Paula Kamen

I’m an author and playwright, specializing in provocative, timely and often darkly comedic work, exploring generational feminist issues and the hidden dramas of invisible disability. (I'm also the author of the comedic memoir, All in My Head, about chronic pain, which spawned others of this genre.) My most produced and well-known work – with dozens of performances -- is my play Jane: Abortion and the Underground, which was Jeff-nominated for Best Ensemble for a 2023 Chicago production with Idle Muse. Before the pandemic, it had an off-Broadway celebrity reading at Rattlestick to benefit A is For, starring Cyntha Nixon, Kathy Naijimy, Ana Gasteyer and Monique Coleman. Most recently, it has been used in red states to raise money for abortion funds, such as with a benefit reading by PowerStories in Florida. Monologues from that play have been excerpted in several anthologies, including, most recently, Frozen Women/Flowing Thoughts, by Venus Theater Company, the longest-running regional feminist theater company. I'm on the warpath to secure an Equity production of my comedy, Dionne's House, a 2022 O'Neill finalist, about a libertine feminist philosopher obsessed with dieting and her almost-magical summer cottage in Michigan. With an unusually stellar title role for an older actress, the play's first live reading last fall was at the Voices from the Heartland New Works Festival at the Dunes Arts Foundation Summer Theatre in Michigan City, IN, --judged by Artistic Director Steve Scott, former Goodman Theatre producer. My short play, A Cure for AIDS: 1995, which explores the loss to future generations when artists and inventors perish before their time, won a special Commendation from the Jewish Plays Project a few years ago. It will be a part of the Spectrum New Plays Festival at FIrst Run Theatre in St. Louis this spring.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://www.paulakamen.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/PaulaKamenauthor/ Bluesky: @paulakamen.bsky.social Threads: @paula.kamen IG: @paula.kamen


MORE ABOUT ME
I knew I had made when two past productions of my Jane play were picketed. But a more transcendent moment with it was a recent Idle Muse production of it in Chicago, in which my play, a lowly flat Microsoft Word document, came to life on new levels with inspired sound design, state-of-the art projections, sharp directing, and superb acting. Magic created in a little black box. The reason I'm now focusing on playwrighting, for that intense collaboration with others whose talents make me seem more intelligent than I really am.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
My newest play is GoFundMe or "The Good Poor," a farce about a well-intentioned crowdfunding campaign gone awry, demonstrating the absurdity of relying on GoFundMe as our country's social-services safety net. I'm also working on co-producing a short-comedy festival on invisible disability, HystericalFest: Women+ Act Out, doing the most forbidden act of actually dramatizing one's illness (historically, a sure-fire way to be diagnosed as "hysterical").

KEYWORDS
abortion, invisible disability, feminist, Jewish, provocative, satire, black comedy