Linguist Finds New Calling as Playwright

Rice University Office of Media Relations

News Release DATE: Feb. 10, 1999 CONTACT: Philip Montgomery PHONE: (713) 831-4792

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RICE LINGUIST FINDS NEW CALLING AS PLAYWRIGHT

HOUSTON, Feb. 10, 1999 -- For most of Douglas Mitchell's adult life, he has been giving voice to ancient tongues such as Old Icelandic and Sanskrit--both of which he teaches at Rice. But there were other voices flying around in his head, and they wanted out.

There's the husband and wife so terrified of a misrouted package looming in their living room that the veil of their domestic tranquillity is ripped apart. There's the townsfolk who picnic on a beach before helping their old folks onto ice floes and setting them adrift to die.

It's a strange world inside Douglas Mitchell's head. It's a world of wit, irony and humor. And now it's onstage.

After 20 years of teaching and research at Rice as a Indo-Europeanist, Mitchell started writing plays at the age of 60 to give shape to those voices in his mind. Now, at the age of 69, he is seeing his plays delight audiences and attract the attention of the leaders of Houston theater, including Edward Albee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, who will direct one of Mitchell's one-act plays in The Netherlands, and Rob Bundy, the artistic director of Houston's Stages Repertory Theater, who named Mitchell as Stages' playwright-in-residence for 1999-2000. This fall Stages will produce a two-week festival of six of Mitchell's one-act plays.

Mitchell has produced 26 plays, most them one act-pieces, since he started writing for the stage about nine years ago.

For more information about Douglas Mitchell or to schedule an interview, please contact Philip Montgomery, assistant director of the Office of Media Relations at (713) 831-4792 or [email protected]

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