Photo: Peter Bellamy
DAN O’BRIEN’s current projects include The Body of an American, a play about the life and work of journalist 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 2009-2010 McKnight Residency and Commission from the Playwrights’ Center, where Dan is a Core Writer, as well as a TCG Future Collaborations Grant and a Sundance Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship. In 2010, Dan’s play The Three Christs of Ypsilanti will premier at Black Dahlia Theatre in Los Angeles, directed by Michael John Garcés, and The Angel in the Trees with The Production Company at Manhattan Theatre Source, directed by Mark Armstrong.
Recent productions include The Cherry Sisters Revisited (2010 Humana Festival, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, directed by Andrew Leynse, original music by Michael Friedman), and The House in Hydesville (Geva Theatre Center, directed by 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 at the Playwrights’ Center, New Harmony Project, 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 playwriting fellow-in-residence. He has received commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Geva Theatre Center, Trinity Repertory Company; and residencies and fellowships from Yaddo, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, New Harmony Project, 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, and 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 the anthology 25 And Under / Fiction (Doubletake / WW Norton), and many literary journals and magazines including StoryQuarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Greensboro Review, 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 was recently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, as well as the inaugural Djerassi Fellow in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In 2002-03, and again in 2005, he was 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.
