Leslie Jacobson

Fulbright Senior Scholar

Media Profile

"Transforming any narrative into a play offers a variety of challenges. The capacious time and meandering structure of a novel must be streamlined to fit what Shakespeare called ‘the two hours traffic of our play’; thus some sub-plots and characters have to be eliminated."

Leslie Jacobson is one of five Americans to be selected as a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Australia for 2007-08. Leslie is currently a Professor and Chair at The George Washington University’s Department of Theatre and Dance. On her Fulbright she will spend time at The University of Adelaide studying playwriting and theatrical production in Australia.

Leslie’s project, Developing a new play and techniques to create theatre from life experiences, will have a number of focus areas.

“As a teacher and director of cross-cultural socially-conscious theatre I will develop and produce a new play based on a novel by a leading Australian anthropologist; train others in my techniques of using personal experience to create socially conscious theatre; and conduct research into the similarities and differences of progressive, experimental theatre in Australia, South Africa, the United States and other English-speaking countries.”

The entire project is planned to run from December 2007 to April 2008 and culminate in performances in Washington DC and the preparation of articles for professional journals and the popular press.

Prior to leaving for Australia Leslie will have prepared several drafts of a stage adaptation of a novel, Evil, by the Australian anthropologist and award-winning author Diane Bell, who is Professor of Anthropology at The University of Adelaide and Writer-in-Residence at Flinders University.

“There is an old saying, ‘Plays are not written, they are re-written’, and so it will be with my adaptation. I continue to rewrite based on responses to the staged reading and my correspondence with Dr Bell. I plan to come to Australia to develop a fully staged world premiere in March 2008 as part of the Fringe offerings of the Adelaide Festival, an annual arts event.”

Leslie achievements in the dramatic arts are too many to list, however include three nominations for the Helen Hayes Awards in the category of Outstanding Direction, an award from The Writers’ Guild of American for producing play by women playwrights, writing and staging a living history presentation commemorating the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Senate in the Old Senate Chamber and writing and staging a living-history presentation commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers Flight at the Smithsonian Institution.