Our 14th Season: Lee Blessing
During its 2010-11 season, Profile Theatre is proud to present the following plays by award-winning playwright Lee Blessing.
Lee Blessing has been a major force in post-1960’s American theater. His plays are considered by many critics to be truthful, often controversial explorations in the variances of human relationships. Blessing’s plays reach into the depth of human souls to find the underlying truths that bind people, no matter what their political viewpoint, sexual preference, ethnicity, or gender.
BIOGRAPHY
Broadway and London's West End: A Walk In The Woods (also seen on PBS’s “American Playhouse”. Off-Broadway: A Body of Water, Going to St. Ives, (Outer Critics Circle Award, Best Play, OBIE for ensemble performance); Thief River (Drama Desk nomination, Best Play); Cobb (Drama Desk award, best ensemble); Chesapeake, Eleemosynary and Down the Road. 1992-93 Signature Theatre season: Fortinbras, Lake Street Extension, Two Rooms and the world premiere of Patient A. Notable world premieres: When We Go Upon the Sea, commissioned by Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre; Great Falls in the 2008 Humana New Play Festival of the Actors Theatre of Louisville; A Body of Water at the Guthrie Theater; Lonesome Hollow, Flag Day and Whores all at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival; The Scottish Play at La Jolla Playhouse; Black Sheep at Florida Stage and The Winning Streak at George Street Playhouse. Other plays include Riches, Independence, Oldtimers Game, Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music, Perilous Night and A User’s Guide to Hell, Featuring Bernard Madoff. Recent adaptations: Heaven’s My Destination, from Thornton Wilder’s picaresque 1935 novel, commissioned by the Cleveland Play House and Moderation, commissioned by the Weissberger Group in New York, from a non-fiction work by Linda Greenhouse. Additional awards: The Steinberg/American Theater Critics Association Award and Citation, the L.A. Drama Critics Award, The Great American Play Award, The Humanitas Award and the George and Elisabeth Marton Award among others. Nominations for Tony and Olivier awards, as well as for the Pulitzer Prize. Blessing is married to playwright and TV writer Melanie Marnich and lives in New York. For the last decade he has headed the graduate playwriting program at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.
Blessing is a current member or alumnus of the Writers Guild of America, west; the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis; New Dramatists in NY and the Societe des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques.
