JOYCE VAN DYKE
Playwright
News
THE OIL THIEF
I'm honored by the inclusion of THE OIL THIEF in 100 Plays to Save the World by Elizabeth Freestone and Jeanie O'Hare (Nick Hern Books).
"A thrilling compendium of plays that speak to the enormous environmental crisis of our time." Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director, The Public Theater.
REPRESENTATION AND HOW TO GET IT
Upcoming production: August 24-26, 2023, at The Mount, Edith Wharton's home in Lenox, MA, presented by Great Barrington Public Theater.
A new solo show about women's voting rights and Julia Ward Howe, now on tour. For information about booking a performance, visit www.Representationtheplay.com.
THE WOMEN WHO MAPPED THE STARS - School Tour
Now on tour in Maine schools, 2022-2023.
From the original full-length play, this is a 50-minute adaptation for schools commissioned by the University of Southern Maine. For information about booking a performance, email sara.valentine@maine.edu.
AMERICAN OTHELLO
Inspired by the first major American production of Shakespeare's play with a multiracial cast: Paul Robeson, José Ferrer, Uta Hagen (then married to Ferrer), and Margaret Webster, who directed and co-produced along with Robeson. Their 1940s wartime production of Othello changed theatre history -- and upended their lives. Now, a surprise reunion of the four actors fans new flames. (Staged reading, Gloucester Stage Company, 2021.)
Press
"revelatory and triumphant"
EdgeBoston
"Director Lucie Tiberghien mines the play’s pathos, comedy and mystery with her dazzling staging . . . an entrancing theatrical spectacle."
Theatre Scene
"Enchanting and thought-provoking"
Boston Globe
"a drama as explosive as a pistol shot"
Digital City
"All of the human drama is crystalline in The Oil Thief "
Boston Phoenix
"Somehow, Joyce Van Dyke fits not just a love triangle but 450 million years of geological time into a taut, mesmerizing 80 minutes."
Boston Globe Critics' Picks
"thrilling"
Boston Herald
"A Girl's War [is] Joyce Van Dyke's moving and thoughtful play about ethnic tensions in the Caucasus -- though it applies to just about any war in the world."
Boston Globe Critics' Picks
"Van Dyke creates three unforgettable characters, depicts the complex and shifting relationships among them . . . It’s the vastness of Van Dyke’s perspective that makes the smallest moments of personal heartache affect us so strongly."
Boston Globe
About
Joyce Van Dyke's REPRESENTATION AND HOW TO GET IT, on tour in 2022-23, is a new one-woman show about voting rights and Julia Ward Howe. It was performed at New York's United Solo Theatre Festival, as well as Boston's Revolutionary Spaces and other New England venues.
THE WOMEN WHO MAPPED THE STARS is on tour in Maine (2022-23), in an adaptation commissioned for school performance. The original play about five astronomers who did groundbreaking work at the Harvard Observatory was commissioned by Central Square Theater and had its world premiere in 2018 by The Nora / Central Square Theater.
DAYBREAK premiered Off-Broadway in 2018 at the Beckett Theatre (Theatre Row), produced by Pan Asian Repertory Theatre. An earlier version had a workshop production by Boston Playwrights' Theatre at the Modern Theatre under the title, DEPORTED / A DREAM PLAY.
Other plays include THE OIL THIEF, included in 100 Plays to Save the World (Nick Hern Books, 2021.) THE OIL THIEF was originally commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre / Sloan Project, produced by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and won the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Script (2009). A GIRL’S WAR, produced by Golden Thread Productions, New Repertory Theatre, and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, won multiple awards including the Gassner Award and the Boston Globe’s “Top Ten” plays of 2001, and was anthologized in Contemporary Armenian American Drama (2004). A MacDowell Fellow and Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow, Joyce has taught Shakespeare and playwriting for many years at Harvard Extension School.
