Kristen Greenidge

Kirsten Greenidge is the Village Voice/Obie award-winning author of MILK LIKE SUGAR and THE LUCK OF THE IRISH. Additional plays include: SPLENDOR, 103 WITHIN THE VEIL, RUST, PROCLIVITIES, THANKSGIVING, SANS-CULOTTES IN THE PROMISED LAND, and FAMILIAR. Using a pronounced, hyper-realistic style and detailed attention to poetic language, Greenidge’s plays examine the intersections of race, gender, and class. She is a PEN America/Laura Pels Award for mid-career playwright recipient, and she has been nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award, a Audelco Award, and three IRNE awards (she has received IRNEs twice). She is also a former NEA resident playwright at Woolly Mammoth; a two-time TCG/Edgerton New American Play Award recipient; a Sundance/Time Warner Award recipient; a Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival Mark David Cohen Award and a Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival Lorraine Hansberry Award winner.

Her plays have enjoyed productions and development experiences at the Kenyon Playwrights Conference, Huntington Theatre Company, Company One Theatre, The Flea, LCT3, Playwrights Horizons, Women’s Theatre Project, La Jolla Playhouse, Theatre Masters, Denver Center Performing Arts Theatre Company, San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, Sundance (Utah and Ucross), South Coast Rep, Madison Rep, National New Play Network, New Dramatists, Mark Taper Forum, the Guthrie, P. 73, Mixed Blood, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, A.S.K., and The O’Neill.

Greenidge is an alumnus member of New Dramatists and a current member of the Boston writer’s group Rhombus. She is working with several theatres on commissioned projects including a concert adaptation of Christopher Paul Curtis’ children’s novel BUD, NOT BUDDY for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; an American Revolutions Commission for Oregon Shakespeare Festival; TONGUE TIED TIGHT, AND DELIVERED for LCT3; TO THE QUICK, for La Jolla Playhouse; BALTIMORE, an original play for the University of Iowa’s Big Ten Commission; and, THE VIEW FROM HERE, written for the Huntington Theatre Company’s Education Department’s anti-bullying initiative. Kirsten began writing at a very early age but did not take her first playwriting classes until she attended Wesleyan University and trained with playwright, poet, and screenwriter, Darrah Cloud, after which she went on to the playwright’s workshop at the University of Iowa. There she was fortunate to work with Erik Ehn, Naomi Iizuka, Sydne Mahone, and Dare Clubb, among others. It was also at Iowa where she experienced the freedom and exhilaration of a playwright’s workshop—a creative space where writers are encouraged to take risks and hear their work read aloud again and again and where writers are taught to be constructive listeners to and supporters of each other’s work. These are principles that guide Kirsten’s playwriting classes at the SOT. As playwriting teacher and mentor at the School of Theatre, Kirsten’s work involves making sure any student who wants to write dramatically has as many tools that student needs to be able to do so well and with agility.