mary lynn owen

Mary Lynn is an Atlanta writer, actor, and educator. Her play, KNEAD, a solo play in which she also performed, baking four loaves of bread onstage every night, received its world premiere at The Alliance Theater in 2018. Her play, LADY PARTS, selected for the Working Title Playwrights First Light Series, was also featured in Theatrical Outfit’s 2020 Unexpected Play Festival. Recently, her play, TESTING, was selected for the 2021 Threshold Festival at Actor's Express. She is the recipient of the 2019 Gene Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, The Alliance Theatre’s 2017 Reiser Lab Award, and has twice been named a semi-finalist for the O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference. Commissions include the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Atlanta’s MoJo Festival, and a 2020 Development Grant through Synchronicity Theater and the MAP Fund. Mary Lynn is a member of The Dramatist's Guild, Working Title Playwrights, Actor's Equity Association, and SAG-Aftra. She has studied playwriting with Marsha Norman and Joseph Skibell. Her writing residencies include Cottages at Hedgebrook in Langley, WA, and The Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, GA. A dedicated teacher, Mary Lynn teaches Introduction to Acting, Teaching as Performance, and Un Taller para Actores en Español at Emory University Department of Theater and Dance. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://marylynnowen.com
FB: Mary Lynn Owen
IG:@marylynnowen

MORE ABOUT ME
My favorite thing to do when I'm not writing is to dig in the dirt. To settle a new seedling into a pot. To trim the dead branches from the St. John's Wort. To try - once again - to grow flowers from seed. To water my tomatoes. To rake the pine straw from the beds. To curse the damn pine trees - the beautiful Alabama Long Needle Pines - that every year block out more of the sun. To break another dish - or two or five - to make my borders. To fertilize. To show off my Dahlias to my neighbor. To pour a glass of wine in the late afternoon, and to clip and mulch and weed and tend - and sip - until it's dusk. To finish the wine, and wind up the garden hose, and call it a day. And to run out in the morning first thing, with coffee, to do a little inspection, but mostly to sit. And to listen to the birds. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I'm working on the latest draft of my most recent play, TESTING. TESTING is the story of a Mother, Grandfather, and two adult children in the year after Father’s death as Mother announces that she is throwing in the care-taking towel. In a room strewn with the detritus of their lives, their bonds with each other are tested as this interracial family confronts themselves and each other and decides what to keep and what to throw away. 

KEYWORDS
​women; older women; mothers; sex; visibility; farce/tragedy; blended families