Barfield to Co-Direct Playwrights

Tanya Barfield to Join David Lindsay-Abaire as the New Co-Director of the Program Beginning Fall 2020

Juilliard has announced that Marsha Norman would step down in the spring, 25 years after arriving at Juilliard to head the playwriting program with Christopher Durang. Starting next fall, Tanya Barfield will join David Lindsay-Abaire in co-directing the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.

Barfield and Lindsay-Abaire are both alumni of the program, having graduated in 2002 and 1998, respectively. Lindsay-Abaire became co-director when Durang retired, in 2016, and Barfield said she was thrilled to be joining Lindsay-Abaire in that role. “Having had the honor of studying with Marsha as well as serving as the Juilliard Drama Division’s literary manager [2009–14], I am deeply connected to the program. It’s a place to exchange ideas, teach and learn writing, but also it’s a return home.”

In 2011, Barfield told the Journal that she’d studied acting as an undergraduate at New York University “because I didn’t know there was such a thing as a living playwright,” but after graduating, “as an actress of color, there weren’t a lot of roles for me. It was pre- Waiting to Exhale, and I wasn’t convincing as a drug addict or a prostitute, so I started writing my own solo pieces and performing them.” Before long she was launched into a successful, award-winning career as a playwright, with her work having been produced all over the world including, this month, the fourth-year actors’ production of Bright Half Life.

Keep an eye out! We’ll be paying tribute to Marsha Norman and her incredible career as a playwright and as a nurturer of talent later this year. In the meantime, let us know at [email protected] if you have favorite memories or tributes to share about her.