John Dennis Anderson

John Dennis Anderson, a native Texan living on Cape Cod, is a performance studies scholar and Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Communication Studies at Emerson College, where he taught for 27 years. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Baylor University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, all in Communication Studies with a focus on the study of literature through performance.

His play The Ghosts of Cooper’s Town was a finalist for the Kaplan Prize in 2022 and an excerpt titled “Writing Wrongs” was presented online for Wellfleet’s Preservation Hall and the Women’s International League for Peace and Justice in 2021 and 2022. His play On the Great Beach with Beston won the Blue Institute’s Words on Water Playwriting Award in 2021.

With Karen Vuranch, he adapted the letters of Edith Wharton and Louis Bromfield as the play A Cultivated Friendship , and they performed it online in 2021 for Ashland Chautauqua in Ohio.

He appeared in the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival in 2021 and in You Can’t Take It With You and The Laramie Project in 2018 and Casa Valentina in 2023 at the Provincetown Theater, and he performed his solo adaptation of Frederick Busch’s novel The Mutual Friend at Kennesaw State University and Ithaca College in 2013. Anderson presents nationally his Chautauqua performances (consisting of researched monologues in character followed by Q&A in character and then out) as Henry James, William Faulkner, Washington Irving, Robert Frost, Louis Bromfield, Henry Beston, Lynn Riggs, Ernest Hemingway, Marshall McLuhan, and Christopher Isherwood.

John was a faculty member for Humanities North Dakota’s online Chautauqua Training Institute in 2022-2023, and he served as the consultant and a performer for Hofstra University’s Democracy in Performance projects in conjunction with the Presidential Debates of 2008, 2012, and 2016.

He received the National Communication Association’s Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance in 2013 and Lilla Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies in 2017. He is the author of Student Companion to William Faulkner.

A member of the board of the Open University of Wellfleet, he has taught OUW courses on William Faulkner, Henry James, Lynn Riggs and Tracy Letts, A. R. Gurney, and Thornton Wilder. His website is jdanderson.org.

Isherwood, Truro Playwright Collective, Truro Public Library, staged reading, 2023

The Ghosts of Cooper’s Town, St. Mary of the Harbor, Provincetown, MA, staged reading, 2022, Finalist for the Kaplan Prize

“Writing Wrongs,” Racial Reckonings: Three Short Plays by Wellfleet Playwrights Candace Perry and John Dennis Anderson, Cape Cod Branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, online, 2022; Wellfleet Preservation Hall, online, 2021

A Cultivated Friendship: Edith Wharton and Louis Bromfield, Ashland Chautauqua, online, 2021

Marshall McLuhan, What Are You Doin’?, film, writer and performer, 2021

On the Great Beach with Beston, online, Blue Institute’s Words on Water Playwriting Award, 2021

The God of Sironia, Texas, Federated Church of Orleans, MA, staged reading, 2020; Barnstable Comedy Club, Barnstable, MA, staged reading, 2019

The Mutual Friend, one-person play adapted from the novel by Frederick Busch, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, 2013; Emerson College, Boston, MA, 2013; “Dickens in Ithaca,” Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, 2012; St. Botolph Club, Boston, MA, 2006; The University of Texas at Austin, 1994; Texas Speech Communication Association, Waco, TX, 1992 (Full-length premiere). Excerpts: Emerson College, 1992 and 1991; Swedenborg Library, Boston, MA, 1992; Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, 1992; Kutztown, PA, 1991; Atlanta, GA, 1991; Pittsburgh, PA, 1991; Phoenix, AZ, 1991.

Edith Wharton and Henry James: A Literary Friendship, written and performed with Dr. Lynn C. Miller, Foust Artist Series, Georgetown College, Georgetown, KY, 2002; Modern Language Association, New Orleans, LA, 2001; The University of Texas at Austin, 2001; Sauk Valley Performance Festival, Dixon, IL, 1998

The Mutual Friend: A Chamber Opera, adapted from the novel by Frederick Busch, librettist, with composer Michael Wartofsky, New Opera and Musical Theatre Initiative, North Shore Music Theatre, Beverly, MA, and St. Cecilia’s Parish, 1999

The Ring and the Book, adapted from the poem by Robert Browning, Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, Waco, TX, and Austin Community College, Austin, TX, 1985

Sironia, Texas, adapted from the novel by Madison Cooper, Waco Civic Theatre, Waco, TX, 1985

Numerous solo Chautauqua performances (monologues shaped from primary sources with Q&A in character and out) as authors Henry James, William Faulkner, Washington Irving, Lynn Riggs, Robert Frost, Louis Bromfield, Ernest Hemingway, Lynn Riggs, Marshall McLuhan, and Christopher Isherwood, 1994 to present

Finalist, Kaplan Playwright Competition, 2022 (The Ghosts of Cooper’s Town)

Blue Institute’s Words on Water Playwriting Award, 2021 (On the Great Beach with Beston)

Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies, National Communication Association, 2019

Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance, National Communication Association, 2013

B. Iden Payne Award Nomination, Best Actor in a Comedy, Splendora, Austin Circle of Theatres, Austin, TX, 1985

B. Iden Payne Award Nomination, Best Drama, The Ring and the Book, Austin Circle of Theatres (Adapter and Director), Austin, TX, 1985.

“The medium is the mother: Elsie McLuhan, Elocution, and Her Son Marshall.” Text and Performance Quarterly 37:2 (2017): 110-128.

“Stage Adaptations of Wharton’s Fiction,” Edith Wharton in Context, ed. Laura Rattray. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012.

Student Companion to William Faulkner. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007.

“As I Lay Dying: Faulkner’s Tour de Force One-Man Show,” Text and Performance Quarterly 16 (1996): 109-130.

Truro Playwright Collective

Eventide Theater Company (Playwrights, ETC member)

National Communication Association

Open University of Wellfleet Board

Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies, Emerson College