UMaine Faculty Member Wins Best Play Award

The play “One Blue Tarp” written by Travis Baker, a University of Maine Department of English adjunct faculty member, has received the Best Play from the State of Maine award in the 2013 Clauder New England Playwright Competition, hosted by the Portland Stage Company. He’ll receive the award at a May 18 reception in Portland.

For more than two decades, the Clauder Competition has been New England’s most prestigious playwriting award, according to the Portland Stage Company. Thousands of entries are received and awards are given to the best overall work and by each of the six New England states. The award was created in 1981 to celebrate the distinctive voices of our region’s playwrights and to bring their work to the attention of the greater theatrical community, the company says.

“One Blue Tarp” is about a man in a coastal Maine town who decides to defend his right to have a pile of junk under a blue tarp in his front yard in an unorthodox manner — by sitting down. The play was first read as part of the Northern Writes Reading Series at Penobscot Theatre Company in 2010. It also was named a semifinalist for the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Workshop in 2011.

Baker teaches creative writing and college composition at UMaine.