Aurin Squire
Playwright Biography
Photo retrieved from Seattle Public Theater.
Aurin Squire (he/him/his) is an award-winning playwright, reporter, and multimedia artist. He is a two-time recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center and has received residencies at New Dramatists, the Royal Court Theatre in London, Ars Nova, Lincoln Center Lab, National Black Theatre, the Dramatists Guild of America, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange.
In the 2018-2019 season, Squire had six productions in Chicago, North Carolina, Seattle, Dallas, and Miami, including world premieres of "Fire Season" and "Confessions of a Cocaine Cowboy" (which he co-authored with documentary filmmaker Billy Corben). He won the 2017 Helen Merrill Prize for Emerging Playwrights and the Emerald Prize from Seattle Public Theater for his new drama. His political satire "Obama-ology" was workshopped at the Juilliard New Play Festival before becoming a sold-out hit at Finborough Theatre in London. "Obama-ology" also received a school production at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2015 and was published by Oberon Books. In 2016 he returned to Finborough with his interracial relationship drama "Don't Smoke in Bed." His dark comedy "To Whom It May Concern" won New York LGBT theatre awards for best play, best playwright, and best actor before being optioned and having an Off-Broadway run to critical acclaim at the ArcLight Theatre and was published by Original Works Publishing. Squire’s drama "Freefallling" was first produced at Barrington Stages before going on to win first prize at InspiraTO Theatre’s International Play Festival, and receive the Fiat Lux Prize from New York’s Catholic Church. His gay rights drama "Article 119-1" was produced throughout Germany, Canada, Italy, and in the United States. In 2016 his dark futuristic comedy "Zoohouse" was workshopped at the National Black Theatre as a part of his 'I Am Soul' fellowship while "The Gospel According to F#ggots" was workshopped at Brooklyn Arts Exchange.
As an independent reporter he has written for The Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, The New Republic, ESPN, Talking Points Memo, FUSION, and many other publications around the country. As a multimedia artist, Squire wrote Dreams of Freedom, the multimedia installation video about Jewish immigrants in the 20th century for the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Dreams won 3 national museum awards and is in the permanent exhibit at NMAJH.
In TV, Squire has been a writer for the CBS political satire “BrainDead," and the NBC family drama "This is Us." He is a producer/writer for the CBS show "The Good Fight" as well as the supernatural drama "Evil."
In his spare time, he’s a theatre podcast co-host of Maxamoo, writes reviews of new plays, meditates, and studies religion. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, New School University, and Northwestern University.
Highlighted Play
Defacing Michael Jackson (2013)
Set among the swamps and canals of rural Florida, Defacing Michael Jackson follows a motley group of African-American teenagers who create their own Michael Jackson fan club in 1984. But when a white family moves to the neighborhood and their son tries to join the club, all the rules of the community are challenged, and relationships start to crumble. Defacing Michael Jackson is a dark comedy about losing innocence, hero worship, and American identity. ¹
Squire has spoken extensively about how this play was created from a María Irene Fornés writing exercise that Cuban playwright Rojelio Martinez led Squire's class through in graduate school. Because Squire has pulled back the curtain on his writing process, this play is a great one to use when teaching playwriting in a high school setting. Students can easily replicate the process that Squire used to write the play (which was initially a one-act) and analyze how Squire kept and manipulated the exercise’s structure in his final play. This piece is also a great production for high schools to produce since it features exclusively teenage characters.
¹Source: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/6397/defacing-michael-jackson
Photo from Flying Elephant Production's 2018 production of Defacing Michael Jackson in Chicago, IL. Photo by Emily Schwartz.
Sample Activity
Objective: Students will be able to analyze the writing process used to create Defacing Michael Jackson by Aurin Squire and apply that analysis to the creation of their own short plays.
Target Audience: High School Theater Class
Suggested Supporting Materials:
I'm Black--My Dad Taught Me to Swim as an Act of Political Resistance
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/06/21/i-m-black-my-dad-taught-me-swim-act-political-resistance/
Memories of My Mom
Procedures: After students read the play, the teacher facilitates a discussion with them about their initial reactions to the piece and the suggested supporting materials. The teacher then explains how Squire uses his writing to try to challenge his own point of view and how he believes that good theater should not be comfortable. The teacher shares this quote with students:
“I am here to poke the flabby underbelly of liberal smugness, but I am not doing it simply to be a contrarian. I am doing it because it makes me a better liberal, a more engaged artist, and a more thoughtful citizen. I don’t want my mind to get flabby, inflexible, and smug. Theater is an excellent form of spiritual and social yoga.” -Aurin Squire
The teacher fields responses to the quote and asks students to reflect on the title of the play and to articulate how the process of "defacing" might connect to the "theater of challenge" for which Squire advocates, encouraging them to analyze how they saw Squire create this kind of theater in Defacing Michael Jackson. The teacher then shares this video in which Squire elaborates on his writing process, and encourages students to examine how that process might support the kind of theater that Squire is trying to create:
The teacher fields student reactions to the video, encouraging students to articulate how they saw Squire employ his theories in Defacing Michael Jackson and how that use supported his goals as a writer. The teacher then explains that students are going to apply Squire's process to create some "challenging plays" of their own. The teacher shares that Squire wrote Defacing Michael Jackson using a María Irene Fornés exercise that was taught to him by Cuban playwright Rogelio Martinez and that students are going to use this same process to write their plays, which like Defacing Michael Jackson, will be "coming of age" stories. The teacher describes the exercise and has students identify which parts of the exercise correspond to which parts of Defacing Michael Jackson. The teacher then leads students through the exercise, encouraging them to apply Squire's techniques as they work:
First, students list three real childhood rituals, which they actually participated in, that meet the following criteria:
The ritual formed a community that wasn't there before.
The ritual made you feel good.
The ritual allowed you to have a new identity/place in the world.
The ritual disintegrated when you got older.
Students select one of the rituals they listed to focus on and write scenes based on the following prompts:
Scene 1: Character A delivers a monologue explaining the world of the play. (When and where does this story take place? What is that world like? What do we need to know to be dropped right into the story?)
Lights shift
We watch the ritual take place with all the characters who would be there.
Scene 2: Characters B and C are getting ready to go to the ritual and one of them reveals new information about something changing/happening in this world that will interrupt the ritual's ability to continue indefinitely.
Scene 3: Character B delivers the news about the change to Character A.
Scene 4: Character C delivers a monologue talking about the change and how it has affected them.
Lights shift
Scene 5: Characters A and C argue over something literal and small which serves as a cover for being sad/angry that the ritual has been disrupted and is coming to an end.
Scene 6: Character A delivers a monologue looking back on what happened and how it has affected them.
After students have completed their writing, the teacher facilitates a discussion with students about the plays they've written and how they applied Squire's process to their own writing. The teacher then asks students to analyze how the final version of Squire's play expanded on or amended the structure laid out in the exercise and to articulate why they think Squire made those changes. Finally, the teacher asks students to reflect on the idea of "defacing" as it relates to the "coming of age" story. The teacher prompts students to explore how these ideas are tied together and how their plays helped them investigate those ideas.
Extension: Students write a reflection about what they learned from applying Squire's techniques to their own writing. They then revise/expand their plays and perform them. Students evaluate each other's plays, assessing the ways in which the plays embraced the ideas of challenge and "defacing".
Discussion Questions
What do you make of Squire’s decision to ignore the “elephant in the room” of the sexual abuse allegations made towards Michael Jackson? What about his use of the word “retarded” throughout the play? Do you think these choices were purposeful or an abdication of critical engagement? If deliberate, why do you think he made these choices? How did you feel about them?
Does a peek behind the curtain at Squire’s writing process change the way you interact with Defacing Michael Jackson? If yes, how? If no, why not?
How do you think about the “coming of age” story in relation to your own work as a theater artist? What about in relation to anti-racism work?
Are there childhood rituals that shaped your worldview positively or negatively? How do you think about them now? How do they affect the way you engage as a person or a theater artist? Do they still hold strong or did you have to move on from them?
Squire asserts that many plays overlay the present on the past (think Hamilton) and that he finds it more interesting to overlay the past on the present. What do you think of this idea? Do you think Defacing Michael Jackson does this? If so, what do we gain from the play through this choice?
Annotated Plays
Obama-ology (2014)
Warren is a fresh-faced, new wave, thoroughly modern, hot-wired, wifi'ed, ecologically green, politically progressive, on-point staffer for the 2008 Obama campaign. When he agrees to some on-the-job training from a chorus of campaign instructors, the questions he faces out in the field begin to unravel his education in the classroom. As his job requirements and his personal beliefs split apart, the barriers between political and cultural, psychological and social, racial and religious, public and private begin to dissolve. Obama-ology is a 21st century tale about what happens when the traditional ethnic, social, economic, and party boundaries have become so porous that people are never quite sure with whom or where they stand. All that and it's a comedy too!¹
This play is based on Squire’s own experience as an Obama campaign staffer in East Cleveland during the 2008 presidential election. The play has obvious political connections and can be easily used to enhance classroom study about elections and campaigns in a high school or middle school history class. However, Squire also describes this play as being the story of what it is like to be chosen as “the one” to fix everything; “the one” to represent your race. It is the story of how such an experience inevitably comes head-to-head with the reality that we are all just imperfect human beings. In this way, the play is a great exploration of identity politics and intersectionality and a challenge to the idea that any one group of people is a monolith.
Photo from Skylight Theatre's 2016 production of Obama-ology in Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Krieger.
Obama-ology was created from Squire's short play, African Americana. This video is from a 2013 workshop production of that piece at the Brookyln Arts Exchange in Brooklyn, NY.
Running on Fire (2015)
A young college student is out for a jog when he is implicated in a crime spree. After his property is confiscated by an officer, his attempt to seek justice sets off a chain reaction of events that ripple across the college, surrounding town, and amongst a community seething with tension. What is real and what is not get called into question in this timely play that asks 'who are we to ourselves and each other?'¹
Through its main character, Marcus, this play examines W.E.B. DuBois’s theory of “double-consciousness”--the idea of marginalized people looking at themselves through the eyes of their oppressors. As Marcus tries to ignore how he is viewed by the world around him, he is eventually forced to come face to face with the reality of what it means to be black in a predominantly white space. This play is a great production choice for a university that is situated within an underserved community of color. The play could be used to open up a dialogue with those in the surrounding community and could be used to inspire structural and systemic change by both the university and its students in order to repair relationships with populations that they have subjugated.
¹Source: https://newplayexchange.org/plays/30788/running-fire
Photo from Lee Street Theatre's 2018 production of Running on Fire in Salisbury, NC. Photo credit unknown.
Comprehensive List of Works
Theater
African Americana (2014)
Am I Black Enough? (2003)
Art Gallery (2004)
Article 119-1 (2014)
Baby Talk (2005)
Beasts (2015)
A Black Spell (2005)
Bleed (2009)
Boxing the Sun (2005)
Children Lost (2015)
Confessions of a Cocaine Cowboy (2019)
Crash (2001)
Dear God (2004)
Death of a Primitive (2003)
Defacing Michael Jackson (2013)
The Devil Makes Work (Unknown)
Don’t Smoke in Bed (2016)
Elijah (2005)
A Family Manual for Kwanzaa (2015)
Fight of Dadaelus (2004)
Fire Season (2017)
Freefalling (2013)
The Gospel According to F#ggots (2016)
The Great Black Sambo Machine (2005)
It’s Giuliani Time (2006)
The Last Days of William Dale (2019)
Let There Be Light (2013)
A Light in My Soul (2008)
Match Me (2005)
Matthew Takes Mannahatta (2009)
Mercury Parallel (2015)
Mississippi Goddamn (2015)
The Naturalization of the Garcias (2004)
Nueva Cancion (2004)
Obama-ology (2014)
Placebo (Unknown)
Rainbow (2019)
The Rape of Marie (2004)
Rheinfield (2005)
A Room Facing the Moon (2005)
Running on Fire (2015)
Shadows in the Light (2001)
Strange Fruit (Unknown)
Summer Solstice (2004)
Sweet n’ Low/Mailman (2003)
To Whom It May Concern (2006)
Uncertainties (2007)
Under the Skin (2005)
Versatile (2005)
While Submerged from All Sides (2008)
White Bread: A Hip Hopera (2003)
A Wonderful World (2020)
Zoohouse (2015)
Television
While We Breathe (2020)
Evil (2019)
Bir Aile Hikayesi (2019)
The Good Fight (2018)
This Is Us (2016)
BrainDead (2016)
Obama-ology (2014)
50 Bucks in Argentina (2011)
Multimedia
Dreams of Freedom at The National Museum of American Jewish History (Unknown)
Photo from Miami New Drama's 2020 Production of A Wonderful World in Miami, FL. Photo retrieved from http://www.adamkochassociates.com/.
Photo from Miami New Drama's 2019 production of Confessions of a Cocaine Cowboy in Miami, FL. Photo by Stian Roenning.
Photo from Seattle Public Theater's 2019 production of Fire Season in Seattle, WA. Photo by Truman Buffett.
Photo from 2016 production of Zoohouse at National Black Theatre in New York, NY. Photo retrieved from https://www.nationalblacktheatre.org/zoohouse.
Additional Resources
Check out and download Aurin Squire's plays on New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/users/759/aurin-squire
Aurin Squire discusses his writing process in a conversation with Miami New Drama Artistic Director Michel Hausman in this video from March 2020.
Aurin Squire returns for a conversation with Miami New Drama Artistic Director Michel Hausman and leads a masterclass on writing in this video from May 2020.
Aurin Squire talks about onstage and screen writing, collaboration, and meditation in this interview with Ciara Pressler from July 2020.
Visit Aurin Squire's Blog, Six Perfections:
Bibliography
6/22 Aurin SQUIRE: Why the right can't admit The Charleston was a RACE CRIME. (2015, June 22). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://majorityreportradio.com/2015/06/22/622-aurin-squire-why-the-right-cant-admit-the-charleston-was-a-race-crime
Asquire. (2013, July 21). African Americana (short play). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7imVs16R7U
Aurin Squire just may be the one - episode 79. (2015, June 01). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://open.spotify.com/episode/3qds4euc2jr6aC99mri00F
Aurin Squire. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsS/squire-aurin.php
Aurin Squire. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://newdramatists.org/aurin-squire
Dreams of freedom. (2019, November 26). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://localprojects.com/work/museums-attractions/dreams-of-freedom/
Hoke, D. (2017, May 18). ARTISTS helping artists (#AHAinTheater) Adam and Aurin TALK MARKETING-PART 2: Donna Hoke. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from http://blog.donnahoke.com/artists-helping-artists-ahaintheater-adam-and-aurin-talk-marketing-part-2/
HQ, P. (2020, July 29). Pregame HQ. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://pregamehq.com/aurin-squire-on-stage-and-screen-writing-collaboration-and-meditation/
Interview with playwright aurin Squire - Portland Shakespeare project: Igniting a passion for the classics. (2020, July 07). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://portlandshakes.org/interview-with-playwright-aurin-squire/
Meet the Fellows: AURIN Squire, Playwright. (2014, December 09). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://dgfund.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/meet-the-fellows-aurin-squire-playwright/
Olmos, M. P. (2013, November 10). Matthew Paul OLMOS on Defacing Michael Jackson at the Nuyorican poets Cafe. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from http://newyorktheatrereview.blogspot.com/2013/11/matthew-paul-olmos-on-defacing-michael.html
Smith, D. (2018, April 19). Feel the heat of 'running on fire'. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://www.salisburypost.com/2018/04/19/feel-the-heat-of-running-on-fire/
Squire, A. (2015, February 04). MLK's mother was ASSASSINATED, too: The Forgotten women of Black History Month. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/mlk-mother-was-assassinated-forgotten-women-black-history-month
Squire, A. (2015, February 22). Why 'Selma' didn't win Best Picture. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://newrepublic.com/article/121113/selma-oscar-snub-why-film-wont-win-best-picture
Squire, A. (2015, January 27). Black and Blue: Cops of color In POST-FERGUSON America. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/what-its-like-to-be-a-black-latino-cop-after-ferguson-and-eric-garner
Squire, A. (2015, June 21). I'm Black-My dad taught me to swim as an act of political resistance. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/06/21/i-m-black-my-dad-taught-me-swim-act-political-resistance
Squire, A. (2017, January 06). Writing tv, thinking theatre-but with less urgency. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/02/23/writing-tv-thinking-theatre-but-with-less-urgency/
Squire, A. (2020, August 28). The incredibly short rise and fall of a black republican. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/the-incredibly-short-rise-and-fall-of-a-black-republican
Squire, A. (2020, December 22). Active listening Episode 2: Aurin squire. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://soundcloud.com/newdramatists/active-listening-episode-2-aurin-squire
Squire, A. (2020, September 18). The blue wall of silence. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/blue-wall-silence-poc-police-dont-speak-out-protests?fbclid=IwAR1QtomqZKnaZJI_4t2vnYgNTddRePW-UNOmT6Qxf3DEdns2tobeQEvMkFY
Squire, A. (2021, January 15). Vaccine skepticism and a failed coup: How disinformation is striking back. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/anti-vaxxers-failed-coup-disinformation-striking-back
Squire, A. (2021, March 06). Six perfections. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from http://sixperfections.blogspot.com/
Squire, A., Osborne-Lee, A., Liu, Y., & MacCarthy, M. (n.d.). Aurin Squire. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://newplayexchange.org/users/759/aurin-squire
Weeks, J. (2019, February 22). The personal and political drama of 'obama-ology' at jubilee theatre. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://artandseek.org/2019/02/21/the-personal-and-political-drama-of-obama-ology-at-jubilee-theatre/
WilliNet_TV. (2018, February 06). Play cafe - episode 6 - aurin squire. Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://vimeo.com/67827216
Writing with aurin squire. (2020, March 27). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://www.miaminewdrama.org/aurinsquire