Victoria Z. Daly

(Updated 6/13/22) VICTORIA Z. DALY is an Emmy Award-winner whose plays include Doppelgänger, Sam, Demeter and Polly, Shell Collection, Invisible, Far North, On the Cross Bronx, Circling the Globe, Raw, Final Rest, High Water Line, Bottom of the Order and What to Do About It (#AfterTheBans.) They have been developed/produced at venues including the Actors Studio, Valdez Theatre Conference, ATHE Conference, Short+Sweet Festivals (Hollywood, Dubai, Perth,) Vspyshka Theatre (Russia, ) SupersoundScotland Radio, Alliance for Jewish Theatre, Berrie Center, KPBX-FM (NPR,) and the Edinburgh Festival. Recent awards: Regional Emmy (producer/story editor,) 3 Seconds in October: The Shooting of Andy Lopez (PBS); “9 Most Memorable Plays of Last 9 Years,” Warner International Playwrights Festival, Connecticut (Final Rest); Neem Award, Russia (High Water Line); Winner, Impossible Fest, Chicago (High Water Line); Best Play, Short+Sweet Dubai (On the Cross Bronx); Winner, Grand Theatre Playwriting Competition, Georgia (Final Rest.) She is a Faculty Member in the Plays in Progress program at the Dramatists Guild Institute, where she works with members to develop their new plays, and also consults privately. Raw and Other Short Plays, a collection of 7 of her plays, is published by Next Stage Press. Other plays and monologues are published by Applause Books, including in HR!’s two She Persisted anthologies; The New Short Play Festival (Amazon); Valdez Theatre Conference; MonologueBank; and some scripts. Vicki is Founder/Director of the 9th Floor writers/actors collaborative, NYC. She has taught playwriting for Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwrights; the Fly Arts Center; Litchfield Performing Arts; Playmaking; and The Write Stuff!. As a television producer/script consultant/executive, she worked for Lifetime Cable, Warner Brothers, and ABC. National journalism: Glamour, Health, Portfolio, etc. Education: MFA, Dramatic Writing, NYU; Certificat, Theatre, L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq; A.B, and M.B.A, Harvard. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://victoriazdaly.com
FB: Victoria Z. Daly
TW: @vzdaly
IG: @vzdaly

MORE ABOUT ME
What was your most gratifying moment in the theater? It's an ongoing "is" rather than a "was." 1) Any moment in rehearsal or production in which I thrill to understand that the director/actors/designers have not only understood the intention of my play but have made it better/funnier/more heartfelt/more theatrical than I'd envisioned. I have immense gratitude for incredible collaborators. 2) Any moment in which an audience member tells me how much my play has gone straight to their heart, or how much it resonated afterwards. Aren't 1) and 2) why we do this: to connect with other humans? What play or production changed your life? The month I turned 16, I saw Marcel Marceau perform in Paris. A friendless high-schooler, I had seen many Broadway musicals but was in no way a theater geek. As I sat in the audience at that performance, however, an unexpected thought came: “I want to return here and study with him.” 5 1/2 years later, I moved to Paris to study physical theater -- not with Marceau but with Jacques Lecoq. Instead of whiteface mime as most people think of it, Lecoq’s conception of "mime" turned out to be a larger idea of the infinite possibility of theater itself. He instructed us to create our own, new forms. The drive and directness, bigness, physicality, theatricality, playfulness; the unlimited nature of what theater can be that I learned at Lecoq’s still color what I write now. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t sat in Marceau’s audience so many years ago and, to my surprise, thought, “I want to go there and do that."

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A full-length play, Shell Collection, about three sisters who have two days to divide up their late mother's possessions, sell her Florida condo and spread her ashes over the Gulf of Mexico. The process doesn't go well, especially because the dead mother keeps showing up to tell one of the sisters that she does NOT want to be buried at the beach. A play about the persistence of family roles long into adulthood; grief; and whether it really pays to hold on to the family silver.

KEYWORDS
Magical Realism, Character-Driven, Comedy, Dramedy, Theatricality, Absurdity, Physical Theater, Climate, Political, Impossible Plays, Satire, Women, Family Dysfunction, Abuse