In a rapidly evolving world where entertainment can be found on a cell phone screen, Richard Kalinoski still sees the stage as a significant and viable medium.
“If students learn that the theatre offers a level of intimacy not applicable to film and TV — the power of immediacy — they can sometimes begin to appreciate the mystery and charm of the theatre,” said Kalinoski, an award-winning playwright and associate professor in the theatre department at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
Kalinoski, who has taught at UW Oshkosh since 1998, juggles teaching, directing and writing with great aplomb. This spring, he directed “Collected Stories,” a play by Donald Margulies about a complicated relationship between a professor and her student.
Kalinoski’s latest play, “My Soldiers,” is featured in the May/June 2010 issue of American Theatre magazine. The play, which is about a female U.S. Army medic back from deployment to Iraq, will have its world professional premiere at the Detroit Repertory Theatre on June 3. Only 15 months earlier, Kalinoski held a “My Soldiers” reading at UW Oshkosh with a cast of students, alumni, faculty and professionals. The reading was directed by Mark Hallen, Eastern University (Pa.), Director of Theatre.
Kalinoski has won numerous awards, such as the Osborn — Best New Play in America by an Emerging Playwright — awarded by the American Theatre Critics Association in 1996, and in 2001, five Ace Awards, including Best Play, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “Beast on the Moon,” a play about two Armenian genocide refugees, captured the 2001 Best Play from the Repertory prize at the Moliere Awards in Paris.
His works have been translated into 17 languages and have been produced in venues all over the world, such as Athens, Brussels, London, Moscow, New York (off-Broadway), Prague, Sao Paolo and Toronto.
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