Anne Hamilton

Anne Hamilton is an NYC-based freelance dramaturg and the Founder of Hamilton Dramaturgy, an international consultancy. She created Hamilton Dramaturgy’s TheatreNow!, where she hosts and produces an oral history podcast series of important theatre women working in America. Anne has dramaturged for Andrei Serban, Michael Mayer, Lynn Nottage, NYMF, Niegel Smith, Classic Stage Company, and the Great Plains Theatre Festival, among others. She is also an award-winning playwright. Her chapter, “Freelance Dramaturgs in the 21st Century: Journalists, Advocates, and Collaborators” appears in The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy. She was a Bogliasco Foundation Fellow, won the Dean’s Prize for Dramaturgy at Columbia University School of the Arts, and holds dual citizenship in Italy and the United States. Anne lost her best friend Curtis in a head-on car accident in 1979, two weeks after his high school graduation. Her emotional life became frozen and she has spent the last thirty-two years exploring all areas of self-expression, particularly through stage plays, poetry, theatre, art, and music. She is currently developing her own chamber-play-with-dance entitled ANOTHER WHITE SHIRT, about the way that grief moves through the body.

Articles:

Revisiting Loss 30 Years Later ‘Refreshing’

Last year, when the 30th anniversary of my friend Curtis’ death was coming up, I set out on a journey of healing, to clean out whatever vestiges of internal emotional and psychological damage that might be stopping me from living a full life today. I trusted that if I thought again about Curtis, I would learn something valuable about myself. And as a writer and artist, I knew that I would express myself in appropriate ways. In this series for the Open to Hope Foundation, I’ve shared some writing that has flowed from recent conversations I’ve had. The writing has […]

Script-writing Helps Her Understand Meaning of Loss

The body is gone, but the love remains. This is the bottom line for so many of us. We may miss the person’s physical presence, but more often it’s the person’s mind/soul/body presence which we long for. And yet, the love remains. I’ve been taking a “deliberate journey of the soul” in search of deeper healing since June of last year, which was the 30th anniversary of my friend Curtis’ death. We were in high school and spent a lot of time together before he was killed in a car accident at age 17. I often wish that I could […]

Writing Poetry Helps Decades After Friend’s Death

June 11th of last year was the 30th anniversary of the death of my friend Curtis in a car accident. As part of my healing process, I set out on a “deliberate journey of the soul,” to clean out whatever vestiges of internal emotional and psychological damage that might be stopping me from living a full life. I trusted that if I thought again about Curtis, I would learn something valuable about myself. And as a writer and artist, I knew that I would express myself in appropriate and meaningful ways. In this series, I share the things I’ve learned, […]

Maintaining Emotional Fluency through Artistic Expression

Last year, when the 30th anniversary of his death was coming up, I set out on a journey of healing…

Accepting Loss as a Fact of Life

When I was sixteen, my best friend was killed in a car accident. My boyfriend was driving the car. They were going to the movies on a summer afternoon two weeks after their high school graduation. I felt that my life was smashed head on in that one moment, just like their car had been smashed by a tractor trailer when a slippery road in a summer rain threw them into the oncoming lane of a highway. My friend Curtis was thrown from the car and died immediately. My boyfriend had a hip injury and recovered fully. I think of […]

The Mathematics of Hope – When Two Plus Two Has to Equal Five

I’ve made a lot of condolence calls this week. A friend lost her father. Another’s cousin has lost her battle with breast cancer. A playwright’s mother has moved in and my friend is her primary caregiver. She had to quit her job. A friend who’s a writer is finding trouble finding hope.

Celebrating the Celebrity – Recognizing Our Own Power

By Anne Hamilton, M.F.A. I was saddened by the news of Michael Jackson’s sudden death on June 25th. We were kids together. We grew up together. We both sang and danced little routines, and had dreams of becoming a star. Of course, his dreams came true and he became an international star – but he took me along for the ride somehow, anyway. This is why I feel sad and have taken some moments to grieve. I grieve first for my own lack of success, in a way, and also that his genius was lost way too soon. Michael Jackson […]

Losing the ‘Father of My Heart’

By Anne Hamilton, M.F.A. — On November 25, Gerald Schoenfeld, the longtime Chairman of the Shubert Organization, suffered a heart attack in his Manhattan home. Shock waves went through the Broadway community. I was devastated by his death because he was the closest thing to a “father of my heart” that I had. I’ve worked in the professional theatre in New York for almost 20 years, and Gerry gave a lot of life to my experience, first as my professor at Columbia, and then as my mentor and champion. I’ve realized throughout the years that I’ve collected father figures, and […]

Sharing Infant Death Survivor Stories

My son, Cayden passed away on Feb. 3rd in his seventh month. My husband and I are dealing with it o.k, however we have not been able to talk to anyone about it or anything. We have alot of people to talk too but none that have experianced what we have. We live in Hamilton, Ont. There is help for people that have lost young children, or babies to s.i.d.s, but our son was not a s.i.d.s. case. He died from choking on his own spit in his sleep. What I need help with is finding a web site that […]