Kirsten Greenidge | |
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| Education | Wesleyan University (BA) University of Iowa (MFA) |
Kirsten Greenidge is an American playwright. Her plays are known for their realistic language and focus on social issues such as the intersectionality of race, gender, and class. Her sisters are the historian Kerri Greenidge and writer Kaitlyn Greenidge. [1]
Greenidge has said that she decided she wanted to be a playwright after seeing August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone at age 12. [2] She attended Wesleyan University and the University of Iowa's Playwright Workshop. [3] From 2007 to 2009, she was part of the Huntington Theatre Company's Playwriting Fellows cohort. [4] From 2006 to 2013, Greenidge was a Resident Playwright at New Dramatists in New York City [5] She is currently associate professor at Boston University, teaching playwriting and mentoring undergraduate students. [6] In 2016, Greenidge began a three-year term as the Playwright in Residence at Boston's Company One Theatre [7] through the National Playwright Residency Program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by HowlRound. [8] [9] In 2024, Greenidge has been named director of the School of Theater in the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. [10]
Milk Like Sugar is a coming of age play about 16 year old Annie who makes a pregnancy pact with her friends. As she dreams about having a baby and leading a happy life, she soon learns teen pregnancy is not all it's made to be in her head. The play opened Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theatre on October 13, 2011 (previews) and closed on November 27, 2011. It was directed by Rebecca Taichman and starred Tonya Pinkins. The play won a 2012 Obie Awards, Playwriting and Performance, Cherise Boothe and the 2012 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Featured Actress, Tonya Pinkins. [11] [12] Greenidge was partially inspired by news stories in the summer of 2008 about the so-called "pregnancy pact" at Gloucester High School, Massachusetts. [13] Milk Like Sugar was an attempt by Greenidge to challenge the traditional female Black characters and create diverse Black experiences based on stories that have never been told on stage. [14] The La Jolla Playhouse received the 2011 Round One Edgerton Foundation New Play Awards for Milk Like Sugar. [15]
Luck of the Irish is about an African American family, whose house was bought by an Irish couple in the 1950s and how to the family's dismay the deed may have never been properly transferred. The family must now find the deed, convince the couple not to take the house, or risk eviction. [16] The play had its world premiere directed by Melia Bensussen at the Huntington Theatre Company in March 2012. [17] [18] The play was produced Off Broadway at the Lincoln Center Claire Tow Theater from February 2013 to March 10, 2013. [19]
Greenidge was commissioned the Big Ten Theatre Consortium to write this play in the spring of 2014. [13] [20] After a racial epithet was written on a student's door the entire campus is in social debate about the racial issues taking place in a very contemporary college setting. Issues such as microaggressions, racial color blindness and social segregation are talked about in the play by an ethnically diverse cast. [21] Baltimore was workshopped at the University of Maryland, [20] and then produced in February 2016 at Boston University, in a co-production with New Repertory Theatre and the Boston Center for American Performance. [22]
Greater Good was produced by Boston’s Company One Theatre in collaboration with American Repertory Theater and the A.R.T. Breakout Series, July 17-Aug 17, 2019. [23] The play is staged within a Montessori-inspired private school at the Commonwealth School in Boston, representing systemic flaws such as underpaid teachers, tokenization, and privatization.5 The audience navigates the school building, engaging in scenes of conflict and interacting with artifacts and characters, blending site-specific and forensic storytelling. Its structure mirrors Sleep No More [24] and Fefu and Her Friends by splitting the audience into groups that experience scenes in different sequences and styles, ranging from naturalistic to absurdist.
The New York Times said Luck of the Irish "feels overburdened and overwritten," [19] whereas the Chicago Tribune praised it as "riveting and provocative." [25]
In “Teenage Motherhood Is Serious, Especially With Baby Bling at Play” in the New York Times , Charles Isherwood critiques Milk Like Sugar's rich, vernacular dialogue and sharply defined characters, which create humor and authenticity. However, the pact premise is criticized as implausible and overly schematic, with some scenes slipping into predictable, didactic storytelling. [26]
Paula Vogel is an American playwright. She is known for her provocative explorations of complex social and political issues. Much of her work delves into themes of psychological trauma, abuse, and the complexities of human relationships. She has received the Pulitzer Prize as well as nominations for two Tony Awards. In 2013 she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Will Power is an American playwright, rapper, actor, and educator.
Sheila Callaghan is a playwright and screenwriter who emerged from the RAT movement of the 1990s. She has been profiled by American Theater Magazine, "The Brooklyn Rail", Theatermania, and The Village Voice. Her work has been published in American Theatre magazine.
Lydia R. Diamond is an American playwright and professor. Among her most popular plays are The Bluest Eye (2007), an adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel; Stick Fly (2008); Harriet Jacobs (2011); and Smart People (2016). Her plays have received national attention and acclaim, receiving the Lorraine Hansberry Award for Best Writing, an LA Weekly Theater Award, a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and the 2020 Horton Foote Playwriting Award from the Dramatists Guild of America.
Ken Urban is an American playwright, screenwriter, and musician based in New York. Urban is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and an affiliated writer at the Playwrights' Center.
Lucy Thurber is an American playwright based in New York City. She is the recipient of the first Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting, a Lilly Award and a 2014 OBIE Award for The Hill Town Plays.
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.
John Kuntz is an American actor, playwright, director, and solo performer. Kuntz is the author of 14 full-length plays, a founding company member at Actors' Shakespeare Project, has taught at Emerson College, Suffolk University, and Concord Academy, and is currently an associate professor of theater at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. He was an inaugural playwriting fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company and a fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in 2007. Kuntz is the recipient of six Elliot Norton Awards, two Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Awards, and New York International Fringe Festival Award, among others.
The Huntington Theatre Company is a professional theatre located in Boston, Massachusetts and the recipient of the 2013 Regional Theatre Tony Award, under the direction of Managing Director Michael Maso. It is notable for its longstanding artistic relationship with African-American playwright August Wilson.
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Deborah Salem Smith is an American poet and playwright. She is the playwright-in-residence at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island and is a Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow.
Kate Snodgrass is an American theater director and playwright. She was the artistic director of Boston Playwrights' Theatre until 2022. She is a professor of the practice of playwriting in the English Department of Boston University. Snodgrass won the 2012 Elliot Norton Award for Excellence.
Melinda Lopez is an actress, playwright, and educator from Boston, Massachusetts. She is the first ever playwright-in-residence for the Huntington Theatre Company. She is a professor at Northeastern University.
Karen Zacarías is an American playwright. She is known for her play Mariela in the Desert. It was the winner of the National Latino Playwriting Award and a finalist for other prizes. Mariela in the Desert was debuted at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Zacarías is the founder of the Young Playwrights' Theater located in Washington, D.C.
HowlRound Theatre Commons is a non-profit service organization based out of Emerson College's Office of the Arts. Its aim is to support developing theatre practitioners and facilitating dialogue within not-for-profit theatre and performance arts field. Theatre Commons' platforms use commons-based peer production as their content methodology.
Shalita Grant is an American actress best known for portraying NCIS Special Agent Sonja Percy on NCIS: New Orleans. She is also known from her roles on Mercy Street, You, Santa Clarita Diet, and Search Party.
Rebecca Taichman is an American theatre director. In 2017, she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Indecent.
Ronan Noone is an American playwright based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Carlos Murillo is an American playwright, director, and professor of Puerto Rican and Colombian descent. Based in Chicago, Murillo is a professor and head of the Playwriting program at the Theatre School at DePaul University. He is best known for his play Dark Play or Stories for Boys.
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