Playwrights West Fundraising Chair

Claire Willett has been the recipient of the Oregon Literary Fellow for Drama and an Oregon Arts Commission Career Opportunity Grant.  She was also named the summer 2011 Writer-In-Residence at the I-Park Artists’ Colony in East Haddam, CT.  A founding artist of Portland’s annual Fertile Ground Festival of New Work, she has produced a staged reading in every year of the festival, including Dear Galileo (2012) and Carter Hall (2014), both produced by Artists Repertory Theatre.  Dear Galileo was produced in March 2013 in the Hothouse New Play Development Series at California's historic Pasadena Playhouse, starring Lawrence Pressman and Robert Picardo.  Other works include Upon Waking; How the Light Gets In; That Was the River, This Is the Sea (co-written with Gilberto Martin del Campo); The Witch of the Iron Wood, a chamber opera based on Norse mythology co-written with local composer Evan Lewis; Carter Hall, a contemporary adaptation of the fairy tale "Tam Lin" featuring traditional Scottish folk songs; and a world premiere adaptation of W.H. Auden’s 1942 poetic oratorio For the Time Being.   She has a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from Whitman College in Washington, and is a graduate of the Paul A. Kaplan Theatre Management Program at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City.