Edith Freni

Edith Freni is the current Lecturer in Playwriting and Play Analysis at the University of Miami, Department of Theatre Arts. She is also the Head of Creative and Dramatic Writing at Perry Mansfield Performing Arts Camp and School in Steamboat Springs, CO. Edith holds both her BFA and MFA from NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing, where she was the recipient of a Goldberg Playwriting Fellowship and the 2007 Harry Kondoleon Graduate Playwriting Award. Edith’s play TOTAL POWER EXCHANGE was nominated in 2010 by New York Theatre Workshop for the New American Plays for Russia Initiative, co-sponsored by The Center for International Theatre Development and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Other nominees for this award include Pulitzer Prize winners Susan Lori Parks, Nilo Cruz and Tracy Letts, as well as Eric Bogosian, Lisa Kron and Sarah Ruhl, among others. NYTW also nominated Edith for the prestigious PONY Award (Lark Theatre) in 2010. That same year, she was a finalist for the Jerome Fellowship (Playwright’s Center) and the Heideman Award (Actors Theatre of Louisville). She has been nominated for the Wasserstein Prize, given by the Dramatists Guild of America; the Cherry Lane Mentor Program, the WordBridge Playwrights Workshop, the Seattle Rep Women’s Playwrights Workshop and was a 2003 Lark Theatre Playwriting resident.Edith was a long-time member of Youngblood, the emerging playwrights unit at Ensemble Studio Theatre. EST has produced her plays WATERBORN (Thicker Than Water, 2004); THE WORKAROUND (Unfiltered, 2005); and MY DOG HEART (Marathon, 2007). Edith is also a member of Obie-winning Partial Comfort Productions and was the co-founder and literary manager of The 24Seven Lab, a playwriting organization that aided in the development of well over 30 plays by emerging and mid-career playwrights from 2004-2011.

Edith’s plays have been produced, developed and read at numerous theatrical institutions in New York and nationally including New York Theatre Workshop, LAByrinth Theatre Company, The Public Theatre, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, PS 122, Partial Comfort Productions at Theatre Row, Watershed Ensemble, The McCarter Theatre, The Lark, The Producer’s Club, The Present Company Theatorium, The Tank, The Brick Theatre, The Kraine Theatre, Collective Unconscious, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, Manhattan Theatre Source, The Trilogy Annex Theatre, The Rita and Burton Goldberg Theatre at NYU, and Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. A selection of her monologues can be found in Hot Blooded, New Monologues from the Members of Youngblood (Playscripts, Inc.), as well as in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2006 (Smith & Kraus). Her play WATERBORN is published by DPS and her play for young actors, HOME AT LAST, is published by Playscripts, Inc. Edith has just finished work on a “transdaptation” of Euripides’ THE BACCHAE, which will be produced at the University of Miami in collaboration with the Department of Classics and the Lowe Art Gallery in February 2012. Edith is a happy product of the NYC public school system and very much misses the Upper West Side. She was a competitive figure skater for 12 years and fought in the NYC amateur circuit with Coach Lee Shabaka’s Team Freeform Women’s Boxing Club for six years. She now trains and competes in triathlon. She currently lives in Coconut Grove, Florida.