M. Elizabeth Osborn

M[argaret] Elizabeth (Betty) Osborn, (born in Alabama in 1939; died of pancreatic cancer in Virginia in 1993, age 54), was a playwright, author, theater director, critic, editor, and educator. From the 1980s to early ‘90s, she was a prominent member of the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA).

Her work on behalf of emerging playwrights has been honored since her death by ATCA’s establishment of the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award, now granted annually to a promising new American dramatist.

Osborn received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1970s, she was an Assistant Professor of Theatre at St. Mary's College of Maryland. While on leave she was accepted as a student of directing in the Virginia Museum Theater Conservatory. From that base, she helped to pioneer the resident professional theater movement in Richmond, where she served as a “Dramaturg"—at the time a relatively new position in American regional theatre—of the Repertory Company of the Virginia Museum Theater (VMT).

Osborn not only composed and published program notes for VMT shows but exercised a strong advisory influence on the selection of the theater’s repertoire. She took the lead in organizing the literary and conservatory operations of the company, including the direction and co-direction of conservatory shows. At the end of the decade she took the post of associate artistic director of the American Revels Company (Revels), also in Richmond. With director Keith Fowler she aided in the administration of Revels, shared responsibility for the company's focus on bringing the black and white communities of Richmond together in a "unity audience," and also served as the company’s unofficial dramaturg.

Her literary prowess earned her the direction of major productions. She staged Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1978) and, consistent with her career-long encouragement of new plays, she mounted the Revels' premiere of Kevin Heelan's Hope I hear it Again (1979). In 1979, her own poetic drama of America's wars, Ashes of Soldiers, received its world premiere by Revels, with Osborn co-directing and acting in the ensemble.

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