Playwright Jeffrey Skinner Set for Talk-Back Following DOWN RANGE at Theatre Harrisburg

Join Theatre Harrisburg on Friday, November 11, 2016, immediately following the Veteran's Day performance of DOWN RANGE for a talk-back with the show's playwright, Jeffrey Skinner.

The event will begin immediately after the 8pm performance concludes. The talk-back is free and is open to the public.

Poet, playwright, and essayist Jeffrey Skinner was awarded a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. Skinner's Guggenheim project involves a conflation of contemporary physics, poetry, and theology. He served as the June, 2015 Artist in Residence at the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2015 he was awarded one of eight American Academy of Arts & Letters Awards, for exceptional accomplishment in writing.

His most recent prose book, The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets, was published to wide attention and acclaim, including a full page positive review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. His most recent collection of poems, Glaciology, was chosen in 2012 as winner in the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, and published by Southern Illinois University press in Fall, 2013.

Skinner has published five previous collections: Late Stars (Wesleyan University Press), A Guide to Forgetting (a winner in the 1987 National Poetry series, chosen by Tess Gallagher, published by Graywolf Press), The Company of Heaven (Pitt Poetry Series), Gender Studies, (Miami University Press), and Salt Water Amnesia (Ausable Press). He has edited two anthologies, Last Call: Poems of Alcoholism, Addiction, and Deliverance; and Passing the Word: Poets and Their Mentors. His numerous chapbooks include Salt Mother, Animal Dad, which was chosen by C.K. Williams for the New York City Center for Book ArtsPoetry Competition in 2005. Over the years Skinner's poems have appeared in most of the country's premier literary magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, FENCE, Bomb, DoubleTake, and The Georgia, Iowa, and Paris Reviews.

Also a playwright, Skinner's play Down Range had a successful run at Theatre 3 in New York City in the Spring of 2009, and another in Chicago in 2014. His play Dream On had its premier production in February of 2007, by the Cardboard Box Collaborative Theatre in Philadelphia. Other of Skinner's plays have been finalists in the Eugene O'Neill Theater Conference competition, and winners in various play contests.

Skinner's writing has gathered grants, fellowships, and awards from such sources as the National Endowment for the Arts (1986, & 2006), the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the state arts agencies of Connecticut, Delaware, and Kentucky. He has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, McDowell, Vermont Studios, and the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown. His work has been featured numerous times on National Public Radio. In 2002 Skinner served as Poet-in-Residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut.

He is President of the Board of Directors, and Editorial Consultant, for Sarabande Books, a literary publishing house he cofounded with his wife, poet Sarah Gorham. He teaches creative writing and English at The University of Louisville.

DOWN RANGE is the story of 2, twenty-plus-year veterans who return home after their convoy is hit by an IED in Iraq. Torn between family and the call of duty, the men face a new kind of fight -- one against betrayal, fear, infidelity and loneliness. A poetic portrait of two couples as well as an incisive commentary on current events, DOWN RANGE is not simply a "realist" drama, but a play charged with a rare authenticity, filled with the surprising and bitter stuff of real life.

The Theatre Harrisburg production features Kerry Mowery, Tim Wallace, Rebecca Bremer, and Susan Oscilowski. Scenic and Lighting Design by Joshua Rose, Costume Design by Paul Foltz, Technical Direction by Curtis Mittong and Direction by Brett A. Bernardini.

Tickets are: Orchestra $25; Premium Seating $35. All Students (all grades through college) are $10 with valid student ID presented at time of purchase. Group rates available for 10 or more. Special Dinner / Theater package available with WHAT IF...? CAFE for $50.pp. Family 5 packs for $100. For more information, visit www.theatreharrisburg.com.

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