Rose-Mary Harrington is a 2008 Oregon Literary Fellowships recipient in drama. She is pictured here with charcoal on her hands; she explains, “I enjoy drawing, watercolor and charcoal which works as my fuel for right brain activities. During these art sessions many a plot dilemma or block has been unlocked.”
Rose-Mary lives in Ashland, and says “I wrote my first play at age 14, about Sir Walter Raleigh and his crew of rum soaked loquacious sailors.” She also writes, “A great many of my plays are concerned with those that have no voice. I am concerned with humanity, love, class structure and social realism.”
Drama judge Oliver Mayer had this to say about the play Rose-Mary submitted with her application, “Hutto”:
“Rose Mary Harrington captures the open-endedness and dread, as well as the gallows humor, of the limbo that befalls illegal immigrants incarcerated in federal facilities. An otherwise perfectly middle class American family on their way to Disney World, the Amanpours have their lives taken away in the ultimate family test: will they survive as a unit, or will Hutto tear them apart and leave them without a country? Harrington has written a play that investigates — and eviscerates — our American reality.”
Rose-Mary is currently working on a full-length play about evolution. She says, “This play, besides having a basis in chimpology, explores the paternal relationships of homo sapiens. I like the challenge of presenting science in the world of the theatre.”
