Tricia McDermott

Tricia McDermott

Tricia is a freelance director/dramaturg as well as the founder and producing artistic director of the Airmid Theatre Company, a National Endowment for the Arts award-winning theatre. Throughout her career, Ms. McDermott has worked professionally in regional theatres, Off-Broadway, and internationally. Past experience includes executive director of the Shakespeare Globe Centre USA (founded by Sam Wanamaker to...
Tricia is a freelance director/dramaturg as well as the founder and producing artistic director of the Airmid Theatre Company, a National Endowment for the Arts award-winning theatre. Throughout her career, Ms. McDermott has worked professionally in regional theatres, Off-Broadway, and internationally. Past experience includes executive director of the Shakespeare Globe Centre USA (founded by Sam Wanamaker to reconstruct Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London), and literary manager and educational outreach coordinator at the Off-Broadway theater company, Primary Stages.

Tricia works as a freelance director, dramaturg, and arts consultant. Her directing experience has led her to work on both classic and contemporary plays. During her career, she has worked as a choreographer, and actor. Additional positions have included publicity manager, stage manager, systems administrator, box office manager, and tour and booking manager. She is proud to direct for and provide dramaturgical services to Young Playwrights, Inc. founded by Stephen Sondheim to develop America’s next generation of playwrights. In 1996 in Illinois, she founded Doormouse Productions, a theatre company devoted to interactive outdoor theatre for young audiences. The company, in partnership with the local parks and recreation department, taught classes in acting and creative drama for children ages 5 through 12, and performed company-conceived and written plays in repertory throughout the summer months. The company has continued to fill a void in the community and has become an ongoing and successful part of the Parks Department’s yearly programs.

Ms. McDermott is also a theatre educator having taught classes in directing, acting, movement, script analysis, theatre history and creative drama at such universities as Illinois State and SUNY Stony Brook Universities, as well as Marymount Manhattan and Dowling Colleges. She has been artist-in-residence and guest director at Corning Community College in Corning, NY. Tricia is a member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society and the League of Professional Theatre Women. She was named to the Fortune 52 by the Long Island Press in 2011, was 2009 Smithtown Woman of the Year in the Arts and has been listed in Who’s Who in America. Tricia holds a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from Illinois State University and a B.A. in Theatre from Florida State University.

Plays

  • Tales of a Midwestern Murder by Tricia McDermott
    Cast: 
    5–6
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, docudrama/historic + 3 more
    ·
    Keyword: metoo, murder + 5 more
    Genre: adaptation, docudrama/historic, drama, mystery/thriller, period
    Keyword: metoo, murder, feminism, Glaspell, journalism, TRIFLES, early 20th century
    Adapted from the reporting of Susan Glaspell (NOTE: This piece was specifically written to be produced WITH Susan Glaspell’s TRIFLES)

    Adapted from the 21 Glaspell articles covering 1900 murder of farmer John Hossack whose wife was accused and tried for murdering him with the family ax, this short play tells the story in a tabloid, "Nancy Grace" style, using a multimedia approach...
    Adapted from the reporting of Susan Glaspell (NOTE: This piece was specifically written to be produced WITH Susan Glaspell’s TRIFLES)

    Adapted from the 21 Glaspell articles covering 1900 murder of farmer John Hossack whose wife was accused and tried for murdering him with the family ax, this short play tells the story in a tabloid, "Nancy Grace" style, using a multimedia approach combined with a small chorus (with additional recorded voice support) to examine the communities reaction to the murder and in direct contrast to Glaspell’s take on the murder 16 years later in her play TRIFLES.

    Through the eyes of Susan, the girl reporter, we see how abuse and the pleas for help from Mrs. Margaret Hossack went unheeded or dismissed as "family business;" how the new science of forensics play out in the sensational murder case; and how the misogyny of the period imposes itself onto one woman's physicality, prejudicing an entire community against her. As the chorus becomes more and more frenzied and convinced of Margaret's guilt, we see a slowly evolving horror in Susan, who is still too inexperienced, but intelligent enough to know that the full story is still hidden even from her.

    As a companion piece to Glaspell's rarely produced play, TALES’ loud, vulgar tabloid nature is in high contrast to the quiet, intimate and personal nature of TRIFLES.