Betty Shamieh is the Reynolds Playwright-in-Residence for Spring '14. Shamieh is the author of fifteen plays.
Her off-Broadway premieres are The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop) and Roar (The New Group), which was selected as a New York Times Critics Pick and is currently being taught at universities throughout the United States. Shamieh was named a UNESCO Young Artist for Intercultural Dialogue in 2011. She was selected as the winner of The Playwrights' Center’s 2012-2013 McKnight National Residency and Commission. Her recent European productions in translation include Again and Against (Playhouse Theater, Stockholm), The Black Eyed (Fournos Theatre, Athens), and Territories (co-production of the Landes-Theatre and the 2009 European Union Capital of Culture Festival). In 2012, Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Studies presented the world premiere of a suite of arias from Territories, an opera that Shamieh is writing the lyrics and libretto for based on her play. Again and Against was presented in Russian translation as part of the American Seasons in Russia/U.S.-Russia Presidential Bi-lateral Commission and Lark Play Development Center in 2011. As Soon As Impossible was commissioned by Second Stage through the Time Warner Commissioning Program. The Machine was directed by Marisa Tomei and produced by Naked Angels. Her play, Free Radicals, was commissioned by at Het Zuidelijk Toneel (Holland). Shamieh performed in her play of monologues, Chocolate in Heat, in three extended off-off-Broadway runs and over twenty university theatres. She has taught at Barnard College and Marymount Manhattan College. A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, Shamieh was selected as a Clifton Visiting Artist at Harvard in 2004 and named as a Playwriting Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies in 2006. Her works have been translated into seven languages. In addition to teaching playwriting, Shamieh will collaborate with composer Matt Gould and director Cheryl McFarren on a student production of The Malvolio Project, a sequel to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
