Lucas Hnath’s plays include A Doll’s House, Part 2; Hillary and Clinton; Red Speedo; The Christians; A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney; Isaac’s Eye; and Death Tax. His work has been produced nationally and internationally, including at Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville/Humana Festival of New Plays, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Steppenwolf Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Royal Court Theatre, and on Broadway at the John Golden Theater. He is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and a resident of New Dramatists. His plays are published by Dramatists Plays Service, Playscripts, Nick Hern Books, Overlook Press, and Theatre Communications Group. Hnath is a recipient of an Obie, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, a Whiting Award in Drama, a Kesselring Prize, two Steinberg citations from the American Theatre Critics Association, and a 2017 Tony nomination for Best Play for A Doll’s House, Part 2. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU.
“Mr. Hnath is quickly emerging as one of the brightest new voices of his generation. What’s fresh about his work is how it consistently combines formal invention with intellectual inquiry . . . [In The Christians] Mr. Hnath adds a new layer of emotional resonance to his arsenal of gifts.” —Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
“A devastating portrait of a man for whom make-believe was more real than reality itself.” —New York Post [on A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney]
“A blood-pumping and often hilarious evening of theater . . . Beyond being very funny, the poetic brevity and jarring choppiness of [Hnath’s] dialogue captures the spirit of a generation of civic-minded Americans, like Disney . . . ” —TheaterMania [on A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney]
“Few plays are anywhere near as clever . . . The talented Hnath creates a disorienting, ironic atmosphere, a kind of Rushmore plus calculus.” —Time Out New York [on Isaac’s Eye]
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Powell's
- Barnes & Noble
- Alibris
Lucas Hnath’s imagination is unfettered, his ear for rhythm keen. With each play he undertakes a fresh exploration of the dynamic intersection of form and content. These formally adventurous and idiosyncratic explorations work because they are always unmistakably theatrical in nature. Lucas earns his conceptual conceits by grounding them in the actions and desires of complex characters grappling their way through emotionally gripping stories. It makes a surreal kind of sense, for example, to imagine Walt Disney directing his own auto-biopic in his mind, and the stories, personalities, and complicated relationships that unfold during the telling are vivid and unforgettable.