Kirsten Greenidge at Company One Theatre

Playwright

Kirsten Greenidge is an Obie Award winning and Lucille Lortel nominated playwright whose plays place hyper realism on stage as they examine the nexus of race, class, gender, and the black experience. Recently recognized as playwright laureate of Boston she is the author of Beacon, Our Daughters, Like Pillars, Little Row Boat; or, Conjecture, Feeding Beatrice, The Greater Good, Baltimore, Bud, Not Buddy (a concert-style adaptation of the children’s book by Christopher Paul Curtis), The Luck of the Irish, and Milk Like Sugar. Her plays have been produced at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, New Repertory Theatre, The Huntington Theatre Company, LTC3, Playwright’s Horizons, La Jolla Playhouse, Company One Theatre, among others. This summer will mark Kirsten’s third season developing work at the O’Neill, after having creating pieces for the Huntington, Milwaukee Rep, and New Rep in response to the Covid-19 global pandemic. Her one minute play Audacity, part of the Every 28 anthology of plays curated by Claudia Alick as a movement to raise awareness police brutality can be found at every28hoursplays.org. Kirsten has enjoyed development experiences at the Family Residency at the Space at Ryder Farm, the Huntington’s Summer Play Festival, Cleveland Playhouse as the 2016 Roe Green New Play Award recipient, The Goodman, Denver Center, Sundance, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, Sundance at Ucross, the Pacific Playwright’s Festival and many more. Kirsten is currently working on commissions from the Huntington (Common Ground with Melia Bensussen), La Jolla Playhouse (To the Quick), and Oregon Shakespeare American Revolutions Project (Roll, Belinda, Roll). A recent PEN/Laura Pels Playwrighting Award recipient and current Andrew W. Mellon/Howlround Fellow, she is an alum of New Dramatists, and has proudly graced the Kilroys List of New Plays by women and women identified playwrights several years running. Kirsten attended the Playwright’s Workshop at the University of Iowa and Wesleyan University and oversees the BFA playwrighting track at Boston University’s School of Theatre.

Theatre

The mission of Company One Theatre is to change the face of Boston theatre by uniting the city’s diverse communities through innovative, socially provocative performance and developing civically engaged artists.

Residency Activity

In my first three years as the Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence, I have worked on staff at Company One as resident playwright, writing and developing Greater Good, which has been a departure and a challenge in terms of structure. In addition to that, each year during my residency, I have worked with new and emerging playwrights as part of Company One’s Playlab, and this has included regular masterclass style meetings, workshops, as well as community Open-Writes, where writers who are not enrolled in Playlab are welcome to come write with me, and dramaturgy staff while they enjoy snacks and coffee. We’ve had the ability to partner with the Boston Public Library, and several Boston area eating establishments, and we hope to continue with these events in the future on a scale that is sustainable for staff (and for me, too).

I have also worked on C1’s programming committee, and worked to curate and launch Bootcamp, a series of seminars and masterclasses designed primary for playwrights and dramaturgs but open to all via Company One in the early fall. Additionally, I attend weekly department, staff, and artistic meetings, company retreats, and produce (essentially work “front of house” duties and aid in the execution of dramaturgical preshow and post show initiatives) each show during C1’s season, including my own.

The residency has included use of the micro fund, and during the last three years I have begun a research project called Femtour with my sisters, novelist and columnist Kailyn Greenidge (We Love you Charlie Freeman) and historian Kerri Greenidge (Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter), through which we seek to highlight women’s histories that have previously been unsung, myself in order to eventually write more plays, Kerri due to her interest in public history, and Kaitlyn to be able to write more fiction.

How has this residency changed the theatre, and how has this residency changed the playwright? — March 2018