Martyna Majok

Martyna Majok

Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland and aged in Jersey and Chicago. She was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cost of Living (Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club). Other plays include Sanctuary City (New York Theatre Workshop), Queens (LCT3/Lincoln Center, La Jolla Playhouse), and Ironbound (Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Round House, WP Theatre/Rattlestick, Geffen Playhouse,...
Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland and aged in Jersey and Chicago. She was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cost of Living (Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club). Other plays include Sanctuary City (New York Theatre Workshop), Queens (LCT3/Lincoln Center, La Jolla Playhouse), and Ironbound (Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Round House, WP Theatre/Rattlestick, Geffen Playhouse, National Theatre of Warsaw, amongst other theatres in America and abroad). Awards include The Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Play, ATCA Francesca Primus Prize, The Dramatists Guild's Lanford Wilson Award, The Lilly Awards' Stacey Mindich Prize, The Greenfield Prize (first female recipient in drama), Champions of Change Award from the NYC Mayor's Office, Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award, Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Original New Play or Musical at The Helen Hayes Awards, The Ashland New Plays Festival Women’s Invitational Prize, The Kennedy Center's Jean Kennedy Smith Award, Marin Theatre’s David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize, New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, Aurora Theatre’s Global Age Project Prize, National New Play Network’s Smith Prize for Political Playwriting, two Jane Chambers Feminist Playwriting Prizes, and The Merage Foundation Fellowship for the American Dream. Commissions from The Public Theater, Lincoln Center, The Bush Theatre in London, The Almeida Theatre in London, The Geffen Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, South Coast Rep, and Manhattan Theatre Club. Publications by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, TCG, and Smith & Kraus. Residencies at Sundance Theatre Lab in Morocco, The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, The Vineyard Arts Project with The Public Theatre, Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Fuller Road, Marble House Project, and Ragdale. BA: University of Chicago; MFA: Yale School of Drama, The Juilliard School. She has taught playwriting at Williams College, Wesleyan University, SUNY Purchase, Primary Stages ESPA, NJRep, and as an assistant to Paula Vogel at Yale. Alumna of EST's Youngblood, Women's Project Lab, and the Core Writer program at Playwrights Center. Member of The Dramatists Guild, The Writers Guild of America East, and New York Theatre Workshop’s Usual Suspects. Martyna was a 2012-2013 NNPN playwright-in-residence, the 2015-2016 PoNY Fellow at the Lark Play Development Center, and a 2018-2019 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. She is currently writing two musical librettos and developing an original series for HBO.

Plays

  • Sanctuary City
    DREAMers. Love(r)s. Life-long friends. Negotiating the promise of safety and the weight of responsibility, two young people fight like hell to establish a place for themselves and each other in America. A story that asks what we’re willing to sacrifice for someone we love.
  • Cost of Living
    What is the road that brought us here? Unemployed truck driver Eddie sits at a bar alone, recalling his final moments with wife, Ani, when a car accident turned the focus of their relationship from divorcing to caregiving. Overworked, under-qualified, and nearly homeless, Jess takes on another job to make ends meet – this time, as a personal caregiver for a wealthy and beautiful graduate student named John, who...
    What is the road that brought us here? Unemployed truck driver Eddie sits at a bar alone, recalling his final moments with wife, Ani, when a car accident turned the focus of their relationship from divorcing to caregiving. Overworked, under-qualified, and nearly homeless, Jess takes on another job to make ends meet – this time, as a personal caregiver for a wealthy and beautiful graduate student named John, who has cerebral palsy. The histories, influences, and challenges of four lives converge in the meeting of two strangers in a small, empty apartment in Bayonne, NJ.
  • Ironbound
    An immigrant woman waits for her late night bus in the shadows of a run-down Jersey factory. A man appears. A man always appears. And he's got something she needs. Spanning over 20 years, three relationships, and three presidents, what will two working class people trade and how dirtily will they fight for the cheapest safety in a world that does not value all kinds of people?