 LISA DILLMAN is a Chicago-identified playwright whose plays include Ground, Rock Shore, American Wee-Pie, Half of Plenty, The Walls, No Such Thing, Six Postcards, Flung, and Shady Meadows, and Just Cause. Her work has been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival), American Theatre Company, Seattle Public Theatre, Rogue Machine, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, Station Theatre, Tipping Point Theatre, Five & Dime, Canamac Productions, and many other companies across the country. She has received commissions from Steppenwolf, Goodman Theatre (Playwrights Unit member, 2010-2011), Northlight Theatre, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, and the Chicago Humanities Festival. She has also developed work at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, PlayPenn, NNPN's Showcase of New Plays, Chicago Dramatists (Resident Alumna), ACT Theatre/Hedgebrook’s Women Playwrights Festival, William Inge Theatre Festival, and others. Dillman is a longtime company member and current literary director at Chicago’s Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, where her plays American Wee-Pie, The Walls, Shady Meadows, and Chiaroscuro all had their world premieres. Her filmed monologue "Story of a House" was commissioned by Baltimore Center Stage as part of the "My America" project, directed by Hal Hartley, and viewable via YouTube. Dillman's plays are published by Samuel French/Concord Theatricals and Dramatic Publishing, as well as anthologized in collections from Heinemann, Playscripts Inc., Smith and Kraus, and New Issues Press. American Wee-Pie is due out from Dramatic Publishing Company in 2024.
WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://newplayexchange.org/users/249/lisa-dillman FB: https://www.facebook.com/lisa.dillman.96/ MORE ABOUT ME I try not to wallow around in disappointment when it comes to the success or lack of success of my work, but I admit that it can be very tough. I had a few years where I nearly stopped writing entirely. I wallowed then, but I've made a pact with myself that I would never do that again. I write short fiction in addition to plays, and in moments of disappointment and potential wallowing I tend to segue over to this other genre and write something new within it. I try just to keep working on next thing—whatever it may be. I see that women's plays—particularly those by. older women—are produced less often than men's plays, and I do what I can to change that. As both a playwright and the literary director of a small woman-centered theatre company, I'm working to promote, develop, and produce the work of women writers. One big change I'd love to see is more serious and widespread consideration and production opportunities for all the terrific older plays by women that did not get their full due in their initial runs or had one super successful production but then disappeared. I believe that world premiere-itis is still lingering problem in this country, and I can cite a whole lot of Honor Roll plays and playwrights that bear that out. I keep writing plays because it's the kind of writing I love—and do—best, because I'm addicted to the theatre and its various collaborative processes, and because it helps me to root out, understand, and explicate what I believe about our shared world. I also try to write plays that I would really love to see. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm working a large-scale theatrical examination of the American loneliness epidemic tentatively titled The Loneliness Project.  Kate Snodgrass is the author of the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award-winning and much-anthologized play Haiku. The play has been performed around the world and translated into German, Japanese, and Gaelic; the film “Haiku” premiered at the 1995 Boston Film Festival. Her plays Observatory and The Glider (nominated for the Natl. American Critics Association’s “Steinberg New Play Award”) won the 1999 and the 2005 Boston IRNE Awards for “Best New Play,” respectively. Her one-act plays Bark’s Dream and The Last Bark were produced by Boston’s Sleeping Weazel. Her short plays L’Air Des Alpes; Que Sera, Sera; Critics’ Circle; Code Blue; Wasteland; and Brickwork have been published/anthologized by Cedar Press, Dramatic Publishing Company, Bakers Plays, Smith & Kraus, and Applause Theatre Books, respectively. A Playwriting Fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company (“HTC”), her short radio play Overture may be found on their “Dream Boston” website. The HTC and Hartford Stage Company produced her full-length play The Art of Burning in 2023, directed by Melia Bensussen. Kate is the former Artistic Director of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and co-founder of the Boston Theater Marathon, now in its 26th year. Kate was designated a “Theatre Hero” in 2001 by StageSource and received Boston’s Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence in 2012; she is the recipient of a 2015 Tanne Foundation Award for her passion and commitment to the theatre. She studied acting at the London Academy of Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and in NYC with disciples of Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner, and Voice with Robbie McCauley. Kate is a proud member of the AEA, AFTRA, and The Dramatists Guild.
MORE ABOUT ME: I love to revise. I feel most myself when I’m in the rehearsal room because Theatre is Family, first and always. I keep doing Theatre looking for another transcendent moment—like in Brooks’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Shepard’s Fool for Love, or Bernstein’s Candide, or Shaffer’s Equus, or Sondheim’s Passion, or Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, or Lepage’s Far Side of the Moon, or Churchill’s A Number, I could go on….that proves we are none of us alone. WHAT I'M WORKING ON: A play about forgery--artistic and otherwise. KEYWORDS: Mystery, Political, Nature, Equality, Climate, Environmental, Adaptations, Fable/folktales, Young Audiences, Science, Mythology, Farce, Gender, and Death (always). |
AuthorHonor Roll ! Members Profiles Project Archives
August 2024
Categories |
RSS Feed
