W. Langdon Brown

Institute Fellow
Director of Author's Theatre

Directed "Engaging Shaw", receivied rave reviews

PROFILE
W. Langdon Brown is a fellow of the NY State Writers Institute and a University at Albany English Department faculty member.  He is director of Authors Theatre for the Writers Institute where new plays by Bill C. Davis, William Kennedy, Lisa Thompson, Warren Leight, Frank Pugliese, David Rabe along with Brown’s own adaptation of Richard Russo’s Mohawk have been workshopped.  Brown’s directing work includes: London Fringe (Butley, The Ribadier System), Theatre Row (A Scent of Almonds), Regional (Every Trick in the Book, Engaging Shaw) in addition to numerous university and stock productions.  His translation of Feydeau’s Le Systeme Ribadier was recently revived at the Classical Acting Co. of Dallas.

He is a former chair of the University at Albany’s Department of Theatre. An educator and theatrical director, his professional directing credits include the world premiere of A Scent of Almonds on Theatre Row in New York; the world premiere of his translation of Le Système Ribadier by Feydeau at the Overground Theatre in London; and a revival of Butleyin the London Fringe. He has also managed and produced stock seasons in New York and New England.

Brown’s University directing credits include the world premiere of John and Elizabeth Fuller’s Not Just a Love Story; the American premiere of Ladies in Waiting by Canadian playwright Ellen Fox; and productions of Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Overmeyer’s On the Verge, Sheridan’s The Rivals, Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Feydeau’s Hotel Paradiso, and many others.

During the spring 2004 semester the Writers Institute sponsored a staged reading of Brown’s adaptation of Richard Russo’s novel Mohawk. In choosing to write a stage adaptation of Mohawk Brown said, "Richard Russo’s writing is inherently dramatic and thus irresistible to those of us in the theatre. His dialogue creates characters who leap off the page and seem to demand lives on stage and in film. His gentle compassion for these characters, who often refuse to help themselves, creates a Chekhovian world so vivid and affecting that all of us who experience it recognize it as our own."

Brown received his Ph.D. in theatre history and dramatic literature from Cornell University. He served as Associate Editor of the reference work Shakespeare Around the Globe: A Guide to Notable Postwar Revivals and contributed essays to the volume. He has published articles on twentieth-century French theatre in Theatre Journal, Theatre History Studies, and Theatre Survey in addition to authoring dramatic criticism, book reviews, and translations of French plays.