ACC Drama Department Commences Its Fall 2008 Season with Proof
David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, Proof will be directed by Drama Dept. Chair, Shelby Brammer and will feature Equity Guest Artist and ACC Fulltime Math Faculty, Paul Wright.
by John Silvey
The ACC Drama Department opens its fall 2008 season with a hit, literally. Department Chair Shelby Brammer has decided to open the season with a Broadway hit — Proof. Proof, which opens in the ACC Gallery Theater on Friday, October 10th, is a Pulitzer Prize winning drama written by playwright David Auburn. According to The New York Times, Proof ran on Broadway for 917 performances before closing on January 5, 2003, “making it the longest–running Broadway play in two decades.” Proof is also the recipient of the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play. Proof was eventually made into a motion picture released in 2005 based on the screenplay written by David Auburn and Rebecca Miller (daughter of the famed playwright Arthur Miller), and starred Hollywood notables Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Playwright David Auburn began his playwriting career as a student of the University of Chicago, where he received a B.A. in English. He then received the honor of a screenwriting fellowship with noted director Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment. After Auburn finished his fellowship, he decided to leave Los Angeles for New York City to become a playwright. Auburn arrived in New York City and started a theatre company with a group of friends, and then spent two years in the playwriting program at the prestigious Julliard School. Since his first play Skyscraper, David Auburn has a successful career as a playwright and screenwriter. Auburn is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, and the Joseph Kesserling Prize for Drama, in addition to a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. Auburn currently resides in New York City with his wife, Frances, and their daughter, Rebecca.
Director and ACC Drama Department Chair Shelby Brammer began her directing career by writing and directing in New York City where she had an established career as an actress for the stage, screen, and television. She then decided to return to school and graduated with an M.F.A. from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa where she also majored in Directing. Brammer eventually came to Austin and was employed by ACC. In 2000, she assumed the role of the ACC Department Chair of Drama and since directed numerous ACC productions including musicals such as Anything Goes, Hair, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, dramas such as Suburbia, Blood Wedding, comedies such as A Phoenix Too Frequent, The Lucky Spot, Lysistrata, and original pieces Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life (by Charles Bukowski) and Somewhere West of Love (a western which she wrote.) Shelby Brammer recently returned from a year long sabbatical during which time she wrote, produced, and directed an independent film based on the novel The Gay Place by Billy Lee Brammer, in collaboration with her sister, Sidney Brammer.
With elements of mystery and surprise, Proof tells the story of a young woman’s struggle to discover how much of her father’s mathematical genius, and his madness, she may have inherited. ACC’s production of Proof will feature Equity Guest Artist and ACC Fulltime Math Faculty, Paul Wright. Proof will open in The ACC Gallery Theater on Friday, Oct. 10th, running the 11th and 12th and Oct. 17th – 19th, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., 3rd floor, 1212 Rio Grande, Austin.
For more information, please contact the Drama Department at 512-223-3240.
