December 09, 2008

Contact:   Meg Kimmel

Playwright Rona Munro

A play developed last January during the Royal Shakespeare Company Residency at Davidson will be performed as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's season in 2011.

For four weeks last winter, playwright Rona Munro worked on the Davidson campus with Royal Shakespeare Company Associate Director Roxana Silbert and a cast of British and American professional actors, honing Munro’s draft of a new play into a working script. This “new play project” comprised the 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company Residency at Davidson and culminated in a staged reading of Little Eagles in the Duke Family Performance Hall.

Now, the RSC has announced that Munro’s play will open in the 2011 Stratford-upon-Avon season, again to be directed by Silbert.

The RSC says that Little Eagles, “developed in association with Davidson College in the U.S.,” has evolved into a trilogy “covering the years from Sputnik to the Apollo Moon landings and beyond…. Epic in scale and rich with historical detail, Little Eagles is a bold exploration of a time when one man’s dream became a reality and the world changed forever.” Munro describes the Space Race trilogy as “undoubtedly the biggest piece of work I've ever undertaken.”

Rona Munro returns to Davidson College in January as the 2008–09 McGee Professor of Creative Writing, teaching both introductory and advanced playwriting. She says, “I've no doubt the stimulating and supportive atmosphere of Davidson was a big part of the Little Eagles development, and I’m really excited to be returning as a visiting professor.”

Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Munro has written for the stage, film, radio and television. She attended the Mackie Academy in Stonehaven and obtained an honors degree in history from Edinburgh University. Munro is a 1994 Golden Globe nominee for best foreign film, Ladybird Ladybird, a poignant drama of a single mother’s struggles with a troubled past and Britain’s social service system.

Munro (r) and Ananta Bangdiwala '10 enjoy a light moment in a session that Munro presented during the RSC's residency at Davidson last winter.

Established by John McGee, Davidson Class of 1955, and his wife, Ruth, the McGee Professorship allows Davidson to host an outstanding poet, fiction writer, playwright, screenwriter or essayist for one semester of each academic year. Many McGee Professors are accomplished in several of these areas at once. In addition to their teaching duties, McGee Professors help direct senior honor theses and contribute to the life of the college through readings and other appearances. McGee Professors include, among others, Diana Hume George, Stephen Sandy, Maxine Kumin, Robert Morgan, Davidson alumna Sheri Reynolds, Josephine Humphreys, Susan Allport and Douglas Glover.

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,700 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.
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Posted By: Bill Giduz