Bob Bartlett

Bob Bartlett, Professor of Theatre, teaches playwriting, screenwriting, and dramatic literature and theory in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. His plays include three new full lengths, WRITING IN DINERS, MEDIOCRE WHITE MEN, and A BOY ON A BED; UNION, a sometimes fiction chronicling Walt Whitman’s years living and loving in Washington, DC during the Civil War; E2, a contemporary reimagining of Marlowe's Edward II, which premiered last season at Maryland's Rep Stage; SWIMMING WITH WHALES (1st Stage; O'Neill Finalist); HAPPINESS (AND OTHER REASONS TO DIE) (The Welders); THE REGULAR (O'Neill Finalist; Seven Devils Playwrights Conference); THE ORBIT OF MERCURY (O'Neill Finalist); BAREBACK INK, a queer reimagining of the Ganymede myth, which recently had runs at the Capital and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals and NYC's Hard Sparks. His play MARY SHELLEY'S MONSTER will premiere in the historic chapel (1903) at Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC this fall. Recently, Bartlett has been producing his own site-specific work: his play THE ACCIDENT BEAR had a successful run in the Avenue Laundromat in Downtown Annapolis; during the first year of covid, he staged his play THREE STRANGERS SITTING AROUND A BACKYARD FIREPIT AT TWO IN THE MORNING LISTENING TO BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S NEBRASKA in his backyard; he recently staged his horror play, LÝKOS ÁNTHRŌPOS, in a wooded clearing in the middle of the woods on a farm in Maryland and at historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC; his romcom LOVE AND VINYL premiered in the summer of 2023 at KA-CHUNK!! Records in downtown Annapolis with subsequent productions at Astro Records and Good Records in Texas and Byrdland Records in Washington, DC); and he wrote the covid-inspired, twelve-episode DUCK HARBOR with EM Lewis for 1st Stage in Tysons which aired in 2021. Bartlett is an affiliated artist with the National New Play Network and a member of The Dramatists Guild of America. He lives in Central Maryland in an old farmhouse and is a founding member of The Welders, a Washington, DC-based, producing playwrights collective who were recognized with the 2016 John Aniello Award for Emerging Theater Company by theatreWashington's Helen Hayes Awards. He earned the MFA in Playwriting at Catholic University of America, and he is a longtime member of the theatre faculty at Bowie State University in Maryland, where he teaches playwriting, screenwriting, dramatic literature and theory, and more. He is the recipient of the 2022 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, or Creative Activity.