Karen Hartman is an American playwright and librettist. Her plays have been produced at 59e59, Primary Stages, Yale Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Directors Company, Denver Center Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, People's Light, Victory Gardens, Everyman Theatre, and numerous others.
In 2022, the VOLT festival produced by off-Broadway theatre 59e59 simultaneously premiered three of Hartman's plays: New Golden Age, The Lucky Star, and Goldie, Max & Milk. [1] Hartman’s plays have been celebrated as passionate, relevant storytelling that “resonate in the current moment with overpowering force." [2]
Hartman grew up in San Diego, California. She completed her bachelor's degree in Literature at Yale University and received Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama.
After graduating from Yale, she moved to New York City. She was Senior Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington School of Drama in Seattle from 2014-2019, [3] and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with her family.
Karen Hartman's plays have been produced all around the United States, including in New York at the Women's Project, National Asian American Theatre Company, P73, and Summer Play Festival, and regionally at Cincinnati Playhouse, Dallas Theater Center, the Magic, Seattle Repertory Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Victory Gardens, Theater J, Horizon Theatre, Unicorn Theater, and elsewhere.
Three of Hartman's works, Roz and Ray, The Lucky Star (as The Book of Joseph), and Project Dawn (NEA Art Works Grant, NNPN Rolling World Premiere) had ten productions across the U.S. in the 2016-18 seasons, premiering at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, People's Light, Seattle Rep, and Victory Gardens, and are published by Samuel French/Concord. The Lucky Star set records as the highest grossing play in the history of Everyman Theatre in Baltimore. Hartman is currently developing Project Dawn for Population Media Center as a television series, and another project for 20th Television.
Hartman's essays and commentary have been published in the New York Times [4] and the Washington Post . [5] [6] [7] She is the co-founder of national program #TogetherForAbortion, which brings people together for conversations about women's reproductive rights. [8]
Hartman’s work has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, the National Endowment for the Arts, Princeton’s Hodder Fellowship, the Helen Merrill Foundation, Space at Ryder Farm, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, a Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, a Joseph A. Callaway Award from New Dramatists, a Jerome Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and more. She has been a guest artist at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain. [9]
Hartman held the Playwright Center's McKnight Residency and Commission for a nationally recognized playwright in 2014 and 2015. [10] She held a 2019-2020 Guggenheim Fellowship [11] and is an alumnus of New Dramatists [12]