Howard L. Craft

Playwright

Bio

Howard L. Craft is a poet, playwright, and arts educator. He is the author of two books of poetry, Across The Blue Chasm and Raising The Sky.  His poetry also appears in Home is Where: An Anthology of African-American poets from the Carolinas edited by Kwame Dawes and Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch The Sky edited by Tony Medina. His plays include: FREIGHT: The Five Incarnations of Abel GreenThe Miraculous and The Mundane, Orange Light, Caleb Calypso and the Midnight Marauders and Jade City Chronicles Volume 1: The Super Spectacular Badass Herald M. F. Jones which has been adapted to radio and is the first African-American Super Hero Radio Serial. 

Craft teaches creative writing in colleges, public, private schools and to adults through the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and various arts councils and organizations.  An accomplished writer, Craft has received the N.C. Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship, a Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant, and is a two-time recipient of the N.C. Central University New Play Project, as well as commissions from universities and professional theater companies. Craft is currently the Piller Professor of the practice for the Writing for the Stage and Screen program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Engagement Information

Howard Craft has been commissioned by the Theater Studies department to create a new script in conjunction with Professor Torry Bend's work this semester for the spring mainstage. Dreaming: Little Nemo In Slumberland revisited is a work-in-progress that Bend is developing with her students in THEATRST 350 based on the work of Winsor McKay. Winsor McCay’s work was incredibly influential for comics and cartoons, but this art also contains outdated, offensive and racially charged imagery. Bend and Craft will guide the students in confronting this material while discussing how to adapt it for performance today.  During the semester, students will follow Craft in his writing process and develop their own scenes for the production, as he gives feedback. There will be final performances which will include conversation about confronting this material, a reading of Craft’s script and performed scenes that we have developed over the semester. 

Activity

As Howard Craft create a new puppet theater script in conjunction with Professor Torry Bend's work for the spring mainstage DREAMING, he will be guiding the students of THEATRST 350 in developing their own scenes for puppet theater.