melissa bell

Melissa Bell is a published and produced playwright whose work explores women’s agency as they navigate their power and repression. Awards: LADY CAPULET, Nominated Best Adaptation & Modernization in 2020 & 2021 by New York Shakespeare and Henley Rose Playwright Competition Finalist 2017, premiered by Barefoot Shakespeare Company in Central Park in 2019, and has been performed live or virtually at Turn to Flesh (NY), Advice to the Players (NH) Bernie Wohl Center (NYC), Farm Arts Collective (PA), Norwalk Library (CT) CreateTheater (virtual space), Bedford Playhouse, and the Little Shakespeare Festival and featured in Smith & Krause’s Best Men’s Monologues of 2020. Honored Finalist, Collaboration Award, 2019 by Women in Arts & Media Coalition for COURAGE based on Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children produced by NACL Theatre, immersive site-specific journey, featuring Debra Winger, performed on Governor’s Island, NYC, and Apple Pond Farm in the Catskills. Librettist for FINDING MADAME CURIE, musical with composer David Kurkowski. Associate Playwright/ensemble member of Farm Arts Collective based in Damascus, PA, whose decalogue of original eco-plays DREAM ON THE FARM was featured in the New York Times Arts Section in 2021. ZOE COMES HOME premiered at the Tusten Theatre in Narrowsburg, NY, in 2022, revived by popular demand in 2023, and produced in NYC by 29th Street Playwrights Collective, where I am a Resident Playwright. OFF BROADWAY: DEVIL & THE DEEP, music by Graham Russell of Air Supply, produced by Theatre East. LOST IN LOVE, the Air Supply Musical, one-night-only event produced by Triad Theatre benefiting the Actors Fund, featured 2x Tony nominated actor Constantine Maroulis and Tony winning actress Andrea McArdle. GAME BOY, produced by TRU, featuring Tony Awardee Cady Huffman, for TRUSPEAK. ICEBOX PLACENTA/PLAYGROUND PLACENTA, featured in Smith & Krause’s Best Women’s Monologues of 2019, Short Plays on Reproductive Freedom. Columbia University BA.

WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://www.themelissabell.com/
IG: @themelissabell
TW: @melissabell_wtr
FB: melissa.bell.142240

MORE ABOUT ME
I don't know why I keep doing theater! It's just that every time I feel like stopping, I remind myself that no one will care whether I stop or not -- except for me. Then something fun and wonderful comes along and I'm in production or arranging a reading or writing songs or a book for a new play or musical. Or I find a submission that is just right for one of my plays and they produce it. Or I stop in the coffee shop and the local arts alliance event director asks me if I have anything new. I say No, but then say, oh wait, I have something that might just relate to your audience. Honestly, I love being an artist and I've been one my entire life. If I'm not writing a play, I'm writing a press release or updating the graphics for my website or the 29th Street Playwrights Collective website, of which I am a founding member and the General Manager. I went to college late in life and I began work as a content creator with an agency creating PowerPoint marketing and corporate decks for Big Pharma. Before that I was a singer, recording dance music, and before that I had a rock band right out of high school. I'm a performer and theatre maker at heart who loves having a band of people around to create with.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
TAYLOR'S INFERNO: A Juke-box musical featuring the music of a popular 80's rock band, based on Dante's Inferno. The next installment of DREAM ON THE FARM and the Book to FINDING MADAME CURIE. I am working on a novel version of LADY CAPULET, as well as a version for episodic TV.

Keywords
​period, woman-centered, Immersive/site-specific, reimagining classical themes, heightened speech, dark comedy, depression/anxiety/mental health, Shakespeare adaptation, Shakespearean women, historic women, Madame Curie, Emma Goldman, Climate change, eco-plays, librettist, lyricist, songwriter.