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. 

New work includes The Light of the World, which explores our relationship with Confederate iconography. It was workshopped at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writers’ Festival in 2018.  Her play, Looks Like Pretty, which explore racial bias and the development of color photograph, was a co-commission from the Geva Theatre and the Sloan Foundation. It will premiere at Geva in the 2019-2020 season.

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.

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

January 2020

Thrilled to be named the playwright-in-residence for the 2020 Playwrights Series at the University of Southern Mississippi.

October 2019

Elyzabeth's feature article "Women's Work" was published in Southern Theatre Magazine. Read it here.

September 2019

"Santa Doesn't Come to the Holiday Inn" was featured on the National New Play Network's Scripts By Women Over 40

July 2019 

Elyzabeth's one minute play "The Other Side of Alabama" was featured in the One Minute Play Festival at Actors' Express in Atlanta.

June 2019

Elyzabeth's 10 min play "Sideline Hustle" was featured in the "7th Inning Stretch" at Mile Square Theatre (NJ)

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. 

White Lightning/Alabama Shakespeare Festival

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

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.  

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Click HERE to watch the documentary.  

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Alabama Shakespeare Festival Aims to Update the Southern Cannon

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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".

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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.