Robert Lawson is a playwright, director, composer, screenwriter & visual artist. Recent work includes : co-author (with director Jonathan Glatzer), co-producer, 2^nd Unit Director and acting coach (Hilary Duff) for What Goes up – a feature film shot in Vancouver, BC also starring Steve Coogan, Molly Shannon, Josh Peck, Max Hoffman and Olivia Thirlby (national release)… co-author (with Glatzer)       of Tyler’s Gap, a television project produced by Touchstone/ABC & Fox Television - Rob Bowman, director; David Duchovney, Executive Producer… play commission (by co-author Marlin Fitzwater) entitled Empires Fall concerning the fall of Communism and the relationship between George H. W. Bush & Mikhail Gorbachev (staged reading at Ford’s Theater, D.C. 2011; subsequently at the Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M Univ., March 2013)… a commission by NGN Productions (Vancouver) for screenplay Dancing in the Dark … Reservoir (TV series, with Glatzer) in development with AMC. He will be working with the BostonCenter for the Arts to develop a site-specific installation/performance work in the Artist Studios building (with visual artist Eugene Finney; for Sept. 2013).

Recent premieres of his writing include: everything is going to have to be put back produced at the Tre Stage in L.A… Hiroshima: crucible of light produced by Untitled Theater Co. at Walkerspace (NYC)… Tabula Rasa, a music/theater piece about autism at the Neuro Fest (NYC)… The Architecture of Sight at the Chocolate Factory (Queens, NY)… Pandora’s Box: a vaudeville at the Houseman Studio Theater (NYC)… Kuhfangfederblech (“Cowcatcher”) at the Festsalle in Vienna, Austria.

Directing premieres include The Death of Don Juan (an opera by Elodie Lauten) at Franklin Pierce University, where he is on faculty, and in 2011 conceiving & co-directing the New York premiere of the work at Theater for the New City as well as a screening of the video rendition of his production at the ‘Op on Screen Festival’ (NYC)… Notable works premiered at Franklin Pierce include script, score, direction & set design for Vanishing Point (2013, in consideration for 2014 ACTF Regional festival), Echo Chamber (2011), Terrible Destiny (2010; based on Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’), The Transit of Mercury Across the Face of the Sun (2009/2010 at the regional American College Theater Festival; runner up for the National KC/ACTF Festival) created in collaboration with his wife, choreographer Sally Bomer (also on faculty), and The Architect of NoPlace, a music/theater project about silent films (in collaboration with Austrian artist Kay Mühlmann). His …but the rain is full of ghosts was presented at the KennedyCenter as part of the National ACTF Festival (2003).

In 2010, he was invited by the HellenicAmericanUniversity in Athens, Greece to develop a summer institute which resulted in “Site Project”, a program centered on the creation of new site-specific performance work. Based in Athens in 2010 & 2011, in 2012 Site Project was based in Prato, Italy just outside Florence. In addition, he conducts an ongoing series of workshops in Narrative Strategies, Framing & Abstraction using digital media at Donau Universität in Krems, Austria for the School of Telecommunications, Information and Media (since 2002).

He is the recipient of a Meet the Composer grant for his work on Leonardo’s Tank - which premiered at Andy’s Summer Playhouse - a theater in New Hampshire that creates experimental theater work by professionals working with young performers, for which he was artistic director from 1995-2007.

Art shows include: an multi-room art/science installation based on the Camera Obscura that ran for two years (NH), and a four-part ‘Cabinet of Wonder’ investigating real and imagined artifacts entitled Recently Discovered : use unknown (also in NH).

His performance texts have been published in American Writing, Poems & Plays and The Northern New England Review. His plays are published by Playscripts, Inc. (The Passage… byline: Amanda Danger… Kid Sniff & the Ticking Clock… Hiroshima: crucible of light as well as fragments published in a Playscripts monologue compendium). Published works have been and continue to be performed across the U.S., Europe and as far afield as Japan. In 2011, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a profile on him and his work, as did the Austrian periodical Freigeist. He is a member of the Writers’ Guild (WGA/East), ASCAP, SAG, AEA, AFTRA and the Dramatists Guild.

CONTACT

Phone: 603.899.4018
Office:  Petrocelli Hall, 2nd floor