Unsafe Spaces: From the Desk of the DG President, Doug Wright

Doug Wright

Keynote Speech from the Dramatists Guild National Conference, Hilton Midtown Hotel, New York City, July 28, 2018

Jan 01, 2019

Doug Wright

“The theatre must always be a safe . . . place.”

So said Donald J. Trump; I’m hesitant to use the title “president,” because as President of your Guild, I have a vested interest in rehabilitating that word.

Trump launched this aesthetic salvo when the fearless cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton confronted musical theatre enthusiast Mike Pence (who knew?) following the show’s curtain call.

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Doug Wright

won the Tony Award for Best Play, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, I Am My Own Wife. His play Quills garnered the 1995 Kesselring Prize for Best New American Play from the National Arts Club and, for Wright, a 1996 Village Voice Obie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting. He is a recipient of the William L. Bradley Fellowship at Yale University, the Charles MacArthur Fellowship at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, an HBO Fellowship in playwriting, and the Alfred Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. In 2010 he was named a United States Artists Fellow. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on the board of New York Theatre Workshop.

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