Playwright Robert Schenkkan at UT Tonight [Reading Preview]

University of Texas

Joynes Events: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author, Robert Schenkkan
Thursday, March 24
UT Campus - Carothers (Joynes Room) (2501 Whitis Ave.)
Free, 7pm
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Our University of Texas has no doubt produced a great number of notables. Even if we’re restricting ourselves to literature, translation, and related disciplines, the school can lay claim to a nobel laureate, several Pulitzer Prize winners, Rhodes Scholars, and a bevy of other seriously gifted authors, poets, critics, and playwrights. (Aside from the obvious, the idea here is that you’re allowed to feel cool for living in a city that, as host to an institution of this caliber, has helped foster such breadth of talent).

With that in mind, consider one Robert Schenkkan, a U.T. (and Cornell) alum and decorated author of ten plays, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Kentucky Cycle, four episodes of HBO’s The Pacific, and countless other T.V. series and film screenplays. As if that weren’t enough, he was an actor in two first-season episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. How can you deny him?

Now for the nitty-gritty: tonight at 7:00, Mr. Schenkkan will be giving a presentation/reading in the Joynes Room on U.T. campus as part of the Plan II Honors Program’s 75th anniversary celebration. He’ll be talking about and through the scenes he wrote for The Pacific (for which he received two Emmy nominations) and actors from the UT Drama department will read/perform a scene from one of Schenkkan’s new plays, Docent. Part of his presentation will focus on the discrepancies between writing for the stage and writing for the screen.

The event is free, too, so no excuses! Head over to the Joynes Room tonight and get educated.