Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder
Playwright, Educator, Decent Human Being
Plays
Click on each title to learn more.
Roslyn Ruff and Billy Eugene Jones
Gee's Bend/Alabama Shakespeare Festival
Bio
Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder’s plays include Gee's Bend, Fresh Kills, The Flagmaker of Market Street, The Furniture of Home, White Lightning, Provenance, and Everything That’s Beautiful. Her plays have been produced at the Royal Court (London), Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center, Cleveland Play House, KC Rep, Northlight, the Arden, B Street Theatre, and Hartford Stage, among others. Her one act, “Santa Doesn’t Come to the Holiday Inn” was featured in the Marathon of One Act Plays at the Ensemble Studio Theatre.
Her theatre for young audiences play, Georgia Mae James Unplugs America will premiere at The Growing Stage in July 2022. She will also workshop her new solo piece, Zelda in the Backyard, at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Southern Writers' Festival in July 2022. She has also been awarded a commission from the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta to adapt Grammy-winner Tena Clark's memoir, Southern Discomfort for the stage.
Her play, Looks Like Pretty, which explores racial bias and the development of color photography, was a co-commission by the Geva Theatre and the Sloan Foundation. It was scheduled for its world premiere at the Geva Theatre in the spring of 2020 (Covid cancelation). The play was featured on the prestigious Kilroy's List. It was most recently featured in the 2022 Play-By-Play series at the Pioneer Theatre.
Her play The Light of the World, explores our relationship with Confederate iconography. It was workshopped at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writers’ Festival in 2018. Other plays include A Requiem for August Moon (Pioneer Theatre workshop), The Bone Orchard (Denver Center commission, Great Plains Theatre Conference), and a short play for the acclaimed My America, Too project (Baltimore Center Stage), as well as four commissions from the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Elyzabeth is the recipient of the Osborn Award given by the American Theatre Critics Association and is a graduate of the dramatic writing program at New York University. She is a proud alumnus of Youngblood at the Ensemble Studio Theatre.
Elyzabeth wrote for two seasons of the serialized podcast, In Good Company. She was also a staff writer on the short-lived CBS show Love Monkey.
In 2018 Elyzabeth traveled with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival on their State of the South tour where they hosted town hall discussions in 12 cities throughout the South as they explored the changing face of Southern identity. The project culminated in a documentary and was featured in the New York Times.
Elyzabeth is the current Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-Residence at Sewanee: The University of the South where she teaches playwriting.
News
Summer 2022
Elyzabeth's new play, Zelda in the Backyard, will be featured in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Southern Writers' Festival.
Summer 2022
Georgia Mae James Unplugs America has it's world premiere at The Growing Stage in NJ.
Summer 2022
Looks Like Pretty was featured in the Play-By-Play Festival at the Pioneer Theatre.
SPRING 2022
Everything That's Beautiful opens at the Human Race Theatre.
Spring 2022
The Alliance Theatre commissioned Elyzabeth to write the stage adaptation of Grammy-winner Tena Clark's memoir, Southern Discomfort.
Summer 2021
Elyzabeth returned as a writer for Season 2 of In Good Company.
Summer 2021
Elyzabeth's play, The Spirit of Ecstasy was optioned for film.
Spring 2021
Georgia Mae James Unplugs America was the winner the new play festival at The Growing Stage: the Children's Theatre of New Jersey.
White Lightning/Alabama Shakespeare Festival
Fall 2020
Elyzabeth was a writer/co-creator for In Good Company, a new serialized radio play commissioned by the New Conservatory Theatre.
Summer 2020
Georgia Mae James Unplugs America, a new play for young audiences, was featured on Stars In The House.
Spring 2020
Elyzabeth's monologue, "Give Us This Day" was featured in the 22 Homes series produced by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival
Winter 2020
Thrilled to be named the playwright-in-residence for the 2020 Playwrights Series at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Fall 2019
Elyzabeth's feature article "Women's Work" was published in Southern Theatre Magazine. Read it here.
Fall 2019
"Santa Doesn't Come to the Holiday Inn" was featured on the National New Play Network's Scripts By Women Over 40
Spring 2019
Elyzabeth was featured in Southern Theatre Magazine. Click HERE to read about it.
February 2019
Elyzabeth was the keynote speaker at the Southeastern Theatre Conference.
January 2019
Looks Like Pretty was featured in the Ensemble Studio Theatre's First Light Festival in New York.
November 2018
Looks Like Pretty was workshopped at the Geva Theatre.
October 2018
The Light of the World was featured in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Southern Writers' Festival.
Projects and Press
Elyzabeth was interviewed on BroadwayWorld, com for the world premiere production of Georgia Mae James Unplugs America.
Read the interview HERE.
Over the summer, Elyzabeth worked with a fabulous group of writers to create an original, scripted serialized podcast in response to the pandemic.
The drama onstage is nothing compared to what’s happening behind the scenes in this original episodic series. A new kind of podcast for a different kind of world, New Conservatory Theatre Center’s "In Good Company" is a love letter to the resilience of art, artists, and the places they call “home”.
Season 2 now available
Elyzabeth was featured on a new theatre podcast, Out of the Rehearsal Hall, produced by the Geva Theatre.
Check out the Geva blog here.
You can listen to the podcast here.
In response to the global pandemic, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival commissioned 22 playwrights to write monologues on the theme of "home".
Elyzabeth's work was called a "standout" in this feature article.
In 2018, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival launched The State of the South. Four playwrights, artistic director Rick Dildine, and a film maker spent 10 days touring the south hosting town hall meetings where they explored the changing face of southern identity.
Click HERE to watch the documentary.
Alabama Shakespeare Festival Aims to Update the Southern Cannon
Click HERE to read New York Times article
Elyzabeth was featured in the Spring 2019 issue of Southern Theatre Magazine after being the keynote speaker at the 2019 Southeastern Theatre Conference. Read more about her speech, "Keep Your Eyes on Your Own Work".
Click HERE to read.
Baltimore Center Stage created the My America, Too project to address the issue of violence against African-American men in America. Ten playwrights from diverse backgrounds were commissioned to write short plays in response. Utilizing gorilla theatre techniques, six of those plays were filmed in the exact location where gun violence occurred.
Click HERE to watch.
Contact
Agent Contact
Beth Blickers/Agency for the Performing Arts