Mitchell Named Playwright-in-Residence

Fueled by a strong need to express his thoughts in an orderly yet humorous fashion, Douglas Mitchell turned to playwriting as a way to keep his sanity. After 13 years of writing plays, the Rice University linguist is well known for his one-act dramas, and this fall, he takes on a new role of his own as Rice’s playwright-in-residence.

Mitchell’s work has garnered international attention and has been produced in many American cities and several European countries. He has directed his plays with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee and was named playwright-in-residence for Stages Repertory Theatre. “He is a very bright man and quite inventive,” Albee says. “He has a very fertile imagination. He knows his way around the theater. I think he is by nature a playwright.”

Mitchell, who has been on the Rice faculty for 21 years, teaches Sanskrit, Old English, Gothic, the history of linguistics, the history of the English language, and playwriting. He did not begin writing plays until he was 60, and he did so as a way of thinking about and dealing with internal confrontation. “It keeps me from going nuts,” he says.

—Ellen Chang