is a playwright, poet, essayist, memoirist, and librettist. His play The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage, winner of the 2018 PEN America Award in Drama, received a critically acclaimed world premiere at Boston Court Pasadena, directed by Michael Michetti, and was nominated for six Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle prizes including Best Play. O'Brien's The Body of an American received an off-Broadway premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre, co-produced by Primary Stages and Hartford Stage, and directed by Jo Bonney (New York Times Critic's Pick). The Body of an American was the winner of the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, the PEN Center USA Award for Drama, the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, and was shortlisted for the Evening Standard's Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright. The play premiered at Portland Center Stage, directed by Bill Rauch, and received its European premiere in an extended run at the Gate Theatre in London, in a co-production with Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton, England, directed by James Dacre. O'Brien was a 2015-16 Guggenheim Fellow in Drama & Performance Art. Dan O'Brien: Plays One is published by Oberon (Methuen / Bloomsbury). A collection of his essays entitled A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas was published in 2021 by CB Editions in the UK and by Dalkey Archive Press in the US. danobrien.org.
