Linda Manning
(Updated 12/12/2025) Linda is an award winning playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In 2025 she wrote, directed, and starred in a short film, “Deborah at Work”. Her solo show “Perfect Love” directed by Obie, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award winner Gretchen Cryer completed a run at the Cherry Lane Theatre in NYC in 2022. Also in 2022, she directed her play “Bite the Apple” (2019 Finalist for the Kentucky Women Writers Prize) which was produced in NYC with the assistance of a generous grant from Café Royal Cultural Foundation. She has written five full length plays: "Bite the Apple”; "There Is No You and Me" (Finalist - New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest – 2017); "GUY" (semi-finalist for the O'Neill National Playwriting Conference 2007); "DO SOMETHING WITH YOURSELF! The Life of Charlotte Brontë" produced by The Invisible Theatre, NYC and published by Smith and Kraus; and an adaptation of "The Fall of the House of Usher" produced by The Invisible Theatre, NYC. She has written three full length screenplays: "Learning to Drive" (GRAND PRIZE -- 2013 StoryPros Awards Screenplay Contest), "Charlotte" (WINNER – Best Feature Screenplay - 2021 City of Angels Women’s Film Festival, second round of competition for the 2016 Sundance Screenwriters Lab), and "Divine Food". She has also written a series pilot, “Linda’s Jazz Nights” (Quarter-Finalist – Atlanta Film Festival 2021). Linda has performed in theater productions regionally and in New York (The Flea, Rattlestick Theater, Dixon Place, United Solo, NY Intl. Fringe), and she has had featured roles on television and in numerous independent feature films. Linda has worked as a teaching artist for Bronx Council on the Arts, Red Bull Theatre, Hour Children, Horace Mann School, and in NYC public schools. Linda has a Masters Degree from Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island, and a Bachelors from the University of Colorado.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.lindasmanning.com/
IG: @lindasmanning
MORE ABOUT ME
One of my most gratifying moments in the theater happened this year when I had the opportunity to play the beautifully complex role of Janice in "Italian American Reconciliation" directed by Austin Pendleton. It was an extraordinary time.
WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A new play about generational trauma. It tells the story of three generations of disconnected, uprooted women living out their daily lives, attempting to create a sense of home and belonging, but blind to the ways they are inflicting their internal battles on each other. When a stranger enters their world, the youngest character’s eyes are opened up to the possibility of another life outside the only home she has known. She must decide whether it is worth the risk to find out if there is something more out there.
KEYWORDS
love, legacy, drama, romance, motherhood, feminism, woman over 50, family trauma, sexuality, the shadow self
