Playwright and TV Writer ED VALENTINE is also a 4-time Daytime Emmy winner for “Outstanding Writing in a Pre-School Children’s Series” for SESAME STREET. He was named one of “50 Playwrights to Watch” in The Dramatist magazine; his plays have been performed in NYC, across the U.S, and in Dublin, Ireland. His many plays include LIZZIE, OR: HATCHET HOUR, WOMEN BEHIND THE BUSH, and 27 PIGS.
Ed is the two-time winner of the "Best Full-Length Play in the Northeast" award from the Kennedy Center / American College Theater Festival, and he was also awarded Hunter College’s Zarkower Award for promising playwrights in three consecutive years. A proud member of the Dramatists Guild, Ed held a Dramatists Guild Fellowship.
Ed is currently a co-Artistic Director of New Circle Theatre Company, the...
Playwright and TV Writer ED VALENTINE is also a 4-time Daytime Emmy winner for “Outstanding Writing in a Pre-School Children’s Series” for SESAME STREET. He was named one of “50 Playwrights to Watch” in The Dramatist magazine; his plays have been performed in NYC, across the U.S, and in Dublin, Ireland. His many plays include LIZZIE, OR: HATCHET HOUR, WOMEN BEHIND THE BUSH, and 27 PIGS.
Ed is the two-time winner of the "Best Full-Length Play in the Northeast" award from the Kennedy Center / American College Theater Festival, and he was also awarded Hunter College’s Zarkower Award for promising playwrights in three consecutive years. A proud member of the Dramatists Guild, Ed held a Dramatists Guild Fellowship.
Ed is currently a co-Artistic Director of New Circle Theatre Company, the descendant of the Circle Rep Lab (the development wing of Circle Rep). NCTC has produced and workshopped many of Ed's plays, including BETSY ROSS LIES!, CONSUMPTION, and TOOTH OF WINTER. He is a founding member of The Beekeepers Theater (MA), En Avant Playwrights (NYC), and the experimental object-and-puppet theater, Cardium Mechanicum.
In the TV world, Ed has been head writer of the Netflix hit SHARKDOG; a staff writer on SESAME STREET, THE FAIRLY ODDPARENTS, and DOC MCSTUFFINS; and a writer on numerous other shows, including MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC. He was awarded a 2007-08 Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship, and has been a story editor and writing workshop leader for Sesame Workshop’s International co-productions in Bangladesh and India.
After his undergraduate studies at Boston College, Ed was a page at NBC - and afterwards a fourth-grade homeroom teacher. His life changed when he began to study playwriting at nights with his Hunter College mentor, Tina Howe. Later, while enrolled as an MFA student at NYU’s Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing, Ed studied playwriting with Oskar Eustis, Len Jenkin, Marsha Norman, Rachel Sheinkin, and Janet Neipris; and TV writing with Charlie Rubin and Joe Kelly.
Puppetry is also a big part of Ed’s life, both in performance and in writing. Ed’s piece AMERICALAND (a cycle of 50 short puppet plays, with one play set in each of the 50 states) was developed as an Emerging Artist piece at the Center’s National Puppetry Conference in 2013, and continues to workshop regionally.
Ed also wrote the script for THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, an annual attraction in Woodland Hills, CA, which draws thousands of visitors each Halloween. Ed created and wrote a role in this high-tech home haunt for Neil Patrick Harris, who appears in a holographic performance.
Ed coaches writers and runs writing workshops. He has taught an Animation Writing Masterclass at NYU’s DDW, and has been a thesis professor / advisor in the online MFA Visual Narrative program at the School of Visual Arts.
Ed is completing a book of advice and encouragement for writers called HOW TO BE A WRITING SUPERHERO, designed to unlock the superpowers in anyone who longs to write. Contact Ed at [email protected], or see more of his work at www.edvalentine.com.