Field
Barbara Field was among the first playwrights to establish an impressive career outside the traditional limelight of New York City. Alongside Beth Henley, Marsha Norman and Megan Terry, Barbara opened doors for women playwrights in what was a male-dominated profession. During the 1970s and 80s, her plays premiered at the Guthrie Theater and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays. She participated in the developmental process of the National Playwrights Conference...See more
Barbara Field was among the first playwrights to establish an impressive career outside the traditional limelight of New York City. Alongside Beth Henley, Marsha Norman and Megan Terry, Barbara opened doors for women playwrights in what was a male-dominated profession. During the 1970s and 80s, her plays premiered at the Guthrie Theater and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays. She participated in the developmental process of the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Theatre Center. She was a co-founder of The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. She worked with some of the great directors of her era: Michael Langham, Garland Wright, Anatoly Efros and Stephen Kanee. And as though that weren't enough to establish her credentials as a playwright of note, Barbara gave the American theatre its first and most influential production of A Christmas Carol in 1975. That title has appeared in every Guthrie season over the past four decades, and nationally Field's play launched a thousand more productions. This volume marks the third collection of her plays. New Classics from the Guthrie Theater: Classical Adaptations for the American Stage by Barbara Field was published by Smith and Kraus in 2003 and includes seven plays translated and/or adapted from classical sources by Dickens, Gogol, Dumas fils, Bulgakov, Ghelderode and Mary Shelley. The second volume, titled Barbara Field: Collected Plays Volume One, was published by On Stage Press in 2008 and focuses on original plays written during the first three decades of her career (1970s-90s). These plays premiered at South Coast Repertory, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and Actors Theatre of Louisville and they reveal Barbara's mastery of storytelling in both realistic and experimental forms. See less
Barbara Field's Featured Books