Aaron Coleman

Aaron Coleman

AARON COLEMAN is a New York City-based playwright and lyricist originally from Los Angeles. He is an '22-'23 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow and a First Year Member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. His play TELL ME I’M GORGEOUS AT THE END OF THE WORLD is a Finalist for the 2023 O'Neill NPC and was placed on the 2022 Short List for the Yale Drama Series Prize. His play UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE...
AARON COLEMAN is a New York City-based playwright and lyricist originally from Los Angeles. He is an '22-'23 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow and a First Year Member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. His play TELL ME I’M GORGEOUS AT THE END OF THE WORLD is a Finalist for the 2023 O'Neill NPC and was placed on the 2022 Short List for the Yale Drama Series Prize. His play UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, AS TOLD TO AARON COLEMAN was part of The Old Globe's 2023 Powers New Voices Festival.

In February 2022, his play WHERE HAVE ALL THE FAIRIES GONE? was presented by Brave New World Repertory Theatre. Recently, his original short family musical LEO’S BIG DAY OUT (music by Chuck Pelletier) was virtually staged by Circle in the Square Theatre School, where he is the Playwright-in-Residence and teaches playwriting.

Over the past few years, Aaron has been a Semi-Finalist for the Princess Grace Award, a two-time Finalist for the Jerome Fellowship at The Playwrights’ Center (2022, 2021), Finalist for New York Theater Workshop's 2050 Fellowship (2020), Finalist for The Civilians’ R&D Group (2020, 2021), Finalist for Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship (2019), and a Finalist for the Playwrights’ Week at The Lark (2019). He's been a Finalist a whole heck of a lot! He has also been a Semi-Finalist for the Creative Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farms. He has developed work with The Workshop Theater and others.

Other projects include lyricist for the Off-Broadway musical IMELDA written with East West Players and New Musicals Inc. (Pan Asian Rep, David Henry Hwang Theatre), and co-book writer for STAY FOREVER: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF DUSTY SPRINGFIELD (Renberg Theatre). As a lyricist with New Musicals, Inc. in Los Angeles, Aaron has developed musicals for McCoy Rigby Entertainment, the Celebration Theatre, and American Folklore Theatre.

Aaron is also a director with work presented with New Musicals, Inc., New York’s Prospect Theater Company and the Hudson Theatre Los Angeles.

MFA graduate: Writing for Screen and Television from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
B.A.: in Drama from the University of California, Irvine.

He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and The Playwrights' Center.

Plays

  • TELL ME I'M GORGEOUS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, The Last Gay Play by Aaron Coleman
    Recommendations: 9
    ·
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, commedia dell'arte + 6 more
    ·
    Keyword: absurdism, Dystopia + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, commedia dell'arte, dark comedy, fantasy, farce, horror, satire, verse
    Keyword: absurdism, Dystopia, Gay and LGBTQ, black, African-American, Asian-American, party, African American culture and identity, gay identity, queer
    2023 Finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference
    2023 Semi-Finalist, Blue Ink Award, American Blues Theater
    2023 Workshop Production, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
    2022 Short List, Yale Drama Series

    YAS, BISH! This will be #BestSummerEver!
    The party rages on in a fierce Fire Island home, and nothing can stop it. Not even two unexpected...
    2023 Finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference
    2023 Semi-Finalist, Blue Ink Award, American Blues Theater
    2023 Workshop Production, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
    2022 Short List, Yale Drama Series

    YAS, BISH! This will be #BestSummerEver!
    The party rages on in a fierce Fire Island home, and nothing can stop it. Not even two unexpected houseguests, who set off a reckoning of apocalyptic proportions. TELL ME I’M GORGEOUS AT THE END OF THE WORLD blows up the tropes of the gay party play—and shakes up theatrical genres quicker than a cosmo laced with poppers—to tell the tale of a Black gay man and an Asian-American gay man seeking a place in the mainstream gay community. But the world has other plans.
  • UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, As Told to Aaron Coleman by Aaron Coleman
    Recommendations: 3
    ·
    Cast: 
    9
    ·
    Genre: drama, fable/folktale + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: African American, American South + 6 more
    Genre: drama, fable/folktale, period
    Keyword: African American, American South, black, Race, History, slavery, American Civil War, storytelling
    - Reading, The Old Globe, Powers New Voices Festival 2023
    - Semi-Finalist, 2021 Princess Grace Award
    - Selected for 2019 Primary Stages/ESPA Drills Reading Series

    THERE'S MORE TO THE TALE THAN ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH.
    Uncle Remus’s Brer Rabbit folktales have enchanted Americans for over a century—no one more so than Aaron Coleman, a writer trying to find his own story in...
    - Reading, The Old Globe, Powers New Voices Festival 2023
    - Semi-Finalist, 2021 Princess Grace Award
    - Selected for 2019 Primary Stages/ESPA Drills Reading Series

    THERE'S MORE TO THE TALE THAN ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH.
    Uncle Remus’s Brer Rabbit folktales have enchanted Americans for over a century—no one more so than Aaron Coleman, a writer trying to find his own story in today’s world. Needing inspiration, Aaron finds himself in a plantation cabin in the late 1800s, face-to-face with the legend himself. As Remus starts spinning his wild stories, conjuring up a fantastical world of rabbits and foxes, he also reveals his untold life growing up in the antebellum South—a life that inspired his tales of family, courage, and survival.

    UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, AS TOLD TO AARON COLEMAN is a new play about visiting the stories of the past to understand the present—and reveals the ultimate truths about being a black storyteller in America.

  • WHERE HAVE ALL THE FAIRIES GONE? by Aaron Coleman
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: gay history, gay rights + 8 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, period, romantic comedy
    Keyword: gay history, gay rights, Gay Pride, civil rights, 1960s, New York, African American culture and identity, Gay Culture, romance, love story
    In a Greenwich Village gay bar in 1968, two strangers meet. One is a Southern Black man who moved to New York to escape a world of intolerance. The other is an extravagant white man who escapes into old movies and gin martinis. As they stand at the intersection of the Civil Rights Movement and the nascent Gay Liberation Movement, the two men form a burgeoning relationship. What they discover is that the true...
    In a Greenwich Village gay bar in 1968, two strangers meet. One is a Southern Black man who moved to New York to escape a world of intolerance. The other is an extravagant white man who escapes into old movies and gin martinis. As they stand at the intersection of the Civil Rights Movement and the nascent Gay Liberation Movement, the two men form a burgeoning relationship. What they discover is that the true revolution may be in finding each other in a world built to keep them apart.
  • LEO'S BIG DAY OUT by Aaron Coleman
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: adventure, comedy + 2 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, musical, young audiences
    *Virtual Production, Circle in the Square Theater School, 2021

    It’s the perfect new musical for a brand new spring in New York! 8-year-old Leo has a dream: to go outside and sing with a real-life musician—if only his worrywart aunt would let him. But when their cat, Gata, escapes out the brownstone window, it’s up to Leo to save her. With the help of a couple fabulous new friends, Leo takes a big...
    *Virtual Production, Circle in the Square Theater School, 2021

    It’s the perfect new musical for a brand new spring in New York! 8-year-old Leo has a dream: to go outside and sing with a real-life musician—if only his worrywart aunt would let him. But when their cat, Gata, escapes out the brownstone window, it’s up to Leo to save her. With the help of a couple fabulous new friends, Leo takes a big step outside and finds more than his cat—he finds his own voice, at last. LEO'S BIG DAY is a 45-minute musical written for young audiences.
  • TWO CHARACTERS TRAPPED IN A ZOOM PLAY by Aaron Coleman
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, melodrama, tragedy, zoom
    This 10-minutes play wonders, Will the two characters ever get out of this Zoom play?