Laura Jacqmin

The 2009 Artist in Residence at UWM’s Center on Age and Community is award-winning playwright Laura Jacqmin.

Jacqmin’s goal is to create a play about memory loss for the regional theater circuit that also can be used in medical education settings. The residency is designed to give her a deep learning opportunity in the area of aging and memory loss that will inform the writing of the play.

Jacqmin will be in Milwaukee through the end of this month. The residency culminates with readings on Nov. 19 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 22 at 2 p.m. The readings are part of the Theatre Department’s Lab/Works series and will be presented at Studio 508 at Kenilworth Square East, 1925 E. Kenilworth Pl.

Ed Sobel, former director of new play development at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, will direct the reading. “It’s an exciting opportunity for people to see how a play is shaped over the course of the two readings,” says Anne Basting, director of the Center on Age and Community and associate professor of theatre.

Jacqmin is the winner of the 2008 Wasserstein Prize, a $25,000 award for emerging female playwrights. Her plays have been produced and developed with Ars Nova, Second Stage Theatre, Aurora Theatre Company, Victory Gardens Theater and The 24 Hour Plays Off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater. Jacqmin is an adjunct faculty member at Carthage College.

Jacqmin is the third and final artist in residence at UWM’s Center on Age and Community. The program was funded by the Helen Bader Foundation and the Brookdale Foundation Group and is offered in collaboration with UWM’s Peck School of the Arts. She follows documentary photographer Wing Young Huie and artist David Greenberger.