In addition to writing Byhalia, Mississippi, Evan Linder ’04 acts in the play with Liz Sharpe.
Evan Linder ’04 has done it again: The Chicago playwright’s newest play – titled, Byhalia, Mississippi – has gotten rave reviews since it opened earlier this month in seven cities with a World Premiere Conversation. The play has also won the NewWorks@The Works Playwriting Competition and was named on a short list of 25 finalists out of more than 1,600 applicants for the Theatre503 Playwriting Award. Set in a town with a racially charged past that still very much affects its present, the play has sparked discussions about race relations in the American South.
Linder and his plays have been the subject of much discussion since 2007, when he and five other disillusioned actors and comedians founded The New Colony with the mission of developing a new kind of theatre-going audience. The Chicago-
The world premiere of playwright Evan Linder’s newest work was met with rave reviews.
based TNC is now made up of 100 colonists (including its ensemble, freelancers, board members, etc.), including fellow alumni Ashley Wolfe ’06 and Will Cavedo ’06.
“I like to call myself a ‘new play developer,’ because I think it better describes the different hats all of us wear,” says Linder, who last year also founded the TNC’s Writer’s Room, an intensive seven-week writing workshop – and still somehow finds the time to teach playwriting and 20th century American drama at the University of Chicago.
For more information about Linder and his career in theatre, read an article about the playwright published in the summer 2014 issue of College of Charleston Magazine.
