The Playwrights

Anne Washburn's plays include Mr. Burns, The Internationalist, A Devil At Noon, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, I Have Loved Strangers, The Ladies, The Small and a transadaptation of Euripides' Orestes. Her work has been produced by 13P, Actors Theater of Louisville, American Repertory Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dixon Place, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Folger, London's Gate Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, NYC's Soho Rep, DC's Studio Theater, Two River Theater Company, NYC's Vineyard and Woolly Mammoth. Awards include a Guggenheim, a NYFA Fellowship, a Time Warner Fellowship, Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. She is an associated artist with The Civilians, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, and is an alumna of New Dramatists and 13P. Currently commissioned by MTC, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, and Yale Rep.

Michael Friedman was an Obie Award winning composer/lyricist. He was most well-known as the co-creator of the critically-acclaimed musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which premiered in New York at the Public Theater and subsequently transferred to Broadway. Other credits include the musical The Fortress of Solitude, based on the book of the same name by Jonathan Lethem; Unknown Soldier, which premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival; and Love’s Labour’s Lost, which premiered at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Michael was a founding Associate Artist of The Civilians, the acclaimed investigative theater company. His work with The Civilians included Gone Missing, In the Footprint, The Great Immensity, Paris Commune, (co-written with Steve Cosson) (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch, and This Beautiful City as well as the score for Anne Washburn’s critically-acclaimed Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play. His latest collaboration with Civilians’ Artistic Director Cosson, The Abominables, opened at Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis in September, 2017.

In the months leading up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Michael traveled the country creating a series of songs based on interviews he conducted. Those songs became his “State of the Union Songbook,” which was presented by The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Michael received a MacDowell Fellowship, a Princeton Hodder Fellowship, a Meet The Composer Fellowship, and he was a Barron Visiting Professor at The Princeton Environmental Institute in 2009. At the time of his death, he was the Artist in Residence and Director of the Public Forum at the Public Theater, and was also the Artistic Director of City Center Encores! Off-Center.

In 2018, Michael received a star on the Playwrights’ Sidewalk at the Lucille Lortel Theater.