Biography

DAN O’BRIEN’s current projects include The Body of an American, a play about the haunting of war reporter Paul Watson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of a fallen US soldier in Mogadishu in 1993. This play is the recipient of the McKnight National Residency and Commission from the Playwrights’ Center, as well as a TCG Future Collaborations Grant and a Sundance Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship. In 2012, Dan’s play The Three Christs of Ypsilanti will premier at Black Dahlia Theatre in Los Angeles, directed by Michael John Garcés. Dan is currently collaborating with composer Jonathan Berger on Anaphora / Magnificat, a chamber opera set to premier in 2013 at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University, directed by Rinde Eckert and performed by New York Polyphony. His song cycle Theotokia (Hymn to the Mother God), also with Jonathan Berger, recently premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA, performed by Dawn Upshaw.

Recent productions include The Cherry Sisters Revisited (Humana Festival, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, directed by Andrew Leynse, original music by Michael Friedman), The Angel in the Trees (Production Company, Mark Armstrong), and The House in Hydesville (Geva Theatre Center, Skip Greer). Previous productions include The Dear Boy at Second Stage Theatre (Michael John Garcés), The Voyage of the Carcass off-Broadway with Tony winner Dan Fogler at SoHo Playhouse and produced by Stage 13, of which Dan O’Brien is a founding member; Moving Picture at Williamstown Theatre Festival (Darko Tresnjak), Key West at Geva Theatre Center (Skip Greer), The Voyage of the Carcass with P. 73 Productions (Alyse Rothman), Am Lit at Ensemble Studio Theatre, the short play Her First Screen Test at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Lamarck at Perishable Theatre.

Dan’s plays have been developed at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, PlayLabs, New Harmony Project, JAW Festival at Portland Center Stage, Atlantic Theater Company, Primary Stages, Roundabout Theatre Company, American Conservatory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Magic Theatre, Black Dahlia Theatre, The Play Company, Rattlestick, Lark Theatre, Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, and Manhattan Theatre Club, where he was a playwright-in-residence in 1999-2000. He has received commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Center Theatre Group, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Geva Theatre Center, Trinity Repertory Company; and residencies and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, Yaddo, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, New Harmony Project, Ucross Foundation, and the Thomas J. Watson Foundation.

Awards include the Osborn Award by the American Theatre Critics Association, the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award, the National Student Playwriting Award, and the National AIDS Award for Playwriting (Kennedy Center / ACTF). His work is published by Playscripts, Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing, and in numerous anthologies and journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation and Blackbird. Dan also writes fiction and poetry. His work has been published in 25 And Under / Fiction (Doubletake / WW Norton), and numerous literary journals and magazines including StoryQuarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Greensboro Review, 5 AM, Hanging Loose, Quarterly West, Bellevue Literary Review, Louisville Review, The Pinch, 32 Poems, Nimrod, South Carolina Review, Southern Humanities Review, Cold Mountain Review, and MARGIE.

Dan has taught playwriting at Princeton University, University of Wisconsin in Madison, SUNY Purchase, The University of the South (Sewanee), Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Brown University, Primary Stages, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and in his own private workshop in New York City. He holds a B.A. in English & Theatre from Middlebury College, and a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting & Fiction from Brown University.

Dan has served as a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, the inaugural Djerassi Fellow in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and twice as the Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-residence at Sewanee, The University of the South. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer and actor Jessica St. Clair.