Playwriting alumna Callan Stout ’17 was named a winner of The Film Fund's 2020 Narrative Contest for a short film adaption of a play with her collaborators, current Columbia undergrads Arielle Friedman and Lucy Blumenfield.
Serving as an alternative form of film industry funding platforms, The Film Fund is a unique nonprofit organization that funds short films. Their promise is simple, write one sentence for a chance to win up to $10,000 to support the creation of a short film. Rather than burden the filmmakers with lengthy grant writing, The Film Fund is designed on a platform that is inherently non discriminatory, focusing on the quality of the submission, rather than the demographic or background of the filmmaker.
Stout calls herself a feminist playwright. Her plays explore women finding their strengths and fighting for self-determination. She’s from Los Angeles but is now based in NYC. She loves theatre experiences that give the audience magic: emotional magic, stage magic, musical magic, all and any of them. She particularly enjoys the moment where the audience and actors all breathe together.
Callan Stout’s plays have been seen in New York, London, Los Angeles, Cameroon, and more. Her plays include you do not look, LEG (Princess Grace Semifinalist, Cherry Lane Theatre 2014 Mentor Project Semifinalist, Hope on Stage finalist), Girl Becomes Bone, Breathing in the Rain, A Song for a Surfer, American in Camera, The Pastry Queen, and More than Breakfast. She often works with director Jenny Beth Snyder. Her children’s plays Brownies, Bicycles & Bigfoot and an adaption of The Jungle Book, are both published by YouthPLAYS. The Jungle Book has been performed across the US and in Cameroon. She is a founding member of Cockpit Writers Group, an alumna of Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Play Group, an alumna of Pipeline Theatre Company’s PlayLab, and a new member of Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Callan holds a BFA from NYU Tisch and an a MLitt from the Elphinstone Institute.
