Matt Buchanan is a New England-based professional playwright and composer specializing in theatre with and for young people. His plays and musicals have been performed across the United States and in several foreign countries. He is also an accomplished stage and music director, a skilled scenic artist, and a performing musician. He was a founding member of the Boston rock band System Underload. Mr. Buchanan has a BA in Music from Harvard College and an MFA in Child Drama from the University of Texas at Austin.
For many years, Mr. Buchanan has concentrated his energy on creating quality plays that are truly suitable for performance by student actors--plays that challenge the performers and the audience, that explore issues important to young people, and that provide age-appropriate roles for budding actors and actresses. His work is neither the "traditional" rehashed fairy tales so common in children's theatre nor the ubiquitous "issue plays" one often sees in work intended for teenage performers. His characters are real, even in fantastical settings, and they approach the universal rather than the particular--but the universal experience of young people, not of miniature adults. Audiences and casts alike have been enthusiastic in their love of and enjoyment in his work.
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