Playwright Perspectives: Kirsten Greenidge and Sarah Ruhl in Conversation
February 29, 6:30-8:30 PM
Boston Lyric Opera Headquarters @ Midway Artist Studios
15 Channel Center Street, Boston MA 02210
FREE
Space is limited – please register to confirm your seat.
REGISTER HERE
Join fellow artists, new play aficionados, and advocates of new work for a fun gathering and dynamic conversation with celebrated playwrights Kirsten Greenidge and Sarah Ruhl. Explore the twists and turns of a modern playwright’s career and discover unexpected avenues to scripting for the stage. Learn about Greenidge and Ruhl’s recent journeys writing for The Anonymous Lover and Eurydice (both presented during Boston Lyric Opera’s 2023/24 Season) and hear about the special considerations that arise when collaborating with composers—both living and long since dead. The evening will be co-moderated by playwright and Dramatists Guild Member Amy Merrill and Boston Lyric Opera’s Sara O’Brien. It will include a festive wine and cheese reception, as well as time for mingling and Q&A.
6:30-7:00 – Check-in and Reception
7:00-8:00 – Moderated Conversation
8:00-8:30 – Socializing
This event welcomes professional and amateur playwrights as well as general-interest audiences curious about the playwriting process. Capacity is limited to 50 registrants – please RSVP to secure your seat. Questions? Contact events@blo.org.
Presented by Boston Lyric Opera in partnership with The Dramatists Guild.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
SARAH RUHL is an award-winning American playwright, author, essayist, and professor. Her plays include The Oldest Boy; Dear Elizabeth; Stage Kiss; In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play (Pen American Award, Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play); Melancholy Play; Demeter in the City (nine NAACP Image Award nominations); Scenes From Court Life; How to Transcend a Happy Marriage; For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday; Eurydice; Orlando; and Late: a cowboy song. Her plays have been produced on Broadway, across the country, and internationally, and translated into 14 languages. Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her MFA from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel. She is the recipient of a Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and a Lilly Award. She is a member of 13P and New Dramatists and won the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. She teaches at Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
KIRSTEN GREENIDGE is known for such works as The Luck of the Irish, Baltimore, and the Obie Award-winning and Lucille Lortell-nominated Milk Like Sugar. A PEN/Laura Pels Playwrighting Award recipient, she is honored to have been named Playwright Laureate of Boston by Roxbury Community College and is currently a Howlround/Mellon Foundation Artist-in-Residence at Company One Theatre in Boston, where she facilitates the Volt Writer’s Lab and its Open Write Playwrighting series. She is also a Huntington Playwrighting Fellow and a New Dramatists alum. Ms. Greenidge is known for work that places hyper-realism onstage, examining the nexus of race, class, gender, and the Black American experience. Her work has been developed and produced at the Huntington, American Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, LTC3 (Lincoln Center), Yale Repertory Theatre, The Kennedy Center, and more. Works include Feeding Beatrice: A Gothic Tale; Bossa Nova; Sans-Culottes in the Promised Land; Roll, Belinda, Roll; and an episode of Boston Lyric Opera’s desert in, an episodic opera. An alum of Wesleyan University and University of Iowa, Ms. Greenidge believes strongly in the importance of community and collaboration in theatre-making, working to uplift and center the stories of those who have not traditionally seen themselves onstage. As an associate professor at Boston University, she founded and maintains the theatre program’s New Works, which includes First Pages, Springboard Reading Series, and Next Stage Workshops and Productions.