Diana Grisanti

Diana Grisanti

Diana Grisanti is a playwright and educator whose work has been produced across the country. Her plays include Vanessa in Bed (Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund); Enter Ghost. an immersive haunted HAMLET experience (co-written with Steve Moulds, for Kentucky Shakespeare); Bowling for Beginners (Vanderbilt University); The Patron Saint of Losing Sleep (Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte); River City (National New...
Diana Grisanti is a playwright and educator whose work has been produced across the country. Her plays include Vanessa in Bed (Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund); Enter Ghost. an immersive haunted HAMLET experience (co-written with Steve Moulds, for Kentucky Shakespeare); Bowling for Beginners (Vanderbilt University); The Patron Saint of Losing Sleep (Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte); River City (National New Play Network); The Starkweather-South High School Physics Club First Annual End-of-Year Lock-In, or Ghost Party (Cleveland Play House); and the musicals Casa Alfonsa and El Guayabo/The Guava Tree (co-written with composer Emiliano Messiez, for Creede Repertory Theatre). Diana has been a Michener Fellow, a Kentucky Arts Council Fellow, and a Writer in Residence at Vanderbilt University. She teaches dramatic writing at Ball State University.

Plays

  • The Patron Saint of Losing Sleep
    Ada is a customer service specialist with a thirst for justice and bout of insomnia. When she receives a call from a woman in need, she takes a trip and tries to help. But things go wrong. Terribly wrong. With the aid of pop psychiatry and divine intervention, Ada must confront her regrets, past and present, if she's ever going to sleep again.
  • River City
    Just weeks after her father’s death, Mary discovers a childhood photograph of him from a past he never talked about. Determined to excavate her heritage, Mary goes on a quest to uncover a half-century of family and town secrets buried in the West End of Louisville, Kentucky. Sometimes, going back home means leaving life behind.
  • The Two Lobbyists of Verona (co-written with Steve Moulds)
    Welcome to fair Verona, where we lay our scene—Verona, Kentucky, that is. This small Rust Belt town has just been wrecked by a massive storm (a tempest, actually). The storm’s silver lining? Undiscovered oil and gas deposits buried deep within the shale. While lobbyists promise unprecedented prosperity in exchange for some “light fracking,” County Council President Katie Connelly fights to spare her town...
    Welcome to fair Verona, where we lay our scene—Verona, Kentucky, that is. This small Rust Belt town has just been wrecked by a massive storm (a tempest, actually). The storm’s silver lining? Undiscovered oil and gas deposits buried deep within the shale. While lobbyists promise unprecedented prosperity in exchange for some “light fracking,” County Council President Katie Connelly fights to spare her town further destruction with her own plan to jumpstart the local economy: The World of Will, a one-stop shop for all things Shakespeare. Will Verona, Kentucky become the next Stratford-upon-Avon? Or will theatrical invention fall before the mighty power of big oil? The Two Lobbyists of Verona is a comedy about loyalty and betrayal, ambition and defeat. There’s also some iambic pentameter in there, with respect to the Bard.