Episode 297 - Mona Monsour

Little Known Facts with Ilana Levine

Mona Monsour ( Playwright) THE VAGRANT TRILOGY will make its New York City debut in April 2022 at the Public Theater, directed by Mark Wing-Davey; the production was in technical rehearsals in March 2020 and was postponed due to Covid-19. UNSEEN will have its West Coast debut at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in spring 2022, directed by Evren Odcikin. WE SWIM, WE TALK, WE GO TO WAR premiered at SF’s Golden Thread in 2018 (dir. Odcikin). THE VAGRANT TRILOGY was presented at Mosaic Theater in June 2018, (dir. Wing-Davey.) Of the trilogy: THE HOUR OF FEELING (dir. Wing-Davey) premiered at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and an Arabic translation was presented at NYU Abu Dhabi, as part of its Arab Voices Festival in 2016. URGE FOR GOING: productions at the Public Theater (dir. Hal Brooks) and Golden Thread (dir. Odcikin). THE VAGRANT was commissioned by the Public and workshopped at the 2013 Sundance Theater Institute. THE WAY WEST: Labyrinth (dir. Mimi O’Donnell); Village Theater (dir. Christina Myatt); Steppenwolf (dir. Amy Morton); and Marin Theatre Company (dir. Hayley Finn).

Other credits: IN THE OPEN, for Waterwell, directed by James Dean Palmer, and ACROSS THE WATER, written for third-year MFAs at NYU (dir. Scott Illingworth). Mona was a member of the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. With Tala Manassah she has written FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS, an EST/Sloan commission. Their play DRESSING is part OF FACING OUR TRUTHS: SHORT PLAYS ABOUT TRAYVON, RACE AND PRIVILEGE, commissioned by the New Black Festival. Commissions include Playwrights Horizons and La Jolla Playhouse. 2020 Helen Merrill Award, 2012 Whiting Award. 2014 Middle East America Playwright Award, MacDowell Colony 2018, New Dramatists Class of 2020. Mona writes for NBC’s New Amsterdam and is creating series for FlipNarrative and AMC International. BEGINNING DAYS OF TRUE JUBILATION, directed by Scott Illingworth and conceived with her company SOCIETY, was part of New Ohio’s Ice Factory Digital Festival in summer 2020. In September 2020, Mona received the prestigious Kesselring Prize, awarded by the National Arts Club to one playwright a year. She was nominated by Seattle Rep for her play THE HOUR OF FEELING.

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