JANET
NEIPRIS
Janet Neipris’s plays have been produced at major theatres in the U.S. and internationally, including the National Theatre, London, Manhattan Theatre Club, New York, The Women’s Project, Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Arena Stage, D.C., Studio Theatre, D.C., Center Stage, Baltimore, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Milwaukee Rep., the Annenberg Center, Philadelphia, and The China Youth Arts Theatre, Beijing.
Her awards include two NEAs in playwriting, two Rockefeller Grants to Bellagio, 1990, for A Small Delegation, about Americans in China the year before Tiananmen Square, and in 2004, A Question of Country, based on a true story about the friendship between a black woman and a white woman during apartheid and the impossibility of it post-apartheid. Other awards include a USIA Grant, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, 1995-2000, O’Neill Center Playwright in Residence, 2002. In 2004 she received a New York University Faculty Research Grant to visit South Africa to research a new play, and in 2008, a New York University Presidential Fellowship for her play about South Africa. Her first agent was the fierce HelenMerrill. The second was the marvelous Lois Berman.
She is the author of Statues, Exhibition, The Bridge at Belharbour, Brussels Sprouts, Sunday at Five on the Cote D’Azur, Acts of Love, Out of Order, 703 Walk Hill, Almost In Vegas, Natives, Look Ma We’re Dancing, After Marseilles, The Agreement, A Small Delegation (original music by Tan Dun, set design by Ming Cho Lee), and A Question of Country. She has also written for film, BBC, and the NPR’s Earplay Series. A composer, she wrote the score and co-authored the book and lyrics for the children’s musical Jeremy and the Thinking Machine, which was produced by the National Theatre, London. She also composed an original score for Death of A Salesman, at the Sharon, Ct. Playhouse, music for Paul Celan’s Black Milk of Morning, Notes on a Life, music and lyrics, Women’s Project, NYC, and music for Circle Repertory Theatre, where she was an original member. Anthologies include Contemporary Women Playwrights and Best Short Plays.
She was keynote speaker at the Prindle Institute for Ethics, DePauw University, on The Moral Responsibility of the Artist. She is currently working on a book of collected short stories, Blue Hills. As Chair of Graduate Playwriting and Screenwriting, Department of Dramatic Writing, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she has educated some of the country’s leading playwrights and screenwriters. Her book, TO BE A PLAYWRIGHT, published by Routledge, is used widely in universities.She has taught playwrights and screenwriters in China, Indonesia, Florence, Prague, London, and South Africa. She is a member of Writer’s Guild of America East, PEN, and served on the Dramatists Guild Council Tony Committee, and founded and chaired their Dramatists Guild Fellows Program.
Her plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing and Samuel French. Her plays and letters are in the Harvard University Houghton Theatre Collection. In 2017, New York University awarded the title of Professor Emeritus.
NEW PLAYS BY
JANET NEIPRIS
A QUESTION OF COUNTRY
The friendship of a black woman, NABUNTU, and a white woman, JULIA, who together secretly form a grass roots organization to fight against apartheid in the early 1970’s in Cape Town. A QUESTION OF COUNTRY wrestles with the impossibility of that friendship post-apartheid when they remain divided, not only by race, but now by class.
The play is based on a true story and three years of interviews in South Africa. It was written under a Rockefeller Fellowship to Bellagio. To date, workshops at McCarter, Negro Ensemble, Culture Project, Queens College, Theatre for the New City NYC.
