Molly Rice

Composer Librettist Playwright Lyricist

Molly is a playwright/ songwriter whose work has been developed & produced in NYC (Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, WP Theater, NYTW, New Georges, 54 Below, Clubbed Thumb) and nationally (American Repertory Theater, Montana Rep, Salvage Vanguard, Trinity Rep, Kitchen Dog, City Theater, Perishable Theater, etc.). Her work and writing about her work can be seen in American Theater Magazine, The Dramatist, Dramatics Magazine, Kenyon Review, Play: A Journal,  Indie Theater Now, Clarkson Potter Press, Heinemann PressTripwire Harlot Press and various national news sources including the New York Times.

Commissions include NYU/ Tisch MFA Acting Program, New Georges, Montclair University, Kenyon College, Pace University and The Drilling Company. Honors and awards include Brown University’s Weston Prize, Women’s International Theater Festival, Princess Grace Award (finalist), O'Neill National Playwrights Conference (2-time finalist), ATL Heidemann Award (2-time finalist), PONY award (finalist), nominations for the New York Innovative Theater Awards, the Pittsburgh Mayor's Award for Public Art, the Cherry Lane Mentor Project (twice) and the Kesselring Fellowship, and selection for New Works Initiatives at Montclair and Pace Universities with director Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812; 2019 Tony winner for Hadestown) and composer Orion Johnstone.

In 2019-2020, Molly wrote and produced Khuraki, a city-wide “culinary play” developed in partnership with the Afghan refugee population of Pittsburgh, PA. Work on the project garnered her nominations for the Mayor's Award for Public Art, the Carol R. Brown Award, and an Organizational Diversity Award from GlobalPittsburgh. A Golden Quill-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary on the project can be found here

Other productions include Sharon, a toy-theater episodic series based on interviews of childcare workers during COVID; the true-crime concert musical Angelmakers: Songs for Female Serial Killers (music, book, and lyrics); Futurity: A Musical by the Lisps (book co-writer, additional text and story) at American Repertory Theater and Soho Rep (Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Musical, 2016); and THE SAINTS TOUR, a site-specific traveling play that has appeared in neighborhoods across the country since 2009. Over the years THE SAINTS TOUR has incorporated the talents of diverse artists like MacArthur Fellow Taylor Mac, Rachel Chavkin, and Dave Malloy; musicians RizoHeather Christian, Rick Burkhardt, Wayne Tucker, and Shanelle Jenkins; visual artists Vanessa GermanLenka Clayton, and James Simon; and organizations like the Salvation Army, Grow Pittsburgh, Judson Memorial Church, and Cherry Lane Theater, among others.

Current: coordination and production of POST THEATRICAL, a national festival of plays-by-mail featuring 13 works from across the country, including her original work The Birth of Paper, a collaboration with residents of Beirut, Lebanon; makers from Pittsburgh's Handmade Arcade; and Pittsburgh's home for international exiled writers, City of Asylum. 

Molly has taught at Brown, Kenyon College, Carnegie Mellon, Pace, Montclair, Marymount Manhattan, Point Park University and the University of Rhode Island, often co-creating, writing, directing, and/ or producing plays for and with students. She is an Artistic Director of the production company RealTime Interventions and a longtime musician/ songwriter. When she was 18 one of her songs made the Top 100 Charts in Alaska. She still doesn’t know what number it was.