Edith Freni
Playwright
Edith is a Plays in Progress Mentor. Her mentor interests: historical/science themed, adaptations, research-heavy, formally ambitious, realism, dark comedy, epic. Request Edith as a PIP Mentor.
“The plays I’m drawn to might take place in a single location and focus on a single problem, but bubbling up underneath that simplicity is a complex statement about what it means to be human in this world. I dig plays that use realism as a foundation but mix in elements from a variety of different forms to tell intricate, epic stories about where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going. If you’re asking big questions about gender, race, technology, the experiment of democracy, the cyclicality of history and/or where our world is headed, then whatever form you choose, I’ll find my way in and we’ll have a blast figuring out how to get the play in your head and the play on the page in line with one another.”
EDITH FRENI holds both her BFA and MFA from NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing. Her work has been produced and developed in New York and nationally at theaters including Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Profile Theatre Company in Portland, OR (Buena Vista), EST (Waterborn, Thicker Than Water 2004; My Dog Heart, Marathon 2007; Female Beginner, Marathon 2017), EST West and Labyrinth Theater Company (Bottoms Up!), the Williamstown Theatre Festival (Help Yourself), Actor's Express in Atlanta (The Stroke and Coming at You From the Cockpit); City Theatre in Miami (Flare) and at Nashville Repertory Theatre (This is About You).
Edith is a three-time nominee for the prestigious PONY Award and a two-time finalist for the Jerome Fellowship. Her play Total Power Exchange was a finalist for the 2017 Blue Ink Playwriting Award given by American Blues Theater in Chicago. It was also nominated for the 2013 L. Arnold Weissberger Award and the 2014 Kilroy's List. In 2014, Edith was nominated for the Humanitas Prize and the Francesca Primus Award for her play Buena Vista. Her play The Stroke was a Kilroy's List honorable mention in 2015 and that same year, was presented as a part of the Turner New Voices series at Actor’s Express. The Mystic was a finalist for the Blue Ink Playwriting Award in 2018.
Edith was a long-time member of Youngblood and is a member of Partial Comfort Productions and Ensemble Studio Theater. She was a 2015-16 Ingram New Works Lab resident playwright at Nashville Repertory Theater; the recipient of a New Territories Playwriting Residency at Serenbe Playhouse, and a fellowship at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She has held commissions from Steppenwolf, the McCarter Theatre education program, Actor's Express, Theater Emory, The University of Miami and Georgia College and State University. Edith was the inaugural Emory University Playwriting Fellow from 2014-16. While at Emory, she co-created the commissioning and development program 4:48, a "bake-off" style playwriting challenge inspired by the great Paula Vogel.
She was also a co-founder and literary manager of The 24Seven Lab, a NY-based theater incubator that developed the early career work of many amazing playwrights, most of whom are now household names, from 2004-2011. She has taught playwriting, playmaking, play analysis, and theater history at the University of Miami, Emory University, The University of the South and is the co-lead teacher for Horizon Theater Company’s annual New South Young Playwrights Fest, as well as a teaching artist with Synchronicity Theater Company’s educational outreach program Playmaking for Girls. She is currently serving as the 2016-18 Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-Residence at The University of the South in Sewanee, TN.
For all else: www.edithfreni.com