emily fitzgerald

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Emily Fitzgerald fled across the Red River to attend college at Trinity University (BA, 1995) which she followed, after three years bumming around Austin, with a graduate study in dramatic literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (MA, 2000). After six years teaching Drama and English at the high school level, she began participation in San Antonio community theatre as a director with “Theater ASAP” by the San Antonio Theater Coalition. In 2014 she penned her first original play, Someone Got Shocked, a collection of three short plays which she directed at the Overtime Theatre in 2015; it was later admitted into the Midtown International Theatre Festival. 2016 saw her direct the production of her first full-length play, Creatures of the Night, which won her an Alamo Theatre Arts Council Globe Award for Best Original Script. She has subsequently written full-length plays ranging from noir mysteries, to supernatural fiction, to fairy tales, to farces. She has written an audience-voting play with multiple story lines and adapted Twelfth Night. Her first play of 2020 was a one-act, Evil Scientists Love a Parade: Malevolent Monthly. Some of her other titles include HEX (2017), No Rescue Required (2018); And Then There Were Some (2019); and Drink Kale Love: A Farce about Theatre, Love, and Cruciferous Vegetables (2020). Her plays are comedic, even those more apt to be called dramas, and all deal in the families and communities we make rather than those we are born into. Mid 2021 sees her having written one full-length play, Battle Cry, a sequel to No Rescue Required; a handbook/memoir on directing; and a novella based in the world she first explored in Creatures of the Night. She lives in San Antonio with her husband and their two Yorkie daughters Maizie and Roo. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA:
Facebook: Emily Fitzgerald
Twitter: @EmilyFitz0607
Instagram: emily.fitzgerald

MORE ABOUT ME:
The production of my first original full-length play, Creatures of the Night, opened in February 2016 and I was directing. Creatures is a noir mystery based on P.I. Annabelle Valentine, the violent loss of her partner and closest friend, and her confrontation with the criminal mastermind responsible for his death, the oddly named Natal Chaumbruss. Part of the play is set at “Joe’s,” a diner, where the kindly, older, cardigan-sweatered Joe is confidante and friend to all his customers. Unlike any other play of mine, this one produced constant audience reactions at every performance. The laughing, gasps, repeated lines, hoots, and commentary were so genuine, so participatory, that they became part of the show rather than a distraction from it. We introduced the idea of Chaumbruss right before intermission and he became THE topic. Arguments abounded about who he, or she, was, which character was secretly the Big Bad. Everyone had an opinion. My most gratifying moment in the theater came when Chaumbruss was revealed to be a suddenly British accented, nattily dressed Joe. I heard a woman in the audience slap her male companion and scream, “I told you it was him!” I was backstage, with the cast, and while they laughed not so quietly, I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I took my bow. I had many gratifying moments associated with that play – a local award, critical acclaim, audience comments to me, a loving cast - but that moment captured it all. An unknown woman was that invested in something I made. I’ve made other audiences laugh, I’ve shocked them, I’ve provoked them, but that woman’s reaction to Natal Chaumbruss’ identity was the best compliment I’ve ever gotten. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON:
A sci-fi play. It's one genre I haven't managed to write in yet. 

KEYWORDS:
​Women, Disabled, Trans/NB, Queer, Inclusive, Comedy, Farce, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Adaptations, Fairy-tales, Alt. structures, Supernatural, Family, Community.