Playwrights

Suzan-Lori Parks

Representative Plays:

White Noise (2019)
Top Dog Underdog (2001)
In the Blood (2000)

Bio:

Named among Time magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next Wave,” Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most acclaimed playwrights in American drama today. She is the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient, and in 2015 was awarded the prestigious Gish Prize for Excellence in the Arts. Other grants and awards include those from the National Endowment for the...

Stephen Adly Guirgis

Representative Plays:

Between Riverside and Crazy (2014)
Our Lady of 121st St. (2003)
Jesus Hopped the A Train (2002)

Bio:

Stephen Adly Guirgis graduated from University at Albany - SUNY. He is a former Co-Artistic Director of LAByrinth Theatre Company in New York Cityand educator in New York City area prisons, schools, shelters, and hospitals for conflict resolution and HIV/AIDS prevention. Guirgis's plays have been performed throughoug the US and across 5 continents. He won the 2015 Pulitzer...

Shay Youngblood

Representative Plays:

Flying Blind (2013)
Amazing Grace (1998)
Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery (1994)

Bio:

Shay Youngblood fell into writing by accident as a child when she was watching TV and became angry at the fact that Howard Hughes was buying an entire floor in a Las Vegas hotel when children in her neighborhood couldn’t afford shoes. She wrote about what she felt and she felt better and this helped her see the power of words. Her first collection of stories, The Big Mama Stories, were a love letter to the...

Sandra Seaton

Representative Plays:

The Will (2020)
Music History (2011)
The Bridge Party (1989)

Bio:

Sandra Seaton is a playwright and librettist. Her plays have been performed in cities throughout the country, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Her libretto for the song cycle From the Diary of Sally Hemings, set to music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom, has been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. Seaton’s spoken word piece King: A Reflection on the Life of...

Sagar Deshmukh

Representative Plays:

Leftovers (Shillak) (2017)

Bio:

A lawyer by education, Sagar took his first theatre lessons in Progressive Dramatic Association, Pune in 1999. Acting is his main strength while he has also been writing and directing intermittently. Sagar is also a founding member of Aasakta Kalamanch, Pune- a prominent Marathi theatre organization. Sagar has been on stage as an actor with more than 25 plays and his notable works include Marathi plays like Matra Ratra, Tichee 17 Prakarne, Uney Purey Shahar Ek, F-1/105 and the latest Mein Huun...

Sa'adallah Wannous

Representative Plays:

Hanthala's Journey from Slumber to Consciousness (1978)
The King is the King (1977)
Elephant, the King of All Times (1969)

Bio:

Saadallah Wannous (1941–1997) was a SyrianplaywrightHis career as a playwright began in the early 1960s with several shortplays which were characterized by a display of his fundamental theme: the relationship between the individual and society and its authorities. In 1969, joined by a group of playwrights, Wannous called for an Arab Festival...

Rudolfo Anaya

Representative Plays:

Rosa Linda (2013)
Billy the Kid (1995)
Who Killed Don Jose? (1995)
Ay, Compadre! (1994)
The Season of La Llorona (1984)

Bio:

Rudolfo Anaya’s first novel, Bless Me, Ultima, was published in 1972, just as the Chicano Movement was taking root in the national consciousness. This community of Americans of Mexican descent was affirming its unique cultural identity through the cultivation of art, theater, music, and literature. Bless Me, Ultima, a novel about a...

Robert O’Hara

Representative Plays:

Booty Candy (2014)
Brave Blood (2001)
Insurrection: Holding History (1999)

Bio:

Robert O'Hara has received the NAACP Best Director Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, 2 OBIE Awards and the Oppenheimer Award. He directed the World Premieres of Nikkole Salter and Dania Guiria’s In the Continuum, Tarell McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays (Part 2), Colman Domingo’s Wild with Happy as well as his own plays, BootyCandy and ...

Rick Shiomi

Representative Plays:

Rosie’s Cafe (1987)
Yellow Fever (1982)

Bio:

Rick Shiomi is a Toronto-born theatre artist now based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a leader in early Asian Canadian theatre movement in the 1980s. He credits his time spent in Vancouver in the 1970s, working with the Powell Street Festival in its early years, and later with the Redress movement, as what gave him the fuel for his early work as a playwright, including his first play, the award-winning Yellow Fever, premiered in San...

Rajiv Joseph

Representative Plays:

Describe the Night (2017)
Guards at the Taj (2015)
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (2010)

Bio:

Rajiv Joseph’s play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama and also awarded a grant for Outstanding New American Play by the National Endowment for the Arts. His play Guards at the Taj was a 2016 Obie Winner for Best New American Play and 2016 Lucille Lortel Winner for Best Play...