Timothy X. Troy (Director/Playwright) professor and chair of the Department of Theatre Arts, received his Bachelor of Arts degree, the history of ideas–modern, from Lawrence University. He earned the Master of Fine Arts in theatre arts/directing from the University of Iowa, where he directed the original production of five new plays from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Professor Troy’s regular contribution to Lawrence’s First Year Studies program was honored with the First Year Studies Teaching Prize in 2004. Since serving as visiting professor at Trinity College-Dublin in 2005, Troy has recently turned much attention to playwrighting. The Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis presented Troy’s play, Radio and Juliet, in March of 2011. That same year, Wisconsin Public Radio premiered his Vietnam Era adaptation of Stravinsky’s, L’Histiore du Soldat. His recent play For the Life of Me, was featured in the Great Plains Theatre Festival PlayLabs program in May of 2013. As a Fulbright Scholar attached to University College Dublin for the 2020-2023 academic year, Troy will teach playwrighting, audio theartre, and research and write a new play based on the revolutionary life of Kilkenny IRA munitions expert, Daniel John Stapleton (1886-1968).
Plays
THE FOREST AND THE TREES examines how the not-for-profit granting process has become increasingly politicized. Competition for a government grant can bring out the best, and the worst, in the applicants, as well as the grant administrators. A prestigious urban forestry grant brings a dance artist, a librarian, an outdoor educator, and an environmental scientist into the fray of party politics, the culture wars, and … the best of ourselves as citizens, friends, and colleagues.
Balms by day; bombs by night. Dan Stapleton, three-time All-Ireland hurling champion, Kilkenny High Street pharmacist, and happily married father of two, awakens his commitment to Irish Nationalism as the First Dáil and the Irish Volunteers begin the process of establishing the new Irish State in 1918. From that moment until the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, Stapleton manufactures and distributes war materiel and gathers important intelligence, all while winning golf tournaments, nurturing a growing family, attending to the ailments of his community, decoding messages disguised as folklore, and gathering allies among those who appear to support British occupation. Based on Stapleton’s 1953 Bureau of Military History - Witness Statement, Run with the Hare (… and hunt with the hound), uncovers the hidden history of Stapleton’s vital contribution to the remarkably successful outcome of the Battle of Kilkenny.
A youngest son gradually believes only he sees the truth of what his older siblings are not ready to accept - their beloved and powerful mother needs help only professionals can now provide.
An environmental crisis forces the government to create two classes of citizens: the resettled ‘arids’ who occupy the recently exposed lake bed of the Great Lakes, and the Old Shores who protect what remains of the fresh water supply by preventing the newly settled citizens from infiltrating the established neighborhoods. Juliet is on the eve of reaching adulthood when she falls in love with a New Shore pirate broadcaster who challenges the assumptions upon which her culture depends. Will she defy her widowed father, a detective whose job is to protect the new order? Will she fall suddenly for his partner, a transplant from the new settlement area? Will adulthood inspire new alliances, or will she do her part to defend what her father devoted his life to preserve?
Radio & Juliet re-imagines some of Shakespeare’s themes in a cautionary tale with shades of George Orwell, 1950’s science fiction, amid the workings of an elusive crime spree only Juliet can solve.
A parent’s capricious demand to inflate her son’s grade threatens Kate Kavey’s career. Surrounded by her eclectic siblings who’ve conspired to reconcile an on-going family crisis, she desperately pursues renewed stability in her personal and professional relationships. Kate looks to art, literature and religion to lead her past doubt, learning that even a middle school teacher is vulnerable to those who will use faith as a weapon.
On March 27, 2015, an admired brother hits send on an email asking six siblings to offer tissue samples for medical testing. Less than a week later, while lying in a hospital bed at Walter Reed Medical Center, recently retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General William J. Troy calls his youngest brother to ask, “Are you willing to save my life?”
In an instant, the urgency of life and death, the confusion of unfamiliar science, the mysteries of chance and fate, and the impulse to probe the events of an extraordinary life, unfold in the heart and mind of a younger brother 1000 miles away.
Stem Cell - a memoir, explores the anxiety, conflict, and vulnerability of two brothers as they plunge unwillingly into the complex and sometimes comical realities of cutting-edge medical science and recognize the vivid everyday blessings that forge the story of their lives.
Set during height of the "Celtic Tiger", The Dublin Journal is a full-length one-act gambol through Dublin’s past and present.