Playwrights

Beth Piatote

Representative Plays:

Antíkoni (2018)

Bio:

Beth Piatote is a scholar of Native American/Indigenous literature and law; a creative writer of fiction, poetry, plays, and essays; and an Indigenous language revitalization activist/healer, specializing in Nez Perce language and literature. She is the author of two books: Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature (Yale 2013), which won an MLA award; and The Beadworkers: Stories (Counterpoint 2019), which was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the...

Badal Sircar

Representative Plays:

Procession (1983)
Stale News (1979)
Evam Indrajit (1974)

Bio:

Badal Sircar was an influential Indian dramatist and theatre director, most known for his anti-establishment plays during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s and taking theatre out of the proscenium into public arena, when he founded his own theatre company, Shatabdi, in 1976. He wrote more than fifty plays. A pioneering figure in street theatre as well as in experimental and contemporary Bengali theatre with his egalitarian "...

Aziza Barnes

Representative Plays:

BLKS (2019)

Bio:

Aziza Banres is the winner of the 2015 Pamet River Prize; her first full length collection, i be but i ain’t, is from YesYes Books, 2016. Her first chapbook, me Aunt Jemima & the nailgun, was the inaugural winner of the Exploding Pinecone Prize from Button Poetry. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, co-founder of The Conversation Literary Festivaland co-host of the podcast, The Poetry Gods. Aziza is a graduate of New York University, member of The Dance Cartel and...

Ayeesha Menon

Representative Plays:

Pereira’s Bakery at 76 Chapel Road (2010)

Bio:

Ayeesha Menon is currently working on a play for the National Theater. At the BBC Audio Drama Awards, her adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities won Best Adaptation in 2019 and her adaptation of Midnight’s Children won the Outstanding Achievement award in 2018. Her stage play Pereira’s Bakery at 76 Chapel Road had a reading at the Royal Court.

Source: The Agency (UK)

KEYWORDS:

Indian

Ayad Akhtar

Representative Plays:

The Invisible Hand (2014)
Disgraced (2012)
The War Within (2005)

Bio:

Ayad Akhtar was raised in Milwaukee, WI and credits his high school teacher for introducing him to writing. He studied acting and theatre at Brown University and received an MFA from Columbia University in Film Directing. His college thesis screenplay became the independent film The War Within, which was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. His first play Disgraced won him the 2013...

Aurin Squire

Representative Plays:

Zoohouse (2016)
To Whom It May Concern (2015)
Obama-ology (2014)

Bio:

Aurin Squire is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and reporter. He is a recipient of the 2014 Lecomte du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center and the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwright Fellowship at The Juilliard School. In 2013 his drama Freefalling was produced at Barrington Stage Company and won the 2013 Fiat Lux Award from the Catholic Church’s Theatre Conference. In 2014 Squire won the...

August Wilson

Representative Plays:

The Piano Lesson (1987)
Fences (1985)
Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984)
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1982)

Bio:

August Wilson, born Frederick August Kittel, Jr, was a renouned American playwright. In 1968, Wilson set up the Black Horizon Theater with Rob Penny where his first plays, Recycling and Jitney, were performed. In 1976 Sizwe Banzi is Dead – his first professional play – was performed at the Pittsburgh Public Theater....

Ariel Dorfman

Representative Plays:

Death and the Maiden (1991)
Purgatorio (2006)

Bio:

Ariel Dorfman, the Chilean-American author of numerous works in both Spanish and English, holds the Walter Hines Page chair at Duke University. His books have been translated into over forty languages and his plays staged in more than one hundred countries. His play Death and the Maiden won England’s Olivier Award for Best Play 1991 and was produced on Broadway, made into a feature film by Roman Polanski and was revived in London’s West End...

Antoinette Nwandu

Representative Plays:

Pass Over (2017)

Bio:

Antoinette Nwandu is a New York-based playwright who was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her play Pass Over made its New York debut at LCT3/Lincoln Center in 2018. A filmed version of the Jeff Award-winning Steppenwolf production—directed by Spike Lee—premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and at SXSW, and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Victory Gardens produced the World Premiere of her play Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from...

Roy Conboy

Representative Plays:

Tailor From Chihuahua (2005)
Drive My Coche (1999)
When El Cucui Walks (1995)
The Journeys of the Angels (1995)
Dancing With the Missing (1992)

Bio:

Roy Conboy is a writer, director, and teacher of Latino/Mixed Blood descent. For more than 25 years he has been the head of the Playwriting Program at San Francisco State University....