Berman, Brooke

Brooke Berman is an award-winning playwright whose work has been developed and produced across the U.S and in London. Her play Hunting and Gathering will be produced Off-Broadway at Primary Stages in early 2008, directed by Leigh Silverman. Her play A Perfect Couple will be produced off-Broadway by Women’s Expressive Theater in the Summer of 2008. Past productions include: Smashing (developed at the O’Neill, premiered at the Play Company in New York City, adapted as a feature film for Natalie Portman); Until We Find Each Other (produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, developed at the O’Neill); The Triple Happiness (produced at Second Stage in New York City starring Ally Sheedy, developed at Soho Rep in NYC, the Playwrights Center in MN, The Royal Court Theatre in London, The Hourglass Group in NYC and ASK in Los Angeles)

Brooke's short play Dancing With A Devil was co-winner of the Heideman Award at Actors Theater of Louisville and presented as part of “Life Under 30” at the Humana Festival that year; the play was nominated for an American Theater Critics Best New Play award that year and published in numerous anthologies. Another short play, Defusion, has been produced in numerous festivals and included as part of Christine Jones’s “Theater for One” project at New York Theatre Workshop. Defusion has been published in an anthology of short plays edited by Craig Lucas for Backstage.

Theatre Productions: Second Stage, The Play Company, Steppenwolf, the Humana Festival, The Ohio Theater, The Round Table Ensemble, Naked Angels. Play Readings and workshops: The National Theatre in London, The Royal Court Theatre in London; The O'Neill Playwrights Conference, MCC Theater, Cleveland Playhouse, The Culture Project, Williamstown Theater Festival, Naked Angels, ARS Nova, ASK Theater Projects, Cleveland Playhouse, Rattlestick, The Hourglass Group, The Women’s Project, the Denver Center, Soho Rep, HERE, and the Juilliard School.

Brooke Berman has written commissions for Arielle Tepper and for The Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) in Minneapolis. A Perfect Couple was commissioned by Arielle Tepper and developed while in residence at the National Theatre in London. Out Of The Water was developed through a Naked Angels residency at New York Stage and Film and workshopped at Cape Cod Theater Project. Awards and Fellowships: Berilla Kerr Foundation grant, Helen Merrill Award, two Francesca Primus awards, Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Fellowship at the Juilliard School, two Lecomte du Nouy awards, an Independent Artist Challenge grant, and a commissioning grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Brooke Berman is a resident playwright at New Dramatists, where she also serves on the Board of Directors. She is a graduate of the Juilliard School and attended Barnard College as an American Studies major before leaving to work with Anne Bogart.

Originally a performer, Brooke Berman wrote and performed autobiographical monologues for over ten years, most recently at The Culture Project. Brooke is a member of the MCC Playwrights Coalition, Primary Stages’s New American Writers Group, the Dramatists Guild and PEN. She was a core member of Rising Phoenix Rep.

Brooke Berman has taught playwriting and creative writing processes in the public school system in New York City, at assorted colleges (Eugene Lang, Fordham, University of Rochester) as well as privately to adults and through the “24 With 5 Teaching Collective” which she co-created at New Dramatists. Brooke Berman spent five years as the Director of the Playwriting Unit for MCC Theater’s Youth Company, a free after-school program for NYC youth and currently mentors with the Young Storytellers Foundation in Los Angeles.