Marcus Gardley at Victory Gardens Theatre
Playwright
Marcus Gardley is a Bay Area-born playwright who is the recent recipient of the 2014 Glickman Award for The House That Will Not Stand. It was commissioned and produced by Berkeley Rep and had subsequent productions at Yale Rep and the Tricycle Theater in London and was a finalist for the 2015 Kennedy Prize. Gardley was the 2013 USA James Baldwin Fellow and the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. The New Yorker describes Gardley as “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello, and Tennessee Williams.” He is an ensemble member playwright at Victory Gardens Theater where his play The Gospel of Loving Kindness was produced in March and won the 2014 BTAA award for best play/playwright. His play Every Tongue Confess, starring Phylicia Rashad and directed by Kenny Leon, was nominated for the Steinberg New Play Award, the Charles MacArthur Award for Best Play, and was the recipient of the Edgerton New Play Award. His musical, On The Levee, premiered at Lincoln Center and was nominated for eleven Audelco Awards including outstanding playwright. His critically acclaimed epic And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi was produced at the Cutting Ball Theater and received the SF Bay Area Theater Critics circle Award nomination for outstanding new play and had two sold-out extensions, while his Black Odyssey premiered at the Denver Center Theatre and opened to rave reviews. In 2014, his saga The Road Weeps, the Well Runs Dry had a national tour and was a finalist for the 2014 Kennedy Prize. His plays This World in a Woman’s Hands (October 2009) and Love is a Dream House in Lorin (March 2007) have been hailed as the best in Bay Area Theater. The latter was nominated for the National Critics Steinberg New Play Award. He has had six other plays produced including: dance of the holy ghosts at Center Stage in Baltimore and the Yale Repertory Theatre, (L)imitations of Life at the Empty Space in Seattle, WA, like sun fallin’ in the mouth at the National Black Theatre Festival. He is the recipient of the 2013 Mellon Playwright Residency, 2011 Aetna New Voice Fellowship at Hartford Stage, the Hellen Merrill Award, a Kellsering Honor, a Gerbode Emerging Playwright Award, a National Alliance for Musical Theatre Award, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Grant, a NEA/TCG Playwriting Participant Residency, the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Scholarship, and an ASCAP Cole Porter Prize. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale Drama School and is a member of New Dramatists, The Dramatists Guild, and the Lark Play Development Center. Gardley lives in Chicago, IL.
Theatre
Under the leadership of Artistic Director Chay Yew, Victory Gardens is dedicated to artistic excellence while creating a vital, contemporary American Theater that is accessible and relevant to all people through quality productions of challenging new plays and musicals.
Victory Gardens Theater is a leader in developing and producing new theatre work and cultivating an inclusive theater community. Victory Gardens’ core strengths are nurturing and producing dynamic and inspiring new plays, reflecting the diversity of our city’s and nation’s culture through engaging diverse communities, and in partnership with Chicago Public Schools, bringing art and culture to our city’s active student population.
Press
The Singular Voice of Two Collaborators by Nakisha Etemad, SDC Journal, Spring 2016.
