The Department of Theatre Arts at Saddleback College is thrilled to present a stage reading of Tumbledown, a world premiere by poet/playwright Red Shuttleworth, on Thursday, March 16th at 7:30 p.m. in the McKinney Theatre. According to Shuttleworth, what Tumbledown started with (in his head) was a rawhide-tough, weathered and lean “desert rat” who has been on a desert peregrination for a long, long time…a man pulling a small wagon with a mounted coyote fixed upon that wagon.
As Shuttleworth composed the play, he realized who was in his thoughts: end-days Wyatt Earp. Shuttleworth received the 2016 Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award for Outstanding Poetry Book from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum for Woe to the Land Shadowing, and he was named in True West Magazine as the Best Living Western Poet. Admission is free.
Preceding the play, the Angels for the Arts will host a meet-the-playwright wine and cheese reception at 6:00 p.m. A reading of winners of a student poetry contest judged by Shuttleworth, will take place along with other surprises.
Red Shuttleworth received the 2016 Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award for Outstanding Poetry Book from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum for Woe to the Land Shadowing (Blue Horse Press). Poet and playwright, primarily on the American West, Shuttleworth is a three-time winner of the Spur Award (from Western Writers of America) for Poetry: Johnny Ringo (Riverhouse Lit), 2013, Roadside Attractions (The Basement), 2011, and Western Settings (University of Nevada Press), 2001. True West Magazine named Shuttleworth “Best Living Western Poet” in 2007.
His poems, one-act plays, and short stories have appeared in over 100 journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Blue Mesa Review, Chum, Clare, Concho River Review, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Minnetonka Review, Neon, Ontario Review, Plains Song Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Roundup Magazine, South Dakota Review, Southwest Review, Suisun Valley Review, and Weber: The Contemporary West. Shuttleworth’s plays have been presented widely in both professional and academic venues, including at The Foothill Theatre (CA), Spirit of the Horse Theatre (MN), Sundance Playwrights Lab, The Sun Valley Festival of New Western Drama, and the Tony Award-winning Utah Shakespearean Festival.
State University of New York at Fredona premiered Red Shuttleworth’s new play, High Plains Fandango on February 24, 2012. Shuttleworth is the editor of Lucky 13: Short Plays about Arizona, Nevada and Utah (University of Nevada Press, 1995). He received an M.A. in creative Writing from San Francisco State University where he studied with William Dickey and Kay Boyle. He also earned an M.F.A. in Playwriting from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he was mentored by Jerry L. Crawford, Julie Jensen, and Davey Marlin-Jones. Red and Kate Shuttleworth live in Washington…in the Columbia Basin, not too close to Moses Lake. He was inducted into the Big Bend Community College Vikings Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011. A large section of Red Shuttleworth’s poetry can be found at: http://poetredshuttleworth.blogspot.com
Saddleback Arts
