Karinne Keithley Syers

Karinne Keithley Syers is a writer and teacher based in Amherst, Massachusetts. Plays and librettos include Loom Troll, Your Ghost Body (Chocolate Factory Theater 2025), Agnes or The Clouds, Douteflower (McSweeney's Audio Issue), Long Bright Day, The Lydian Gale Parr, A Tunnel Year (Chocolate Factory Theater, 2016), Another Tree Dance (Chocolate Factory, 2013), Some Things Cease (St Ann's Puppet Lab), Do Not Do this Ever Again (Ice Factory, 2008), Tenderenda (Danspace Project, 2005), Four Fruits (Surf Reality, 2000), and Montgomery Park, or Opulence (Incubator Arts Project, 2010), for which she won a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production. She has been a two-time fellow at The MacDowell Colony, a member of the Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, a two-time member of Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse, and is grateful to be a resident playwright of New Dramatists. She founded 53rd State Press, co-founded Ur, a dance palace (2003-5), instigated the playwright think tanks and posses Joyce Cho and Machiqq, and co-hosted (with Jason Grote) the Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU. She collaborated as a performer, librettist, sound and video designer, and choreographer, with artists including Big Dance Theater, Sara Smith, David Neumann, Young Jean Lee, Sibyl Kempson, Theater of a Two Headed Calf, Chris Yon, The Civilians, and Talking Band. MFA in Playwriting, Brooklyn College (2006); PhD in English, CUNY Graduate Center (2014). She has taught playwriting at The New School, Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, and Bard Microcollege Holyoke, and through her own Pelagic School. She teaches sixth-grade English and Science and runs the theater club at Eaglebrook School.