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W. David Hancock

ダブリュー・デイビッド・ハンコック

W. Deibiddo Hankokku

Profile

Gender
Male
Nationality
American
Languages
English
Residence History
Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Career

Occupations
playwright, short story writer
Active Years
1994-2024
Affiliations
Foundry Theatre, Playwrights' Center
Influenced By
Richard Foreman, The Wooster Group
Influenced
Heidi Schreck, Peggy Stafford
Nominations
Drama Desk Award nomination (Master)

Education

Bucknell University
Degree: BA
Country: United States
University of Iowa
Theatre Arts / Playwrights Workshop
Degree: MFA
Country: United States
in playwriting

Awards

Obie Award
1995
Work: The Convention of Cartography
Category: Playwriting
Organization: The Village Voice
Result: winner
Obie Award
1999
Work: The Race of the Ark Tattoo
Category: Playwriting
Organization: The Village Voice
Result: winner
Whiting Writers’ Award
1998
Organization: Whiting Foundation
Result: winner
CalArts/Alpert Award
2000
Category: Theatre
Organization: CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts
Result: winner
Creative Capital Performing Arts Award
2000
Organization: Creative Capital
Result: winner
Bush Artist Fellowship
2001
Organization: Bush Foundation
Result: winner
Hodder Fellowship
1997
Organization: Princeton University
Result: winner

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

The Convention of Cartography

1994 experimental play

Set in a traveling art museum for a deceased artist named Mike.

memoryobjectsauthenticity

Deviant Craft

1995 experimental play

About an asylum of criminally insane women performing The Tempest.

insanitytheater

The Race of the Ark Tattoo

1998 experimental play

Takes place inside a working flea market run by Mr. P. Foster, selling artifacts of his deceased foster father.

memorypastobjects

Master

2017 experimental play

Imagined a retrospective and wake for a fictional Afrofuturist artist James Leroy “Uncle Jimmy” Clemens.

Afrofuturismartloss

Cathexis

2018 interactive play

An interactive, robot facilitated judicial event.

technologyjustice

Bibliography

  • The Convention of Cartography (1994)
  • Deviant Craft (1995)
  • The Invisible Medium (1996)
  • The Race of the Ark Tattoo (1998)
  • The Incubus Archives (2002)
  • Leftover Future (2003)
  • Our Lot (2011)
  • Booth (2011)
  • Master (2017)
  • Cathexis (2018)

Style & Themes

Literary Style
experimentalnonlinearblurring boundaries between artifice and realityobject-centric dramaturgyunconventional theatrical spaces
Recurring Motifs
memory theatertheater of objectsmystery and authenticity

Legacy

Known for experimental, nonlinear work blurring artifice and reality, two-time Obie winner with Foundry Theatre. Critics describe it as a 'theater of objects' and memory theater.

In Popular Culture

  • Influenced Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me.
  • Influenced Peggy Stafford.

Quotes

  • …we encounter mystery and authenticity at another level entirely.
    Source: Theater (1999)
  • theater of objects… a memory theater built as a fire wall against the loss of the past.”
    Source: Theater (1999)
  • disturbing and powerful… the drama is something that seems to be leaking from the very forms so elaborately carpentered to contain it.”
    Source: The New York Times (2017)

Trivia

  • Married to playwright Kristin Newbom.
  • Lives in Minneapolis.
  • His first New York production was The Convention of Cartography, first presented at University of Iowa.