Kelly Stuart

2000 Winner in
Drama

Kelly Stuart is a playwright and video artist originally from Los Angeles. In LA, some of her productions include The Interpreter of Horror at the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, The Square Root of Terrible (a children's musical) at the Mark Taper Forum, and Mayhem and Homewrecker at the Evidence Room. Her plays The Peacock Screams When the Lights Go Out and Furious Blood were produced in San Diego at Sledgehammer Theatre. Stuart has been a member of New Dramatists, which funded residencies and enabled her to present work at The Australian National Playwrights Conference, and The Royal National Studio in London. New York productions include Demonology at Playwrights Horizons, The Life of Spiders at the Culture Project downstairs, and Mayhem at the Summer Play Festival. Internationally, Mayhem has been produced in Manchester, United Kingdom; at Theatre Ariel in Târgu-Mures; at Theatre Odeon in Bucharest; and at the Tokyo International Arts Festival. Homewrecker was produced in Berlin at the Schaubuehne. Her most recent play, Shadow Language (originally commissioned by the Guthrie Theatre), was produced at Theatre 503 in London. Stuart is the recipient of fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Arts council, a Jerome Travel grant, and commissions from the Mark Taper Forum, Playwrights Horizons, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, and South Coast Rep. Recently she has been working on a series of short digital video pieces. Her video work has been seen at Alwan for the Arts, Chris Well's "Secret City" and Jeff Jones' "Little Theatre."

Reviews & Praise

“[The Life of Spiders] is a high-wire tale of 19th-century Paris. Greed rules. People flaunt their desires for money, power and sex and pursue these to the death . . . Ms. Stuart's language partakes of 19th-century elaboration and 20th-century directness. Nothing feels forced; the lyric and the vernacular cohabit with ease.” —The New York Times

“ . . . an exceptionally thought-provoking take on American political activism—and its relation to normal life—that is compelling, subtle, funny, and, sad. With crackling dialogue and powerful situations of immediacy and impact, Stuart's drama is part satire, part polemic, and part debate on the need for balancing our desire to change the world with the realization that we must choose our battles carefully.” —Backstage [on Mayhem]

“[A] smart, biting new comedy of bad manners . . . a play that giddily lifts the veil of office decorum to expose the primal drives that rage beneath the polished surfaces . . . What makes the play original is the writer's acute ear for the bureaucratic jargon and shorthand banter that often substitute for communication in big companies. This is a playwright who knows her way around the water cooler.” —The New York Times [on Demonology]

Selected Works

The Interpreter of Horror (stuinter)
Premiered in
1991
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Outside Links
Demonology (Playwrights Horizons)
Making of Mayhem (LA Times article)