Lisa Schlesinger’s plays include the Celestial Bodies trilogy, The Bones of Danny Winston, Rock Ends Ahead, winner of the BBC International Playwriting Award, In the Wake of the Graybow Riots, and Twenty-one Positions with Naomi Wallace and Abdel Fattah AbuSrour. Her playwriting project, Endangered States of America, maps the ruins of ecosystems caused by climate change, neoliberalism and extreme capitalism, on the American landscape. Lisa is currently working on The Iphigenia Project, a multi-year trans-media collaboration with filmmaker Irina Patkanian. Begun in 2012 and adapted from Euripides’ Iphigenia plays, the project uses film, performance, theatre, and digital arts to respond to the refugee crisis and the global displacement of peoples.
She has received commissions from the Guthrie, the BBC, Upstart Crow Project, and fellowships from the NEA and CEC Artslink International among others. She is recipient of the NEA/TCG Playwrights Residency Award and winner of the BBC International Playwriting Award. She recently received an Iowa Arts Fellowship. A recipient of the NEA/TCG Playwrights Residency Award, the BBC International Playwriting Award, and a finalist for a United States Artists Fellowship, her work is produced nationally and internationally on the stage and radio. Her work is published in American Theatre Magazine, Performing Arts Journal, Theatre Communications Group, Theater, Fourth River, and the New York Times. Her plays are published with Broadway Play Publishing, and forthcoming from NoPassport and Playwrights Canada Press. She is an affiliated artist with Sleeping Weazel Inc. in Boston and an associated artists with In Parentheses in New York City. Originally from New York City, she now lives in Iowa City with her family and Django, her australian shepherd. She is Associate Professor of playwriting at the University of Iowa.
