Melissa James Gibson

2002 Winner in
Drama

Melissa James Gibson’s latest play, Placebo, opened in February 2015 at Playwrights Horizons, where she previously premiered This in 2009 (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist). Her other plays include What Rhymes with America (Atlantic Theatre Company), [sic] (Obie Award for playwriting, Kesselring Prize), Suitcase or, those that resemble flies from a distance (NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, Rockefeller Foundation’s Multi-Arts Production Fund), Brooklyn Bridge, with a song by Barbara Brousal (AT&T Onstage award), All Is Not (New York State Council on the Arts Theatre Artist Commission), and Current Nobody, a loose adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey (2005 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist; 2006 Sundance Theatre Lab). Gibson’s work has been produced at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Soho Rep, La Jolla Playhouse and The Children’s Theatre Company, as well as many other theaters, regionally and internationally. Currently, Gibson is working on commissions for Center Theatre Group, the Atlantic Theater Company and the Manhattan Theater Company. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Gibson has been a Jerome and MacDowell Colony Fellow. Gibson is a graduate of New Dramatists and the recipient of a 2006 Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwrights’ Fellowship and a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a writer and story editor for the FX series The Americans.

Reviews & Praise

"Gibson writes fluidly and beautifully for that Impatient Age, slowing down our emotional metabolism for deeper scrutiny while speeding proficiently through her scenes, each a sketchlike contrivance, but none of them sketchy." —New York magazine [on What Rhymes With America]

"Ms. Gibson graduates into the theatrical big leagues with this beautifully conceived, confidently executed and wholly accessible work, which is not just her finest to date but also the best new play to open Off-Broadway this fall. Its confused but lovable characters are drawn with a fine focus and a piercing emotional depth; the dialogue sparkles with exchanges as truthful as they are clever; and . . . the play's delicate pace, richly patterned wordplay and undercurrent of rue combine to cast a moving spell that lingers in the memory, like a sad-sweet pop song whose chorus you can’t shake." —The New York Times [on This]

"Urban anomie is sliced, diced and served up as tasty canapés in Melissa James Gibson's clever, very adorable new play . . . Gibson's voice is a distinct one: a mixture of the archly articulate and the lazy, pause-ridden slang-speak of Gen X-ers." —Variety [on [sic]]

Selected Works

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Outside Links
Interview (TCG)
Interview (Gothamist)