Christopher Rawson

Christopher Rawson (born Christopher Comstock Hart, birthdate unknown) is an American writer and theater critic.

Rawson was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His biological father was noted stage actor Richard Hart. His parents divorced shortly after he was born, and he was adopted by his stepfather, Jonathan Rawson.^[1]

Biography

Rawson's main discipline is as a theater critic. From 1983 to 2009, he was full-time theater critic and theater editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 2009, he semi-retired, continuing as that paper's part-time senior theater critic. He also appears as the weekly critic for KDKA-TV.

Rawson is active in several theater organizations, including the editorial board of Best Plays, the standard theater yearbook established in 1920 by Burns Mantle. He is a trustee of the American Theatre Hall of Fame, for which he helps supervise the annual balloting for the selection of new inductees. He has long been active in the American Theatre Critics Association, which he has twice served as chair (1991-93 and 2007- ) and for which he organized conferences in London, at the O'Neill Theater Center, and at Canada's Shaw and Stratford Festivals.

Since 1968, Rawson has been a member of the English faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has taught courses primarily in satire, Shakespeare, critical writing, Irish drama, and the work of playwright August Wilson. Rawson's B.A. is from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington at Seattle.

In 1999, he wrote Where Stone Walls Meet the Sea, a 600-page centennial history of the Donald Ross-designed Sakonnet Golf Club in Little Compton, Rhode Island and of the summer colony of which it is a part. Rawson's new book August Wilson's Pittsburgh will be published in 2011 by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

References

1. ^ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette profile

External links

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Christopher Rawson piece on Richard Hart

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