Steven Dietz


Steven Dietz is an American playwright and theatre director. Called "the most ubiquitous American playwright whose name you may never have heard", Dietz has long been one of America's most prolific and widely produced playwrights. In 2019, Dietz was again named one of the 20 most-produced playwrights in America. Though several of his plays have been seen Off-Broadway, the vast majority of Dietz's plays are produced in American regional theaters. Seattle WA and Chicago IL are among the cities that have proved to be enduring homes for his work. Seattle's ACT Theatre has produced 12 plays by Dietz, including 7 world premieres. This includes a recent new variation on his own adaptation of "Dracula" entitled "Dracula: Mina's Quest". His new psychological thriller "How a Boy Falls", will premiere at Northlight Theatre, Chicago, in 2020. During the 2018-19 season, Dietz premiered two interlocking plays for adult and youth audiences, entitled "The Great Beyond" and "The Ghost of Splinter Cove." During the 2015-16 season, Dietz premiered three new plays: "Bloomsday", "This Random World", and the thriller "On Clover Road". Other recent plays include an intimate thriller, "The Shimmering"; the black comedy, "Rancho Mirage"; and a contemporary riff on Arthur Schnitzler's "Reigen" entitled "American la Ronde". Dietz's plays have been seen at Steppenwolf Theatre, Old Globe Theatre, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theatre Center, Alliance Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, the Dallas Theatre Center, and the Denver Center Theatre Company, among others. In 2010, Dietz was named one of the most produced playwrights in America, placing eighth on the list, tied with Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee for number of productions. Dietz's plays have been produced internationally in over twenty countries, and translated into a dozen languages. His work as a director has been seen Off-Broadway, at major regional theaters, as well as at the Sundance Institute and the Playwrights' Center - Minneapolis. In addition to teaching master classes in playwriting, story-making and collaboration around the United States, Dietz has taught in the MFA Playwriting and Directing programs at the University of Texas at Austin since 2006.

Life and career

Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Dietz graduated in 1980 with a B.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of Northern Colorado, after which he moved to Minneapolis and began his career as a director of new plays at The Playwrights' Center and other local theaters. During these years he also formed a small theatre company and began to write plays of his own. A commission from ACT Theatre to write "God's Country" brought him to Seattle, Washington in 1988, and he lived and worked in Seattle from 1991 to 2006. In 2006 he accepted a professorship at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2006, he and his family have divided their time between Austin and Seattle.
He is the recipient of the PEN U.S.A. Award in Drama ; the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award ; the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award ; the Yomiuri Shimbun Award for his adaptation of Shusaku Endo's Silence; and the 2007 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery for his adaptation of William Gillette's and Arthur Conan Doyle's 1899 play Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure. Dietz is also a two-time finalist for the prestigious Steinberg New Play Award, given by the American Theatre Critics Association. He was awarded the 2016 Steinberg New Play Award Citation for "Bloomsday."
Dietz's plays range from the political to the comedic. Many of them, have as a central theme the effects of personal betrayal and deception. A recent obsession of Dietz's seems to be the return of the "thriller" to the contemporary theatre canon. Examples include the conspiracy thriller, "Yankee Tavern"; the classic single-set thriller, "On Clover Road"; the intimate thriller, "The Shimmering"; and the psychological thriller, "How a Boy Falls." The majority of the plays are published by either Dramatists Play Service, or Samuel French, Inc.,. An anthology of Dietz's work for young audiences was published by UT Press in 2015. Many of the short plays are also anthologized.
Dietz's work as a director has been seen at many of America's leading regional theatres. He has directed premiere productions of new plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, Northlight Theatre, ACT Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theatre, City Theatre, Westside Arts, and the Sundance Institute, among many others. He was a resident director for ten years at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, where he also served as Artistic Director of Midwest PlayLabs.
Dietz's articles on new play development—most first seen in American Theatre Magazine—have been widely discussed and re-printed.

Works

Original plays (by year of first production)