Playwrights' Bios - Fall 2000 Reading Series

Radio plays "Wreckage," "The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch," "Cruisin'," "Love's Delightful Labors" and an adaptation of "Wolf Lullaby" were commissioned and produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

Libretti include the song cycle "Talk Show," ten-minute opera "Crumbs from the Table of Love," musical "The Wedding Song," and opera "Mrs. Satan."  She is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights' Studio, and a recipient of  the Philip Parsons Young Playwrights' Award and the Aurealis Award.

Brooke Berman (THE TRIPLE HAPPINESS) Brooke Berman is a recent winner of the Helen Merrill Award and a two-time winner of the Francesca Primus Award, first in 1998 for "Wonderland" and again in 2000 for "Playing House."  Brooke's ten minute play "Dancing with a Devil" is a co- winner of the Heideman Award at Actors Theater of Louisville and was presented as part of the 1999 Humana Festival.  "Dancing with a Devil" was nominated for an American Theater Critics Best New Play award and had its second production at City Theater in Miami, Florida.  The play is published in two anthologies.

Ms. Berman's plays have been read and workshopped at Lincoln Center, the Denver Center Theater Company, Dance Theater Workshop,  Soho Rep,  La Mama Galleria,  HERE, and the Juilliard School; and produced at the Humana Festival (ATL),  Soho Rep, HERE,  The Ohio Theater, One Dream,  New Georges, Naked Angels, Urban Empire at Playwrights Horizons, and Nada.  She is a recipient of a Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Fellowship at the Juilliard School, a Lecomte du Nouy award ( in both 1998 and 1999)  and an Independent Artist Challenge grant, the latter of which allows generative artists money to problem-solve issues in the arts community at large.   She has been a finalist for both a Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis and a Playwrighting Fellowship at Manhattan Theater Club.  She is a member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab.

Originally a solo performer, Ms. Berman wrote and performed her autobiographical monologues between 1990 -1995.   Ms. Berman trained with Anne Bogart and has studied playwriting with Marsha Norman, Christopher Durang, and Jon Robin Baitz and Maria Irene Fornes.   She currently teaches process-oriented creative writing workshops to adults and coaches solo performers.  Her short fiction and nonfiction essays have appeared on the web.  She most recently assisted Maria Irene Fornes on "Letters From Cuba" at the Signature Theater.

Ruth Margraff (RED FROGS) (Librettist/Lyricist/Playwright) Ruth Margraff's most recent work includes NIGHT VISION: A NEW THIRD TO FIRST WORLD VAMPYRE OPERA written with composer/baritone saxophonist Fred Ho.  NIGHT VISION was commissioned by two Multi-Arts Project grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, and--with production funding from the Jerome Foundation, the NEA and NYSCA--premiered at HERE Arts in February, 2000 in New York.  Ruth co-wrote ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINESE AMERICAÖA MARTIAL ARTS EPIC with Fred Ho for the JVC Jazz Festival at the John Harms Center for the Arts and the Guggenheim Museum.  ONCE will be featured in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 2001 Next Wave Festival and will tour in 2001. 

Ruth is co-founder of HERE Theater's "Opera Project" where she wrote THE CRY PITCH CARROLLS with composer/violinist Matthew which 
was featured at the 1999 Village Voice/Obie Awards.   An Austin production of THE CRY PITCH CARROLLS at Salvage Vanguard Theater was nominated for 7 Austin Critics CircleAwards and 4 nominations for the 1999 B. Iden Payne Awards including "Outstanding Musical" this year.  Ruth's other work includes THE ELEKTRA FUGUES, CENTAUR BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO, WALLPAPER PSALM, EXOTICA ORANGE, BACK OF THE DOLLAR LATIN, LOCKET ARIAS, GAT HIM TO HIS PLACE, ALL THOSE VIOLENT SWEATERS, FLAGS UNFURLED: 1976, WHEN THE PIE WAS OPEN, BLACK LUNG EXHALING, VINYL PRESSINGS etc. and have, also, been developed and produced by Joseph Papp's Public Theater, Lincoln Center Outdoors & Bang-On-A-Can Festival, HERE Arts, the Kitchen, New York Theater Workshop, Dance Theater Workshop, Hourglass Group, New Georges, Mabou Mines/Ohio Theater, Workhouse Theater, the Drama League, the Poetry Project, Gale Gates Co., La Mama Galleria, Greenwich Street, PS122, Peculiar Works Project, Dixon Place, House of Candles/Mac Wellman Festival, Grove Street Playhouse, Medicine Show, the Knitting Factory, Ohio Theater "Ice Factory", Brooklyn College, Columbia University, etc. (New York); Red Eye, the Walker Art Center (Mpls); Nuyoricans/Theater Double (Philadelphia); Undermain [1999 Dallas Raven Award nom. for "Best Musical"] (Dallas); Salvage Vanguard Theater 
[B.Iden Payne Award nom./Austin Circle of Theatres, "Top Ten Best Plays of 1997"/Austin Chronicle]; Candy Factory/NERVE Dance Co., Frontera @Hyde Park (Austin); Iowa Playwrights' Workshop (Iowa City); Bottom's Dream [L.A. Weekly "Pick of the Week"] and Audrey Skirball Kenis (Los Angeles); and the Film Studio (New Zealand). 

Her work has been published in NuMuse Anthology (Brown), Epoch (Cornell), More Monologues For Women By Women (Heineman), Salvage Vanguard Press, Patterson Literary Review, the Mac Wellman Festival Journal, Conjunctions:28 "Music Theater Portfolio" (Bard), Downtown Brooklyn (LIU), EDGE New York, Autonomedia/Big Red Media and Theater in Crisis (Smith & Kraus).  She is one of Paula Vogel's MFA playwright's workshop graduates from Brown University, a member of a playwrights' lab at the Public Theater and a NYTW Usual Suspect.  Ruth has been the recipient of an artists' residency with composer Joshua Fried and Iraqi folklorist Dr. Sa'di Al-Hadithi at the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy through the Foundazione Rockefeller to initiate DESERT SONGS in 1998 and was "artisita in visita" at La MaMa's Umbria International in Spoleto, Italy.  She has been awarded a 1995-96 Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, a 1996-97 McKnight Advancement Grant, a 1998 New York State Council for the Arts Individual Artist grant, and an NEA/TCG 2000-2001 playwriting residency at HERE Arts. 

Ruth is currently at work on her new play RED FROGS: A SLAPSTICK MIRROR FOR THE SUMMER PURGATORIO for the Common Ground Festival in Los Angeles commissioned by Bottom's Dream Theater.  And she is performing in operatic costume with choreographer Yacov Sharir and his dance company in Austin, Texas this fall.  She has taught literature, literacy, creative writing and socio-political theory at St. Joseph's College and Long Island University in Fort Green and Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  She is a member of the Iraqi Liberation Action Committee and a national member of New Dramatists and an assistant professor of Playwriting at the University of Texas at Austin.

Kira Obolensky (THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULINA) Kira Obolensky's  plays include ...MODERN NIGHTMARE, commissioned by the McCarter Theater; REALITY-BASED: PLAYS INSPIRED BY REAL-LIFE TELEVISION;  LOBSTER ALICE , recipient of the 1998 Kesselring Prize and a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize,  produced by the Jungle Theatre in Minneapolis and Playwrights' Horizons in New York;  THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULINA, which received the Honorable Mention for the Kesselring Prize and the Edith Oliver Award, produced by the Next Theater in Chicago in 1999, Frank Theatre in 2000 and a finalist for the Steinberg Award; THE WHALEBONE SONATA, commissioned by Steppenwolf Theatre; THE RETURN OF DON QUIXOTE,  commissioned and produced by Trinity Repertory Company; and HATE MAIL, written with Bill Corbett, produced by Eye of the Storm and Primary Stages. 

Kira is a graduate of Williams College and the Juilliard School's Playwriting Program. She is a core member of the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis and has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting, and is currently a Bush Fellow.   She writes about design for such publications as Graphis magazine; a recent book, "The Not So Big House," co-written with Sarah Susanka, was a best-selling book about home design.  She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, Irve Dell.