ARTISTIC STATEMENT

I write about people that tend to be overlooked: shy political groupies, lesbian civil rights pioneers, murderess elderly women, twenty-year-old working class surrogates. I write comedies that feature gender non-conformists. I explore people who have a deep need to answer the question: What is the value of one good person? I write plays that have interesting, powerful roles for women of all ages. I write for the theatre for the same reasons that I go to the theatre, a deep desire to connect, a need to explore, a need to get to the bottom of questions that I can’t seem to figure out on my own and to find some shared moments of unexpected understanding. I want to share my world with the world.

PATRICIA COTTER

Award-winning playwright Patricia Cotter has had two of her theatrical works performed as part of Actors Theatre of Louisville’s The Tens. The first, The Anthropology Section, produced in 2015 and Drinking On A Plane, produced in 2018.

Other notable works for the stage include: The Stars Look Very Different Today which was produced as part of Theatre works 17th Annual New Works Festival in 2018; Rules of Comedy, which was produced at the 2015 Humana Festival Ten-Minute Plays; 1980 (Or Why I’m Voting For John Anderson) produced at Chicago’s Jackalope Theatre 2017 and was a 2018 Jeff Award nominee for “Best New Play”, and GLAAD Award nominee, The Break Up Notebook, which was produced in Los Angeles at the Davidson Valentini Theatre.

Her piece, The Surrogate, was the recipient of the of the 2016 Susan Glaspell Award, and was also a finalist at the 2016 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. It was then first produced at Centenary Stage Company, NJ, in 2017.

Patricia’s most recent work, The Daughters, was both a semi-finalist at the 2018 O’Neil National Playwrights Conference, and was featured at the 2018 Playwrights Foundation Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and was recently presented at New York Theatre Workshop’s Monday’s at 3 Reading Series.

As a librettist, she wrote Rocket Science: A Musical, which received readings at Playwrights Horizons in New York (directed by Kathleen Marshall) and was later produced at The Village Theatre in Seattle. The Break Up Notebook: A Musical (based on her original play) was produced at The Vineyard Theatre in New York and at The Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles. She was asked by Disney Theatricals and MTI to write Mulan, Jr.(based on the Disney film Mulan), which is produced and performed nationally.

In addition to writing for the stage, Patricia has written for Twentieth Century Fox Television, Disney Theatrical, and Comedy Central. Patricia’s honors include the American Academy of Arts Letters, a Richard Rodgers Award, an Emmy Award, and she is a three-time Heideman Award Finalist.

List of Plays: Patricia Cotter

Twitter: @patriciacotter