Sept. 24, 2009

Award-winning playwright’s visit to Morningside to include

staged production of her work and playwriting workshop

While an award-winning playwright is on the Morningside College campus Oct. 6-11, the college will present a staged reading of one of her plays, and she will offer a playwriting workshop.

Lavonne Mueller’s plays have been performed across the country and abroad. Currently as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, Mueller travels to college campuses across the United States for weeklong residencies. She also is the International Women’s Forum Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Mueller’s dramatic monologues “Voices from 9/11” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8, in Klinger-Neal Theatre, 3700 Peters Ave. The monologues focus on how Americans pulled together during the crisis.

“I wanted to write a time-capsule of the event,” Mueller said. “I wish someone had done that for Pearl Harbor. I wrote the play in the heat of the event. I couldn’t write that play today.”

Prior to the performance, Mueller will meet with the cast, which includes students Mac Deeds and Joana Nyambura of Sioux City; Tyrel Drey of Storm Lake, Iowa; Whitney Gries of Onawa, Iowa; and Corinne Youngberg of Blaine, Minn. The cast also includes alumnus Trey Blackburn of Sioux City, faculty member Leslie Werden and community members Joanne Fox and Russ Wooley.

The playwriting workshop will be Saturday, Oct. 11, from 10 a.m. to noon in the Yockey Family Community Room in the Olsen Student Center, 3609 Peters Ave., and from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Klinger-Neal Theatre, 3700 Peters Ave. Scripts will be written in the morning and performed in the afternoon. The workshop is free and open to the public. Contact Marcie Ponder at ponder@morningside.edu to reserve a spot.

“Everyone is encouraged to attend – from no experience at all to the experienced writer,” Mueller said. “I hope to get the students to write a mini-play and give them hints and techniques on dramatic structure so that they can expand the play later when I’m gone.”

Mueller has written many plays and also some books and poems. Her play “Letters to a Daughter from Prison” about the letters Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to his daughter while imprisoned for participation in India’s independence movement, was produced at the First International Festival of the Arts in New York City and went on tour in India. Her play “Hotel Splendid” about the comfort women of World War II received an award for outstanding drama opposing war and injustice; it is currently being performed in Seoul, Korea, and Argentina.

Mueller’s visit to Morningside is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program of the Council of Independent Colleges; the former Siouxland Center for Women, the Dr. R. Franklin Terry Women’s Studies Lecture and Faculty Development Series Fund; and Morningside College.