MARA RICHARDS BIM is an award-winning playwright and director, and the founder of the nationally recognized Cry Havoc Theater Company. Mara’s Dallas directing/devising credits include Committed: Mad Women of the Asylum (July 2021) Once Upon a Moon (January 2021); Endlings (October 2020); Crossing the Line (July 2019, co-directed with Tim Johnson); Babel (July 2018); A History of Everything (January 2018), The Great American Sideshow (August 2017); Shots Fired (January 2017 and July 2017, co-directed with Ruben Carrazana); Shut Up and Listen! (January 2016) and The (out)Siders Project (August 2015). In 2019 she was commissioned by the University of North Texas to devise The Memory Project, a verbatim piece created from interviews with residents in assisted living facilities.

Mara is a recipient of 2018 and 2019 Special Projects Grants from the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs for public art installations to accompany Cry Havoc Theater Company productions. In 2020 she received the Holloway Family Foundation’s Visionary Leadership Award, and in 2021 Mara was named one of D Magazine’s “78 Women Changing the Face of Dallas.”

In 2018, Cry Havoc’s production of Babel received two Forum Awards including best new play. The company was also awarded Theatre for Young Audiences/USA’s National Community Impact Award, presented at the Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices Festival. In 2019, Cry Havoc was named “Best Thing to Happen to Local Theater” by D Magazine and the company received three D-FW Theater Critics Forum Awards for their production of Crossing the Line including Best New Play or Musical, Best Performance by an Ensemble, and Best Directors (Mara Richards Bim and Tim Johnson). In 2020, KERA and NPR released a five-episode podcast about the company’s 2018 production of Babel.

Prior to founding Cry Havoc, Mara held staff positions at Dallas Theater Center (Dallas), The New Victory Theater (NYC), MCC Theater (NYC), and The Joyce Theater (NYC). She holds a BFA in Drama and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, and an MSEd in Educational Theatre from The City College of New York. She is currently pursuing a Master of Theological Studies degree at Southern Methodist University.