Mary Lynn Owen

Mary Lynn Owen

Mary Lynn Owen, a 2024 Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellowship Finalist, is a playwright, actor, and teacher from Atlanta, Georgia. Her most recent play, SALVAGE, a finalist for the 2022 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, was featured in The Unexpected Play Festival at Theatrical Outfit (2023), The Ethel Woolson Playwrights Lab (2023) the Working Title Table Series (2022), and the 2021...
Mary Lynn Owen, a 2024 Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellowship Finalist, is a playwright, actor, and teacher from Atlanta, Georgia. Her most recent play, SALVAGE, a finalist for the 2022 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, was featured in The Unexpected Play Festival at Theatrical Outfit (2023), The Ethel Woolson Playwrights Lab (2023) the Working Title Table Series (2022), and the 2021 Threshold Festival at Actors Express. Other full-length plays include KNEAD which premiered at The Alliance Theatre in November 2018, and was the recipient of the 2019 Gene Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, The Alliance Theatre’s 2017 Reiser Lab Award, and a semi-finalist for the 2017 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference; and LADY PARTS, a semi-finalist for the 2020 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and a selection for the 2019 Working Title Playwrights First Light Series and for Theatrical Outfit’s 2020 Unexpected Play Festival. Mary Lynn’s shorter works include the monologues HOMING, commissioned in 2020 by the 22 Homes Project for the Alabama Shakespeare Southern Writers Festival, and TRAILERS, commissioned in 2019 by MultiShades Atlanta for the MoJo Theater Festival Monologue Project. In 2020 Mary Lynn received a MAP Foundation Grant through Synchronicity Theatre to develop a play about Women and Work. In May 2022 Mary Lynn was named by the Eugene O'Neill Foundation as the Travis Bogard Artist-in-Residence and the Carey Perloff Fellow at the Tao House in Danville, California.

Plays

  • Salvage by Mary Lynn Owen
    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: comedy, drama
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    Keyword: Interracial Family, intergenerational + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: Interracial Family, intergenerational, drama with humor, strong roles for women
    Finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference 2022

    A year after Father’s death, Mother sends an urgent email to her adult children, summoning them home to collect their things. In a room strewn with the stuff of their lives - forgotten toys, photo albums, clothes, books, and one errant tape recorder - and in the space of one night and the following day, this interracial,...
    Finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference 2022

    A year after Father’s death, Mother sends an urgent email to her adult children, summoning them home to collect their things. In a room strewn with the stuff of their lives - forgotten toys, photo albums, clothes, books, and one errant tape recorder - and in the space of one night and the following day, this interracial, intergenerational family of Mother, Sister, Brother, and Grandpa collides with the past and present, faces the truth of one another’s lives, and weighs what to keep, what to toss, and what to make into something new.
  • Lady Parts by Mary Lynn Owen
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    6–8
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    Genre: comedy, political
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    Keyword: strong comedic roles for women, gender + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, political
    Keyword: strong comedic roles for women, gender, sexuality, death
    Semi-finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference 2020
    Unexpected Play Festival, Theatrical Outfit 2020
    Working Title Playwrights, First Light Series 2020

    A play about sex. And death. And gender roles. And Scrabble. A comedy.

    Nella, a middle-aged, mid-level talent agent, and the middle sister between Carmen and Charlotte, is smack in the middle of a...
    Semi-finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference 2020
    Unexpected Play Festival, Theatrical Outfit 2020
    Working Title Playwrights, First Light Series 2020

    A play about sex. And death. And gender roles. And Scrabble. A comedy.

    Nella, a middle-aged, mid-level talent agent, and the middle sister between Carmen and Charlotte, is smack in the middle of a middling life. She spends her days talking women into stereotypical roles, and her nights talking her husband, Sam, into looking up just once from his cellphone. The weekly game night she co-hosts with her sisters and in-laws, “Fun Friday,” has become a dreaded event. Is this all there is? Even LuAnn, her seventy-ish mother who has recently embarked on a cruise to the fjords, is having more adventure. Sure enough, a medical diagnosis determines that Nella might just be dead inside, a secret she confesses only to Charlotte, and that Eleanor Roosevelt, in a series of late-night assignments, attempts to do something about. One botched Scrabble Game later, it appears that Charlotte and Carmen have secrets too. And that Mom might not be where they think she is. And that Nella may have to cast herself in the role of a lifetime.

    There is dancing. There are twinkling stars. There are women making it up as they go.



  • Knead by Mary Lynn Owen
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: family, comedy + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: family, comedy, drama, forgiveness, immigrant story
    World Premiere, The Alliance Theater, Atlanta, GA 2018
    Gene Gabriel Moore Award for Playwriting 2019
    Semi-finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference 2017
    Reiser Lab Award, The Alliance Theater, 2016

    In the middle of the night, a woman bakes bread, determined that her mother's incomprehensible recipe will finally work. But something is different about this...
    World Premiere, The Alliance Theater, Atlanta, GA 2018
    Gene Gabriel Moore Award for Playwriting 2019
    Semi-finalist, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference 2017
    Reiser Lab Award, The Alliance Theater, 2016

    In the middle of the night, a woman bakes bread, determined that her mother's incomprehensible recipe will finally work. But something is different about this night. The ingredients of Time and Memory keep interfering, tumbling out of the cabinets, the drawers, and the refrigerator, as the bread-baking process - the kneading, rising, shaping, baking, all in real-time - becomes a journey into the unpredictability of baking and of a family's love.