Kate Hamill | |
---|---|
Born | United States |
Genre | Plays |
Notable awards | "Playwright of the Year" |
Kate Hamill is an American actress and playwright.
Hamill is known for writing and acting in innovative, contemporary adaptations of classic novels for the stage, including Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Pride and Prejudice; William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair; Bram Stoker's Dracula; Louisa May Alcott's Little Women; and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. She also writes new plays and works as an actor, independently.
In 2017, The Wall Street Journal [1] named Hamill "Playwright of the Year." She has been named one of the most-produced playwrights in America for every year ranging from 2017 -2023 by American Theatre [2] magazine, which is published by TCG Theatre Communications Group. In 2023, Primary Stages presented Hamill with the Einhorn Mentorship Award.
Hamill grew up in a dairy farmhouse in Lansing, New York, [3] or as she puts it, in "a town with more cows than people.". [4] She was "a small, high-energy, highly emotional child" and "grew up in a household that prized reading and literature". Her bedtime reading featured Greek myths and classic novels, including Jane Austen's works.
She married her long-term partner, actor and oft-time co-star Jason O'Connell, on January 20, 2020. [5]
She received a BFA in acting from Ithaca College.
Hamill creates stories that are female-centered and feminist.[ citation needed ] As a playwright, she has a playful and theatrical style that features absurdity while examining social and gender issues. As an actor, she "tends to play truth-tellers, oddballs, and misfits: complicated people who color outside the lines." [6]
Hamill's Sense and Sensibility premiered in a short run at New York City's Bedlam Theater Company in November 2014. [7] It had a longer run in 2016 directed by Eric Tucker, also at Bedlam. [8] Hamill played Marianne Dashwood. [8] The play was staged at the Pacific Repertory Theatre in 2024. [9]
Vanity Fair was produced by Manhattan's Pearl Theater in 2017, with Hamill playing Becky Sharp. [10] [11]
Hamill's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice premiered at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in 2017, directed by Amanda Dehnert. [3] The production, in which Hamill and her long-term partner, Jason O'Connell, play the leading roles of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, transferred to Manhattan's Primary Stages. [12] This play was published in script form by Dramatists Play Service INC.
In 2018, Hamill's adaptation of Little Women premiered at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis, directed by Sarah Rasmussen. For its New York City premiere in 2019, it opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre, directed by Sarna Lapine. [13] [14] This play was published in script form by Dramatists Play Service INC.
In 2020, Hamill's feminist retelling of Dracula opened at Classic Stage Company, directed by Sarna Lapine. [15] This play was published by TRW plays.
In 2021, Hamill's "cheerful desecration" of Sherlock Holmes stories opened at Kansas City Rep, directed by Jose Zayas. This play was published by TRW plays.
In 2022, Hamill's adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma opened at the Guthrie Theatre, directed by Meredith McDonough. This play was published by TRW plays.
In 2023, Hamill's original play about the British courtesan Harriette Wilson premiered at Cygnet Theater, directed by Rob Lutfy.
In 2024, Hamill's adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter premiered at Two River Theater, directed by Shelley Butler.
In August 2024, Hamill's original play about the artist Artemisia Gentileschi premiered at Chautauqua Theater Company in Chautauqua, New York, directed by Jade King Carroll. It is scheduled to be performed in Manhattan at Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters in November 2024.
Hamill's 3-act adaptation of the Homeric epic is scheduled to premiere at American Repertory Theater in February 2025. Shana Cooper is directing.
Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are implicit critiques of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her use of social commentary, realism, wit, and irony have earned her acclaim amongst critics and scholars.
Pride and Prejudice is the second novel by English author Jane Austen, published in 1813. A novel of manners, it follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the book, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
First Impressions is a Broadway musical with music and lyrics by George Weiss, Bo Goldman, and Glenn Paxton, and book by Abe Burrows, who also directed the musical. It is based on Helen Jerome's 1935 stage adaptation of Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice.
Falsettos is a sung-through musical with a book by William Finn and James Lapine, and music and lyrics by Finn. The musical consists of March of the Falsettos (1981) and Falsettoland (1990), the last two installments in a trio of one-act musicals that premiered off-Broadway. The story centers on Marvin, who has left his wife to be with a male lover, Whizzer, and struggles to keep his family together. Much of the first act explores the impact his relationship with Whizzer has had on his family. The second act explores family dynamics that evolve as he and his ex-wife plan his son's bar mitzvah, which is complicated as Whizzer comes down with an early case of AIDS. Central to the musical are the themes of Jewish identity, gender roles, and gay life in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Bernard J. Taylor is a writer and composer of musicals and stage plays. His stage works have been produced around the world and translated into German, Romanian, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish and Italian. He is also the writer of 14 novels and three non-fiction books.
Laura Wade is an English playwright.
The author Jane Austen and her works have been represented in popular culture in a variety of forms.
Marianne Dashwood is a fictional character in Jane Austen's 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility. The 16-year-old second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood, she mostly embodies the "sensibility" of the title, as opposed to her elder sister Elinor's "sense".
Quiara Alegría Hudes is an American playwright, producer, lyricist and essayist. She is best known for writing the book for the musical In the Heights (2007), and screenplay for its film adaptation. Hudes' first play in her Elliot Trilogy, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Water by the Spoonful, her second play in that trilogy.
Annie Baker is an American playwright, film director, and teacher who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick. Among her works are the Shirley, Vermont plays, which take place in the fictional town of Shirley: Circle Mirror Transformation, Nocturama, Body Awareness, and The Aliens. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017. Her debut film Janet Planet released in 2023 to critical acclaim.
The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) is a non-profit professional theater company based in Garrison, New York. The festival runs a roughly fourteen-week repertory season each year, operating under a large open-air theater tent. Its productions attract a total audience of about 50,000 from the Hudson Valley, New York City, and 40 US states.
Halley Feiffer is an American actress, playwright and television writer, known for her award-winning plays I'm Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, and for showrunning and writing the entire season of American Horror Story: Delicate starring Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian.
Katori Hall is an American playwright, screenwriter, producer, actress, and director from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall's best known works include the hit television series P-Valley, the Tony-nominated Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and plays such as Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho, Children of Killers, The Mountaintop, and The Hot Wing King, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Paul Howard Gordon is an American composer of popular songs and music for the theatre.
Leslye Headland is an American film and television director, screenwriter, and playwright. She wrote the play Bachelorette and wrote and directed its 2012 film adaptation and the 2015 film Sleeping with Other People. She co-created the Netflix series Russian Doll, along with Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler. She also created the Disney+ Star Wars series The Acolyte.
Jessica Swale is a British playwright, theatre director and screenwriter. Her first play, Blue Stockings, premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013. It is widely performed by UK amateur companies and is also studied on the Drama GCSE syllabus. In 2016, her play Nell Gwynn won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, after it transferred from the Globe to the West End, starring Gemma Arterton as the eponymous heroine. She also wrote and directed the feature film Summerland (2020).
An Octoroon is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. It is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, which premiered in 1859. Jacobs-Jenkins reframes Boucicault's play using its original characters and plot, speaking much of Boucicault's dialogue, and critiques its portrayal of race using Brechtian devices. Jacobs-Jenkins considers An Octoroon and his other works Appropriate and Neighbors linked in the exploration of theatre, genre, and how theatre interacts with questions of identity, along with how these questions transform as a part of life. In a 2018 poll by critics from The New York Times, the work was ranked the second-greatest American play of the past 25 years.
Pride and Prejudice* is a play by Isobel McArthur, with songs, based on Jane Austen's novel. The play is designed for a cast of five or six women, each playing a servant and several of the main characters. After an initial production in Scotland in 2018 and a tour in 2019–20, it opened in the West End in 2021 and toured again in 2022–23. The production won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play.
Rosina Filippi was an Italian-born English stage actress and acting instructor, known for adapting Jane Austen's work to the stage for the first time.