Author Profile:  Roger Cornish

Roger Cornish wrote some two dozen full length plays, numerous one acts and shorter plays, produced across the country in the major regional theatres, among them Arena Stage in Washington, DC, Houston’s Alley Theatre, Philadelphia’s Drama Guild, the Missouri Rep, the Chicago Project, the Denver Center Theatre, the O’Neill and Off-Broadway, et al, as well as in university and community theatres, radio and television.  Cornish reported his plays were produced in 48 US States and Japan.  Among the most widely known are Offshore Signals, Fat Men on Thin Ice, Rocky and Diego and A Class “C” Trial in Yokohama.  Two of his one act plays, I Saw Your Picture In The Paper And I Had To Call and It Hardly Matters Now, are published by Pioneer Drama Service.

Educated at the University of Connecticut, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Minnesota, where he earned his PhD, Cornish taught theatre at several universities including Penn State and Rutgers University where he headed the playwriting program at the Mason Gross School of the Arts.  The editor of several theatre books and dozens of articles, he co-edited the two volume anthology, Landmarks of Modern British Drama with his wife, playwright Violet Ketels Cornish.

Cornish was the middle generation of a theatrical family:  his mother was one of the original Radio City Rockettes, his father was an actor and his daughter, Claire, is an actress and director.