NEWS

CHAPEL HILL – An Emmy Award-winning director and a playwright will stage a one-woman play, "Back Talk: Teaching Lost Selves to Speak," March 27 and 28 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The director, Joan Darling, also an adjunct professor of dramatic art at UNC, will star in the play, a meditation on spirituality, feminism, achievement, loss and recovery. "Back Talk" is based on a humorous and frank memoir of the same title by playwright and author Joan Weimer, a Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences March 15-28.

Performances, to be followed by discussions with the two professors, will be at 5 p.m. March 27 and 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. March 28 in the Elizabeth Price Kenan Theater, inside the Center for Dramatic Art on Country Club Road. Rehearsals will be from 2-5 p.m. March 23-26 in Room 102 of the center. All will be free and open to the public.

Weimer will give a free public lecture, on adapting works for the stage, from 7-9 p.m. March 18 in 104 Peabody Hall. The building is at Cameron Avenue and South Columbia Street.

Weimer also will teach a free public workshop on creativity in writing through using the mind, body and spirit to retrieve and develop memories. The workshop will be Tuesday (March 16) from 7-9 p.m. in the Toy Lounge on the fourth floor of Dey Hall, near Wilson Library off South Road.

An English professor at Drew University in New Jersey, Weimer specializes in American literature. Her memoir evolved unexpectedly when she was researching the life of Constance Fenimore Woolson, a long-forgotten 19^th-century novelist who committed suicide despite a successful career and adventurous life.

During the project, Weimer was immobilized by a back injury. In her year of enforced inactivity, she undertook a journey of self-discovery through imagined dialogues with Woolson about their lives and work. "Back Talk" (Random House, 1994) was the result.

"Ultimately, Weimer turns a year of pain and fear into an opportunity for growth," wrote Publishers Weekly when the book was published.

Weimer also wrote "The Story Tellers," a semi-finalist in the 1980 National Play Award Competition of the National Repertory Theater. She and her husband, David Weimer, co-wrote two screenplays, "Pyramid" and "Ready About."

Darling teaches acting and directing in UNC’s writing for the screen and stage program in the College of Arts & Sciences. One of the first women directing film and television during the 1970s, she won an Emmy and a Director’s Guild Award.

Darling directed popular television shows including "M.A.S.H.," "Magnum PI," "Phyllis," "Rhoda," and "Mary Tyler Moore," including one episode of the latter that a New York Times critic dubbed "the funniest half hour on television."

Darling also created a "Directing the Actor" workshop for Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, where she has been a creative advisor for the past decade.

The Frey Foundation professorship was established in 1989 to bring to campus leaders from fields including public policy, diplomacy, the military and the arts. The foundation was established in 1974 by Edward J. and Frances Frey of Grand Rapids, Mich. Their son, David Gardner Frey, who graduated from UNC in 1964, and from the UNC School of Law in 1967, is vice chairman of the foundation.

For more information, call 843-6339.

- 30 -

Contacts: David Sontag, professor and director, writing for the screen and stage program, 843-6035; Dee Reid in the College of Arts and Sciences, 843-6339; Joan Weimer can be reached before March 15, 520-825-0415; after March 15, Weimer and Joan Darling can be reached locally at 928-8088.

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, 919-962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu