Jeff Barker nominated for playwriting grant

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Award-winning playwright Jeff Barker, professor of theatre and speech at Northwestern College, has been nominated by Region 5 of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) for a national Teaching Artists Grant. If selected, Barker will receive up to $2,000 to underwrite professional development expenses for playwriting conferences, workshops, or other training and resources.

Barker is one of eight nominees from Region 5; KCACTF includes eight regions.

Barker has written more than 50 plays, including Unspoken for Time, published by Dramatic Publishing, and Kin, a finalist for the Arlin Meyer Prize in 2005. Barker penned And God Said, an Old Testament musical, in collaboration with Broadway composer Ron Melrose in 2003. Another ancient Israelite musical scripted by Barker, Terror Texts, will be on Northwestern’s stage in November.

Barker holds the Northwestern College Endowed Professorship and was Iowa’s Professor of the Year in 2006.

The Teaching Artists Grant recipients will be named January 15, just prior to Region 5’s annual KCACTF festival at the University of Kansas in Lawrence Jan. 18–24. The festival includes theatre faculty and students from colleges and universities in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota.

Barker and his wife, Karen, also a theatre professor at Northwestern, were recognized at the 2003 KCACTF for exceptional service to theatre in our seven-state region.

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