Mashuq Mushtaq Deen

Alumni Playwright

2015 -- 2022

aesthetic
Rumi has a poem that goes: "The way of love is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation. Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they're given wings." ... I am particularly interested in the heroic journeys of the heart.

biography
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Draw the Circle (productions: PlayMakers Rep, Mosaic Theatre, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre; published: Dramatists Play Service). His other full-length plays include Flood, The Betterment Society, The Shaking Earth, and Tank & Horse (world premiere at the Berkshire Fringe Festival).

Deen’s work has been presented/developed/supported by a number of institutions including New Dramatists, Sundance Theatre Institute & the Ucross Fundation, Blue Mountain Center, The Public Theater, NYTW, MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, NYU, La Jolla Playhouse, New Harmony Project, Chesley/Bumbalo Foundation, Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, SPACE at Ryder Farm, New York Foundation for the Arts, InterAct Theatre, Page73, Ma-Yi, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Georgetown University, BEAT Festival, PACE University, Hampshire College, Averett University, Dixon Place, Passage Theatre, Queens Theatre in the Park, Tofte Lake Center, and the Berkshire Fringe Festival.

Awards and nominations include: Lambda Literary Award for Drama (2019), James Baldwin Award, Dennis Johnston Playwriting Prize honorable mention, and a nomination for the Weissberger Award. His has been listed on Steppenwolf's Mix List, the Kilroy’s List (Honorable Mention 2017), a finalist for the Jerome New York Fellowship (twice), semifinalist for the O'Neill Conference (twice), and finalist for the Playwrights Center Core Writers.

He is a member of the NYTW Usual Suspects, Ma-Yi Writers Lab, founder of the Public Theater Alumni Writers Group, and the Dramatists Guild. He earned his MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School/New School for Drama. He is represented by the Gurman Agency LLC and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. In his spare time, Deen is also a participating citizen (#flarebkny) and a man of many hobbies, including bread-baker, soap-maker, and student of the guitar.

ND Activity

Board of Directors
Board of Directors
Each fiscal year four current resident playwrights are appointed to the Board of Directors by the Writers' Executive Committee. The playwright board members enjoy full voting and decision-making powers minus the financial requirements of non-playwright directors. They provide a valuable and artist-centered perspective on the governance of New Dramatists.
Composer-Librettist Studio
Composer-Librettist Studio
Our annual Composer-Librettist Studio focuses simultaneously on music-theatre development and the principles of collaboration, teaming five writers with five composers and five performers to develop brand-new works of musical theatre. At the end of the Studio, each playwright has worked with each composer and 25 new music-theatre pieces have been created by the group.
Creativity Fund
Creativity Fund
The Creativity Fund blends the flexibility of a one-day play reading with the intensive focus of a two-week workshop, providing ten to fifteen playwrights per year the opportunity to program three to five day workshops on an ad hoc basis. Creativity Fund workshops are structured according to each writer's needs at any stage of development and are funded through a lead grant from the Andew W. Mellon Foundation.
Pen & Swill
Pen & Swill
Pen & Swill is a catch-all phrase for events designed to stimulate discussion among the resident playwright company on artistic and professional issues. Some are private-just for resident writers-most are open to the public, and they almost always include drinks and snacks.
Writers' Executive Committee
Writers' Executive Committee
The Writers' Executive Committee is a voluntary grouping of resident playwrights who meet throughout the year to discuss and make decisions concerning the work of New Dramatists and to help guide the organization.