Eric Schmiedl is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, and a graduate of Kent State University (B/A English) and the University of Hawai’i (MFA Playwriting & Children’s Theatre). His theatrical work is marked by a passion for collaboration and intercultural exploration. As a playwright and director he has worked with theatres around the country including the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Cleveland Play House, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Cleveland Public Theatre, Beck Center for the Arts, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, the Oregon Children’s Theatre, the Hololulu Theatre for Youth, the Lantern Theatre, and Great Lakes Theater. Eric is the recipient of a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in recognition of his longstanding collaboration with the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in adapting three of Kent Haruf’s acclaimed novels including Plainsong, Eventide, and Benediction, each produced at the DCPA. He has also received a Creative Workforce Fellowship, an Aurand Harris Fellowship, and a Sloan Foundation Commission. His work has been awarded three Edgerton Foundation New American Play Awards. He is currently collaborating with his wife and storyteller Adaora Nzelibe Schmiedl on a new play, My Hemisphere, which explores the lives of two children, a girl from a village in West Africa and a boy from a Cleveland suburb during an epic summer in 1977. Eric has worked on the artistic staffs of the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and the Cleveland Play House. Eric works with the arts programming wing of the Cleveland Treatment Center creating work with and for diverse and underserved communities including theatrical adaptations of acclaimed graphic novels Incognegro by Mat Johnson with art by Warren Pleece and Bluesman by Rob Vollmar and Pablo G. Callejo. Eric is also a faculty member of the MFA in Creative Writing Low Residency program at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky and a proud member of the Cleveland-based folk group The Welcome Table.