Thorndike Library talk: COA then vs. now
Andrea Lepcio ’79 discusses COA’s history and experiences from her time at the college 50 years ago through the present day.
Along with being a playwright, librettist, and screenwriter, Lepcio teaches dramatic writing as an adjunct faculty member and was among the first 100 graduates of COA. Lepcio earned an MFA in dramatic writing from Carnegie Mellon University and a BA in human ecology from College of the Atlantic, and creates plays, musicals, and screenplays independently as well as collaboratively.
Lepcio’s play The Last Jew was a finalist for the 2023 Jane Chamber Playwriting Award. She won the Maine Literary Award for Drama for her solo play Human in 2022 and was a finalist with The Last Jew in 2024. She was a playwright in residence at Acadia National Park in 2018. Strait of Gibraltar had a second production at American Stage in May of 2018 and premiered at Synchronicity Theatre in March 2017. Venus Theatre produced a second production of Tunnel Vision in May 2017, and Off the Wall in Pittsburgh produced the first production in October of 2015. The World Premiere of Dinner at Home between Deaths was produced by Indi Chi Productions at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles in April 2016. It was developed and read at Naked Angels and Lark Play Development Center. Looking for the Pony was a finalist for the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award and for the NEA Outstanding New American Play Award. Me You Us Them was developed with TerraNova Collective’s Groundbreakers Playwrights Group and at the Lark Play Development Center. Central Avenue Breakdown (book by Kevin Ray and Andrea Lepcio with additional story by Suellen Vance and music/lyrics by Kevin Ray) was performed at the Daegu International Musical Festival, New York Music Theatre Festival and Fwd Theatre in Chicago. The Ballad of Rom and Julz (book by Andrea Lepcio, lyrics by Cheryl L. Davis, and music by Brooke Fox) was presented in a concert reading at Bard Summerscape in July 2010.
Lepcio’s plays and musicals have been produced and developed at HERE, Manhattan Theatre Source, New Shoe, Shalimar Productions, Three Chicks, Titans Theatre, Williamsburg Art Nexus, and Women’s Project in NY; Bloody Unicorn, Goodspeed Opera House, Hangar Theatre, Miller Theatre, Provincetown Theatre Company, and Trustus Theatre, regionally, and The Little Theatre Group of Costa Rica, internationally. Her screenplay, A September Spring, won the Sloan Foundation Dramatic Writing Award. A two-time finalist for the Heideman Award, Lepcio’s short plays and monologues have been published in Plays and Playwrights 2003, Estrogenius, and by Smith & Kraus. Lepcio was a founder of the Mint Theatre Company, where she produced the World Premiere of Austin Pendleton’s Uncle Bob. She was a Dramatists Guild Fellow and Fellows Program Director.