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Amy Freed | |
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| Born | 1958 (age 66–67) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Education | Southern Methodist University (BFA) American Conservatory Theater (MFA) |
| Occupation | Playwright |
| Spouse | Mick LaSalle |
Amy Freed (born 1958) is an American playwright. [1] Her play Freedomland was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Freed was born in Manhattan and grew up in The Bronx, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Westchester County, New York. Her father, Richard (1927-2015) was an architect. Her mother was the actor, acting teacher and director Margaret Loft (1925-2024). [2]
She earned a degree in acting at Southern Methodist University. She spent several years in New York and then attended the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco, receiving an M.F.A. [3] While at ACT she wrote a play rather than a thesis for her degree. That play, Still Warm, is loosely based on the TV newswoman Jessica Savitch, and "became a precocious playwriting debut when it was produced at the Climate Theatre in 1991." [4]
Freed was nominated as a finalist in the drama category of the 1998 Pulitzer Prizes for her play Freedomland. [5] [6] Freedomland was produced Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, running from December 16, 1998 to January 3, 1999. Directed by Howard Shalwitz, the cast featured Veanne Cox, Jeffrey Donovan, and Heather Goldenhersh. [7] The "darkly satiric comedy" premiered at the South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California, in November 1997. The title is based on the "name of a Wild West theme park in the Bronx, where Freed grew up." [8]
Her play The Psychic Life of Savages won the New York Arts Club's $10,000 Joseph Kesselring Award. The play ran at Woolly Mammoth in Washington, D. C. opening in April 1995. Lloyd Rose, reviewing for The Washington Post , called the play an "exultantly mean, painfully affecting comedy." [9] That production won a 1995 Charles McArthur Award for outstanding new play. [8] The play also ran at the Wilma Theater, Philadelphia in May 1998. Regarding this play, Freed "calls herself, 'an examiner of pathologies.'" [10]
She wrote The Beard of Avon which was commissioned and premiered by South Coast Repertory, opening in May 2001. [11] The play was produced Off-Broadway by the New York Theatre Workshop, [3] running from November 18, 2003 to December 21, 2003. Directed by Doug Hughes, the cast included Tim Blake Nelson as Wiliam Shakspere [sic], Mark Harelik as Edward De Vere, Mary Louise Wilson as Queen Elizabeth and Kate Jennings Grant as Anne Hathaway. [12]
Her play Safe in Hell, another South Coast Repertory commission, received its premiere production in April 2004. [13] The play received its East Coast premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre in November 2005. [14] The play is "the story of real-life father and son Puritan preachers Cotton and Increase Mather. The comedy delves into the story behind the witch hunt." [13]
You, Nero premiered at South Coast Repertory in 2009 and focuses on "the effect Nero had on the theater scene in ancient Rome..." [15] The play was produced at the Arena Stage in 2011. [16]
In 2012, Freed's play "Restoration Comedy" was performed at the Flea Theater. The production was described as "performed with insouciant wit" in a play which "celebrates a libertine spirit that’s hard to deny." [17]
The Monster-Builder premiered at Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland, Oregon, in February 2014. Called a "wonderfully wild and witty play" by Richard Wattenberg, it focuses on a master architect, Gregor Zubrowski, whose "single-minded pursuit of professional glory has stripped him of his humanity." [18]
She wrote Hell to Pay, one of twenty works commissioned by the Berkeley Rep as part of The Food Project. She gave a lecture on the play in February 2014 at Stanford. [19]
Her work has been produced at New York Theatre Workshop, Seattle Repertory, American Conservatory Theater, Goodman Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and other theaters around the US. [2]
She currently teaches acting and playwriting at Stanford University, where she advised the creators of The Manic Monologues . [20]
She has been the recipient of the Kesselring Prize, [8] the Charles MacArthur Award [8] and is a several times winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award.
Freed received the South Coast Repertory (SCR) 2009 Steinberg Commission, which involved a grant from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust to write a play for SCR. [21]
She was one of five playwrights in the Arena Stage, Washington DC, new program "American Voices New Play Institute", starting in 2010 for three years. [22]
She is married to San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle. [3]
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