Dan O'Brien Video | Interviews

Dan O’Brien is an American playwright and poet whose work includes the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama-winning play The Body of an American, which premiered at Portland Center Stage in 2012 directed by Bill Rauch. The award is shared with Robert Schenkkan's "All the Way." "The Body of an American" is also winner of the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, administered by Williamstown   MORE

Dan O’Brien is an American playwright and poet whose work includes the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama-winning play The Body of an American, which premiered at Portland Center Stage in 2012 directed by Bill Rauch. The award is shared with Robert Schenkkan's "All the Way." "The Body of an American" is also winner of the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, administered by Williamstown Theatre Festival. A new opera with composer Jonathan Berger, Visitations, premiered at the Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University in April 2013, directed by Rinde Eckert. A poetry collection entitled War Reporter is forthcoming in 2013 from Hanging Loose Press in Brooklyn and London's CB Editions, edited by Charles Boyle. O'Brien's other plays include The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, The Cherry Sisters Revisited, The Voyage of the Carcass, The Dear Boy, The House in Hydesville, Moving Picture, Key West, "Will You Please Shut Up?", and The Disappearance of Daniel Hand. His work has been produced by Second Stage Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Geva Theatre Center, Page 73 Productions, The Production Company, SoHo Playhouse, and elsewhere. He has served as a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, the Djerassi Fellow in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and as the Tennessee Williams Fellow in Playwriting at The University of the South. He has frequently served on the playwriting faculty at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. His work has been developed at the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, The New Harmony Project, and elsewhere. A song cycle entitled Theotokia, with music by Jonathan Berger and text by Dan O'Brien, premiered at the 2010 Spoleto Festival USA, performed by Dawn Upshaw. LESS