Baylor Welcomes Award-Winning Writer and Director for Annual Beall-Russell Lecture

Academy Award-winning writer and director John Patrick Shanley will present a lecture, "The Art of the Playwright," at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17, in Room 510 of Cashion Academic Center on the Baylor University campus. The event, which is free and open to the public, is this year's Beall-Russell Lecture in the Humanities.

Shanley has written for film and the stage. His play "Doubt," which opened on Broadway in 2004, won numerous awards, including the Tony, New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama League Award, the Drama Desk Award and the Pulitzer. "Doubt" was the first of his plays to transfer to screen. The film, written and directed by Shanley, earned him an Academy Award in 2009 and Writers Guild Award nominations for best adapted screenplay.

His original screenplays include: "Five Corners" (1987), "Moonstruck" (1987), "The January Men" (1989) and "Joe Versus the Volcano" (1990), which he also directed. "Five Corners" was awarded the Special Jury Prize for screenplay at the Barcelona Film Festival. For "Moonstruck," Shanley was awarded an Academy Award and a Writers Guild Award.

His acclaimed plays, many of which he directed in their original productions, include: Defiance, Savage in Limbo, The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, Beggars in the House of Plenty, Where's My Money?, Italian American Reconciliation, Four Dogs and a Bone, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Dirty Story.

Cashion Academic Center is at 1401 S. Fourth St.

About the Beall-Russell Lectures

The Beall-Russell Lectures in the Humanities were established in 1982 with a financial gift from Virginia B. Ball of Muncie, Ind. She named the lecture series after her mother, Mrs. John A. Beall, and Lily Russell, former dean of women at Baylor. Both were alumnae of the Class of 1910.

The lectures, presented by the Baylor College of Arts and Sciences, are designed to provide an opportunity for Baylor students and faculty to meet and hear lecturers renowned in the humanities. Past lecturers have included poet Maya Angelou, journalist Bill Moyers and Nobel Prize winner for Literature Czeslaw Milosz.

Ball also established the Beall Poetry Festival in 1993, encouraging contemporary poetry. She died in 2005, but her legacy continues through the generosity of the Ball family, whose gifts benefit Baylor and the Waco community.

For more information, contact Christina Covington, coordinator for associate deans of the Baylor College of Arts and Sciences, at (254) 710-4288.

by Katy McDowall, student newswriter, (254) 710-6805