Lynne Conner is a theatre and dance scholar, playwright, arts activist/advocate and educator. She taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh before coming to Colby, and for many years was very active in Pittsburgh’s arts and culture community as a playwright, arts advocate and arts consultant. Her areas of scholarship and artistic practice are all centered on a passionate belief in the power of the arts to enhance the quality of individual lives and to build communities. As an educator, Lynne is committed to the value of a liberal arts education for myriad reasons, beginning with the undeniable fact that freedom of the body politic starts with broadly educated minds.
Lynne’s publications include the books Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), In the Garden of Live Flowers, co-authored with Attilio Favorini (Dramatic Publishing Company, 2003), Spreading the Gospel of the Modern Dance: Newspaper Dance Criticism in the United States, 1850-1935 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997) and a monograph, Project Brief: The Heinz Endowments’ Arts Experience Initiative (The Heinz Endowments, 2008). She has also published chapters, articles, essays and reviews in Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life (Routledge, 2008), Crucibles of Crisis (University of Michigan Press, 1996), Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance (2003), The International Dictionary of Modern Dance, Metamorphosis, High Performance, Theatre Studies, Grantmakers in the Arts Reader and numerous other journals.
Her current research interests are focused on studying the history of audience behavior and psychology in order to guide cultural institutions toward more effective and inclusive participation practices. As the principal investigator for The Heinz Endowments’ Arts Experience Initiative, she has been invited to lecture on the topic for the Wallace Foundation Excellence Awards (2009), National Performing Arts Exchange (2008), Theatre Communication Group at the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver (2008), Performing Arts Centers Consortium (2008), Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Boston Foundation’s Public Forum (2007), International Society for the Performing Arts (2008), Southwest Arts Conference (2006), Grantmakers in the Arts (2005), Dance USA (2005), American Symphony Orchestra League (2007), Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (2006) and the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon University (2007). In 2007 she was selected as a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow for “Cultural Institutions Without Walls: New Models of Arts-Community Interaction” and joined artists and scholars from 26 countries in order to identify particularly imaginative and effective new models of arts and community interaction.
Lynne’s plays and adaptations have been produced in venues across the country, including Main Street Theatre (Houston), Theatre-Hikes (Chicago), the Actors’ Guild of Lexington (Kentucky), Quantum Theatre (Pittsburgh), Gemini Theatre (Pittsburgh), Prime Stage (Pittsburgh), Smith College, Carnegie Mellon University, William and Mary College, Loyola Marymount, Slippery Rock University, Point Park University and the University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre. In the Garden of Live Flowers, co-written with Attilio Favorini, won the 2002 David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival and an honorable mention prize in the 2002 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award contest and is published by Dramatic Publishing Company. Nina was included in the Smith College New Play Reading Series in March 2002, won the Gemini Theater New Play Festival competition, and was named a finalist in the Dorothy Silver Playwriting Award and the Oglebay Institute Towngate Theatre Playwriting Contest. American Humbug received a Creative Heights grant award from the Heinz Endowments in 2007 and was produced by the Three Rivers Arts Festival. As the founding director and resident playwright of the Heinz History Center’s Stages in History professional theatre company from 1996 to 1999, she wrote over fifty one-act plays, monologues and short scenes, including the one-act play, John and Sarah: Scenes from a Love Story, which received the Pennsylvania Federation of Museums Award of Merit/Outstanding Museum Programs in May 2000.
Lynne is the resident playwright for Carnegie Mellon University’s Interactive Theatre Company, a professional troupe performing scripts on workplace and campus life issues, for which she received a Pennsylvania Economy League Learning and Development Award and a College and University Professional Association Innovation Award. She recently completed a series of DVD scripts for Carnegie Mellon University’s Program for Research & Outreach on Gender Equity in Society (PROGRESS), founded by nationally regarded economist Linda Babcock (author of Women Don’t Ask) in order to examine and address the critical issue of gender inequity. Lynne’s scripts were produced by CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center and are being distributed nationally as part of a campaign designed to reach middle-school girls. Dr. Conner is currently writing scripts for a DVD series treating the issue of Sexual Harassment, to be distributed by Carnegie Mellon University.
As an arts advocate, Lynne was the founding co-chair of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Alliance (now the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council), where she helped to develop a nationally recognized advertising campaign for the arts in Pittsburgh. She currently serves as a council member of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and as a board member for ArtUp, a Pittsburgh-based arts organization devoted to new works and studio activities that enhance the quality of Pittsburgh’s downtown living.
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