The Biology and Fine Arts Departments are very lucky to be able to bring back to campus writer/composer/performer Claudia Stevens, who will present one of the first performances of her original monodrama, "Blue Lias, or the Fish-Lizard's Whore." This play, with original music by noted composer Allen Shearer, tells the story of Mary Anning, who discovered the amazing fossils of the Blue Lias near Lyme Regis in England, and who may have been the model for John Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman."

Claudia Stevens

Writer, Composer, Performer

   
Claudia Stevens as Mary Anning in BLUE LIAS or the Fish Lizard's Whore
Photos by David Becker

Musical Background: Trained as a pianist, singer, musicologist and composer, Claudia holds degrees in music from Vassar College (summa cum laude), California at Berkeley, and the Doctor of Musical Arts in piano from Boston University under Leonard Shure. Her academic positions include Williams College and the College of William and Mary, where she is Associate Professor of Piano, Adj. (currently on leave). As a composers’ pianist in the 1980s she was associated with Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions and Elliott Carter, presenting their works and those of emerging composers at Carnegie Recital Hall (New York Composers’ Forum production) and other leading venues, and was also the featured artist in several “Performance Today” broadcasts on National Public Radio. Many works she commissioned have been published. The Aaron Copland House in New York and several other libraries hold collections focusing on her advocacy of new music.

Second Career: In recent years Claudia established a second career as a monologue artist, experimental keyboardist, vocalist and playwright. She has received touring grants from the International Theater Institute and from the Virginia Commission for the Arts (continuously, 1994 to 2005); a NEA “New Forms” grant; and residencies including the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and RS9 Szinhaz in Budapest. She created three major works during residencies at the Baltimore Theater Project. The Baltimore Sun chose her recent piece The Poisoner on the Train as one of fifteen top events of the fall, 2004 season – the only play included.  In 2005 she was appointed Visiting Scholar/Artist at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University.

Touring Since 2004: Claudia’s other theater engagements performing her own works include Stages Repertory Theater, Houston, the Cornelia Street Cabaret in New York (at invitation of Roald Hoffman, Nobel laureate), the JCC of St. Paul, Minnesota, the Kravis Center in Florida and other stages. Her college and university engagements since 2004 include Case Western, Dartmouth, Rutgers, Middlebury, Wake Forest, Colgate, Clemson, Purdue, Bucknell, Drake, Whitman, Willamette, Brandeis, UCLA, UC, Santa Barbara (as the Taubman lecture), Millsaps, Macalester, the University of Kansas, etc.  She has been in residence at Cornell, Carleton, Pacific Lutheran University, and Gustavus Adolphus.

 2006-2007 and beyond: Claudia’s engagements include Stanford University, Mills College, Swarthmore College (as “Cooper” visiting artist in Music Dept.), Davidson College, Western Michigan University, Berea College, Ursinus College, the University of Mississippi, Holy Cross, the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, Auburn, Hampden-Sydney, Austin College, Denison, Mississippi Women’s University, Puget Sound University, Washington and Lee and numerous others.