Justin Warner is a New York-based playwright, lyricist, and librettist. His plays have been produced in more than 30 cities, including NYC, London, LA, DC, Toronto, San Francisco, Austin, and Miami. His musical adaptation of Andrew Solomon's FAR FROM THE TREE, co-written with Kristin Maloney and Robert Maggio, won a 2024 Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has also been a Finalist for the Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre and for a Jonathan Larson Grant. FAR FROM THE TREE has been previously workshopped at the Public Theater under the direction of Michael Greif.
Other productions include the full-length plays AMERICAN WHUP-ASS (AlterTheater, San Rafael, CA; Global Age Project winner) and IMPOSTORS (NEUROFest, NYC; Union Theatre, London; Moving Arts, LA...
Justin Warner is a New York-based playwright, lyricist, and librettist. His plays have been produced in more than 30 cities, including NYC, London, LA, DC, Toronto, San Francisco, Austin, and Miami. His musical adaptation of Andrew Solomon's FAR FROM THE TREE, co-written with Kristin Maloney and Robert Maggio, won a 2024 Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has also been a Finalist for the Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre and for a Jonathan Larson Grant. FAR FROM THE TREE has been previously workshopped at the Public Theater under the direction of Michael Greif.
Other productions include the full-length plays AMERICAN WHUP-ASS (AlterTheater, San Rafael, CA; Global Age Project winner) and IMPOSTORS (NEUROFest, NYC; Union Theatre, London; Moving Arts, LA; Wichita State University), the children's musical CINDERELLA'S MICE (Vital Theatre, NYC, & tour), for which he wrote the book and additional lyrics, his full evening of short comedies, SCREWUPS: LITTLE PLAYS ABOUT BIG MISTAKES (Manhattan Theatre Source, NYC & Birmingham Festival Theatre, AL), three commissioned Gilbert & Sullivan adaptations for middle school performers, and short plays in theaters all over the US.
His musicals THE MASKED ZINFANDEL and THE PASSION OF ED WOOD have been produced, developed, or showcased at the ASCAP/Disney Workshop with Stephen Schwartz, Raw Impressions, Manhattan Musical Theater Lab, the Triad, the York Theatre, and the Greenwich House Music School Theater Lab. His work is published by Concord Theatricals and Original Works, and his monologues are published in many Smith & Kraus anthologies.
As a graduate student, Justin won the Kennedy Center-ACTF's Region II playwriting contest. He has also been a finalist for the Princess Grace Award, the Javits Fellowship in the Humanities, and the Actors Theatre of Louisville/City Theatre's National Ten-Minute Play contest (seven times).
Other credits include an EST-Sloan Foundation commission and grant, and a Peabody Award as part of the writing staff of "Kinetic City Super Crew," a children's radio show funded by the National Science Foundation.
Justin is a Clinical Associate Professor of Expository Writing at NYU, presently teaching in the Tisch School of the Arts. He has written for American Theatre, New Scientist, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Popular Science, Newsday, MediaPost, the American Association for the Advancement of Science's "Science Update" podcast, and many others. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Project Y Theatre's Playwrights Group, and an Associate Artist with AlterTheater in San Rafael, California.