Sibyl Kempson

Sibyl Kempson lives and makes theater plays in NYC and the Pocono Mountains. Plays include Crime or Emergency (Theater Bonn, Germany; Great Plains Theatre Conference, Omaha; Performance Space 122; Fusebox Festival, Austin; Soho Rep; Dixon Place); Potatoes of August (Dixon Place); So Much To Go Crazy (The Show Might Go On) (Sehr Langsam) (The Off Center/Fusebox Festival, Austin); The Wytche of Problymm Plantation (Dixon Place); Bad Girls Good Writers (Brick Theater; Bennington New Works Festival); Spargel Time! (Little Theater) and many others. Her work has been developed in workshops at Dixon Place, Soho Rep, CATCH! Performance Series, and Little Theater, as well as at New Dramatists. Current and upcoming projects include new work in collaboration with Elevator Repair Service, "Fondly, Collette Richland"; a Full Stage USA commission, a program of New Dramatists and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a new work in collaboration with Austin, TX groups Rude Mechs, Salvage Vanguard, Physical Plant, and Rubber Rep, currently titled "River of Gruel: The Requirement(s) of Narrow Approach(es)"; Restless Eye, a collaboration with David Neumann’s Advanced Beginner Group; and a commission from the Playwrights’ Department of NYC Players in partnership with Abrons Arts Center. Her play The Secret Death of Puppets (or) How Do Puppets Die? (or) Puppets Die In Secret had a full production at Dixon Place in November 2011 and Ich, KürbisGeist will be produced by Big Dance Theater at the Chocolate Factory in October 2012. Both plays are being published by the 53rd State Press, joining Crime and an ealier version of KürbisJoyce Cho Plays. Other publication includes Play A Journal of Plays (Potatoes of August), Brooklyn Review (excerpts of Crime and Secret Death of Puppets), Midway Journal (excerpt of The Secret Death of Puppets), and, in the Fall 2012 issue of PAJ, the text for Restless Eye. She is a 2010 MacDowell Colony Fellow, member of New Dramatists class of ‘17, a four-time recipient of Dixon Place’s Mondo Cane! Commission (2002, '07, '09, '11), and of individual grant support from the Greenwall Foundation 2009 & ‘10. She is a founding member of the Joyce Cho Initiative, an affinity of playwrights dedicated to the staging of problem plays, and of Machiqq Women's Auxiliary playwriting group. She has an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College, 2007, where she studied under the instigation of Mac Wellman.

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