ruth zamoyta

Ruth Zamoyta’s first play, "The Caregivers", won a NJ State Arts Council Fellowship in 2018, was semi-finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF) in 2018, and was given special consideration for the American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award. Encouraged, she wrote another play, The Fencers, which was a semi-finalist for BAPF in 2019, had a reading at Art House Productions in Jersey City, NJ, and will have a reading at Urban Stages, NYC, in 2021/22. In 2018 Ruth was selected to participate in the INKubator program at Art House, where she wrote The Incels, which was further developed through a residency at NJ Play Lab. Urban Stages presented a live reading of The Incels in January 2020 and a Zoom production in September 2020. It was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2021. Ruth’s 10-minute comedy “Eleanor Roosevelt’s Pudding” was part of the Heroes and Villains project at Urban Stages which won a Telly Award in 2021. Her short plays “Phil Rizzuto Gives Parenting Advice,” “Baby’s First Madness,” and “Sorry Creature” were produced at theatres in NJ and NYC. Ruth is developing a miniseries about Helene Mayer, a Jewish woman who fenced for Hitler in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in addition to working on four new full-length plays. Ruth is author of the poetry collection ‘Otsu’ and Other Poems, and an e-novel, clarissa@loveless.com. She is co-editor of and contributor to two poetry anthologies, Blanket Stories and Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems. Ruth holds a BA in English summa cum laude from St. John’s University, an MA in English from NYU, and an MS in Strategic Communications from Columbia University. She is a member of the International Centre for Women Playwrights, the Dramatists Guild, and Honor Roll!. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: www.ruthzamoyta.com
Facebook: ruth.zamoyta
Twitter: @ruthzamoyta
Instagram: @ruthzamoyta

MORE ABOUT ME
My mantra: "Plays are about people, not issues." What I want artistic directors to know about me: Writing is fun. I do it all the time. I write a lot and I write fast. I write everything from tragedy to drama to comedy to farce to horror to the absurd. What I love about theatrical writing is collaboration. I love people and their imaginations, so love to hear what they think and feel, and invite them to become part of the process. I listen to feedback and make effective edits. Other artistic directors will vouch for that. The comment I have heard from actors most frequently after readings is: "Wow! Really strong character!" Mostly I write stories about strong women who make unconventional decisions, with the exception of "The Incels," which has women in it but they are muted--yet still very important to the story. I honor, patronize, and support theatres that take chances on new writers, recognize the gender inequity in theatre, and are trying to reverse it.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am developing a miniseries about Helene Mayer, a Jewish woman who fenced for Hitler in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in addition to working on four full-length plays: "The Suspects: A Sustainability Murder Mystery," "The Mischief Maker," "The Widow," and "The Heiress and the Dancer."

KEYWORDS
incels, misogyny, loneliness, isolation, sports, woman athlete, female athletes, Olympics, holocaust, nazi, hitler, mercy killing, eleanor roosevelt, sustainability, environmental, farce, murder, mystery, screenplay, telly
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