Aleta Barthell
Playwright Screenwriter Teaching Artist
about
I grew up in a small town in Wyoming. With only three channels available on television, none of which carried Sesame Street, I was left to my own imagination. I think this was the beginning of my path towards becoming a playwright/screenwriter/teaching artist.
My play based on a New Orleans’ ghost story, Window of Shame, was a finalist for the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center. This play was also a finalist for the HUMANITAS/CTG Playwriting Prize.
Night Witches: Flight into Fantasy, was a part of the New Village Arts Theatre’s “Final Draft Festival.” This play follows an all-female Russian air regiment during WWII.
I am drawn to writing from historical events and characters. I was a panelist for “Writing from History” at the Dramatists Guild National Conference in La Jolla, CA. I am also an ambassador for the Dramatists Guild in San Diego.
I created my own youth theater education program, Kids Act, at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad, California that encouraged students to create their own characters and plays.
I hold a Bachelor in Science in Theater from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL).
I trained as an actor at the British American Drama Academy (Oxford, England) and Shakespeare and Company (Lenox, MA). When I moved to San Diego I began studying playwriting and screenwriting at UCSD, and I have been grateful to continue honing my writing skills through the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive and the Dramatists Guild Institute (Architecture of Plays: Focus on Disability; Writing Plays that Explore Race, Gender, Sexuality, Religion and Popular Culture).
A grant recipient from California Humanities, I was the creator and project director for a program called SAVING STORIES: A Toolkit in the Age of Covid-19. The project paired individuals isolated in assisted and skilled nursing facilities with San Diego dramatists who wrote dramatic monologues based on their lives. The monologues were shared virtually with the community through New Village Arts Theatre.
A second grant from California Humanities, a Humanities for All Grant, allowed me to produce a project called Stories of CREED in Action. The project offered two playwriting workshops, in collaboration with Playwrights Project, to individuals who have experienced homelessness. Father Joe’s Villages sponsored the effort and the San Diego Central Library offered the Neil Morgan Auditorium for performances of the plays created in the workshops that were free to the public. Robust panel discussions after the performances were designed to help bridge gaps in understanding about homelessness.
I am currently developing a television series about the 12th century queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. This endeavor began with a grant from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to study source material in Paris about this powerhouse of a queen and the poetess, Marie de France, who was a part of Eleanor’s Courts of Love. The pilot was a semi-finalist at both the Humanitas New Voices Program and the Austin Film Festival.
I live in San Diego with my husband under blue skies.
Press links:
Playwrights Aim to Save Stories (San Diego Union Tribune)
Creating a Safe Space for Creativity (San Diego Union Tribune)