Lisa Loomer

Lisa Loomer’s play, Two Things You Don't Talk About at Dinner, is having its world premiere at The Denver Center this winter. Another new play, Café Vida, will open The Cornerstone Theater’s new cycle of plays on hunger in Los Angeles this spring. Her play, Distracted, had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum and was subsequently produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The play was produced in Spring 2009 at the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York in a production starring Cynthia Nixon, and has subsequently been produced in theatres throughout the U.S. Living Out had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum and was produced at Second Stage in New York in 2003. It has been produced at such theaters as Seattle Rep, Milwaukee Rep, The Denver Center, and Theaterworks, often in bi-lingual productions, as well as in Israel, Europe, and Mexico. Her play The Waiting Room went from Williamstown Theater Festival to the Mark Taper Forum to highly successful productions at Arena Stage and Trinity Rep, and then on to the Vineyard Theatre in New York. It has been produced nationally and in Europe and Egypt. Her play Expecting Isabel had its world premiere at Arena Stage and its west coast premiere at the Taper. Bocon!, a political fable for young audiences, began at the Taper and has been seen throughout the country, from the Kennedy Center, to Seattle’s Group Theater, Stage Left in Chicago and the La Jolla Playhouse, as well as in Germany, Alaska, and Mexico. For the Cornerstone Theatre Company, she wrote Broken Hearts, produced at the Los Angeles Theater Center. Ms. Loomer’s first work for theater was a collaboration entitled A Crowd of Two at the American Place Theatre. This was followed by a one-woman show, All By Herselves, at the Westside Arts. She began writing plays at the Intar Playwrights Lab, under the direction of Maria Irene Fornes. Her first play, Birds, was produced by South Coast Rep. Subsequent works include Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria!; Accelerando; Looking for Angels; Cuts and Chain of Life, which have been produced at such theaters as The Public Theatre, Intar, and Mixed Blood.

Ms. Loomer is an alumna of New Dramatists and the recipient of two grants from the NEA and a grant from the NYFA. Awards include the Jane Chambers Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, a Garland Award, a Lurie Foundation Award, and the American Theatre Critics Association Award (twice). She was twice nominated for a Pulitzer, and has also received an Imagen Award for positive portrayals of Latinos in all media. Her plays appear in The Best Plays of 1998-1999, The Best Plays of 1994-1995, and The Best Plays of 2003-04, and are published by Dramatists Play Service, TCG, Dramatic Publishing and Arte Publico Press. The Waiting Room and Liiving Out are taught in university drama programs, Women’s Studies programs, and Latino Studies programs.

As a screenwriter, her credits include Girl, Interrupted and numerous pilots and episodes for television.