GARY GARRISON (Desert Playwrights’ Retreat Board Member)

“Time is precious for all of us. So if we’re going to spend time away from jobs, loved ones, our artistry and the like, it has to be worth the investment. At our first Board meeting, I looked at our Zoom screen full of the most extraordinarily talented and committed artists who are always generous with their time and attention and thought, “how lucky am I to be here  . . . and how lucky are all the artists these folks will nurture.“

From 2007-2017, GARY GARRISON was the Executive Director of the Dramatists Guild of America – the national organization of playwrights, lyricists and composers headed by our nation’s most honored dramatists. Up to the spring of 2020, he was also the Director of the Dramatists Guild Institute – a premier educational institution dedicated to the continued education of dramatists throughout the country.  He is currently the Managing Director of Provincetown Theater in Provincetown, MA.

Prior to his work at the Guild, Garrison filled the posts of Associate Chair, Artistic Director and Master Teacher of Playwriting in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he produced over forty-five different festivals of new work, collaborating with hundreds of playwrights, directors and actors.

As a playwright, Garrison’s plays include The Mayworkers, The Unexpected Light On Azadeh Medusa, Too Quick to Pick, Ties That Bind, Skirting the Issue, Caught Without Candy, Game On, The Sweep, Verticals and Horizontals, Storm on Storm, Crater, Old Soles, Padding The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou? and When A Diva Dreams. This work has been commissioned by or featured at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, City Theatre of Miami, Boston Theatre Marathon, Primary Stages, The Directors Company, The Theresa Rebeck Writers Residency (through The Lark), Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Open Door Theatre, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New York Rep.

His recent work as guest artist or master teacher of playwriting involve such institutions as the Marfa Intensives, Convivio Writer’s Conference (Postignano, Italy) Sewanee Writer’s Conference, The Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive, CityWrights of Miami, The Inkwell, Source Theatre in D.C., Baltimore Playwrights Festival, New Hampshire Playwrights Festival, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Southeast Theatre Conference, Northwest Theatre Conference, Alaska World Arts Festival, Boston Playwrights and has taught at New York University, Boston University, University of Oklahoma, The University of Texas, Hollins University, Goddard College, Texas State University, Texas Tech, University of Southern Mississippi, West Georgia College and the Dramatists Guild Institute.

He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of Your Life, Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten‑Minute Play, A More Perfect Ten and in 2021, A Younger Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten-Minute Play for high schoolers. In April of 2014, The Kennedy Center instituted the National Gary Garrison Ten-Minute Play Award given to the best ten-minute play written by a university dramatist and in the spring of 2016 awarded him the Milan Stitt Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting in the country. In 2022, Tusculum University instituted the Gary Garrison Award for Ten Minute Plays for dramatists throughout the country. In July of this year, he was featured in American Theatre magazine’s The Subtext podcast with Brian James Polk under the title, More Than Ten Minutes with Gary Garrison.