Melanie Marnich

Melanie Marnich’s plays include Quake, Blur, Tallgrass Gothic, Calling All, Beautiful Again, These Shining Lives, and The Storm Coming. She has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2005. Her play, A Sleeping Country, premiered at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park as winner of the Mickey Kaplan New American Play Prize. Her play, Cradle of Man, received the 2007 Carbonell Award for Best New Work of the Year and was a finalist for the 2006 Weissberger Award. Tallgrass Gothic was recognized as “Best New Script” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2006. In 2005, her play, These Shining Lives, was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Weissberger Award. Two of her plays, Quake and Tallgrass Gothic, have premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays. Her adaptation of Katie Couric’s book, The Brand New Kid, premiered at the Kennedy Center in November 2006. Her awards include, two McKnight Advancement Grants and two Jerome Fellowships from The Playwrights’ Center, the Samuel Goldwyn Award, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award and the Melvoin Award from Northlight Theatre (Chicago). Her plays have been produced or developed at New York’s Public Theater, London’s Royal Court Theatre, Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Portland Center Stage, The Actors Studio, Geva Theatre, Hyde Park Theatre, American Theater Company, HERE and Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Commissions include, the Kennedy Center, Guthrie Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage and South Coast Repertory. She is a Core Member of The Playwrights’ Center and a writer on the Showtime series, The Big C.