The playwriting intensive will be held in July 2010 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Participants include university students, faculty, and professionals from across the country. Roten is one of 60 participants chosen from hundreds of applicants.

“The event is a two-week playwriting intensive which will force a great amount of work into a very small amount of time,” Roten said. “I will get the chance to study under some of the real leaders in the field and with some amazing educators.”

Roten, who joined Meredith’s faculty in 2003, is a professional actor and a member of the Actor's Equity Association. He is artistic director for Stillwater Theatre, a professional theatre company in residence at Meredith College. He is also a proud member of the New River Dramatists, an organization that exists solely to support playwrights and screenwriters.

The Kennedy Center program consists of rigorous writing workshops and discussions of the art, craft and business of playwriting with the program's director Gary Garrison and a wide range of distinguished guest artists. Garrison is a playwright and author, as well as the executive director for creative affairs of the Dramatists Guild of America and the artistic director and division head of playwriting for the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts. In 2005, Garrison was named Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Date Submitted: 2010-06-23