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Naomi Iizuka

Naomi lizuka’s plays include 36 VIEWS, POLAROID STORIES, ANON(YMOUS), LANGUAGE OF ANGELS, ALOHA, SAY THE PRETTY GIRLS, TATTOO GIRL, SKIN, AT THE VANISHING POINT, CONCERNING STRANGE DEVICES FROM THE DISTANT WEST, 17 REASONS WHY, GHOSTWRITTEN, HAMLET: BLOOD IN THE BRAIN (a collaboration with CalShakes and Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts), 3 TRUTHS (a collaboration with Cornerstone Theater Company), and WAR OF THE WORLDS (a collaboration with Anne Bogart and SITI Company.) Her plays have been produced by Berkeley Rep, the Goodman, the Guthrie, Cornerstone, Intiman, Children’s Theater Company, the Kennedy Center, the Huntington Theater, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, GeVa, Portland Center Stage, the Public Theatre, Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts, Dallas Theatre Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s “Next Wave Festival,” and Soho Rep. Her plays were included in Arena Stage’s OUR WAR project and Baltimore Center Stage’s MY AMERICA project.  Iizuka’s plays have been published by Overlook Press, Playscripts, Smith and Kraus, Dramatic Publishing, Sun and Moon Press, and TCG. 

lizuka is an alumna of New Dramatists and the recipient of a PEN/Laura Pels Award, an Alpert Award, a Joyce Foundation Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Stavis Award from the National Theatre Conference, a Rockefeller Foundation MAP grant, an NEA/TCG ArtistinResidence grant, a McKnight Fellowship, a PEN Center USA West Award for Drama, Princeton University’s Hodder Fellowship, and a Jerome Fellowship.  Her play GOOD KIDS is the first play commissioned by the Big Ten Consortium’s New Play Initiative designed to provide more roles for women.  GOOD KIDS deals with sexual assault on campus and is being produced by the Big Ten schools.  Iizuka currently heads the MFA Playwriting program at the University of California, San Diego.

Where Possibility Abounds
Essay

Where Possibility Abounds

a 20th Anniversary Conversation with the 1995 Cohort of Jerome Fellows

3 November 2015

Jeremy Cohen interviews a group of playwrights about their time at the Playwright's Center.