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Murray Mednick

Murray Mednick (Playwright) is a pioneer of the Off and Off-Off Broadway movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s and was playwright-in-residence for Theater Genesis.  He wrote such ground-breaking works as THE HAWK (NY), THE HUNTER (NY), SAND (NY), WILLIE, THE GERM (NY), ARE YOU LOOKIN’(NY), SCAR (LA) (starring: Ed Harris), COYOTE CYCLE (LA) and THE DEER KILL (NY) (1970 OBIE Award for Outstanding Play), and was the founder/artistic director of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival in Los Angeles from 1978 to 1995. Murray is the recipient of two Rockefeller Foundation grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Theatre Critics Association Best New Play citation (for JOE AND BETTY), a Career Achievement Award from the LA Weekly, an Ovation Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to Los Angeles Theater from the LA Stage Alliance, a Local Hero Award from Backstage West, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theater. “As Murray Mednick experiments with language… he is emblematic of a Los Angeles dramatic tradition in much the same way that Clifford Odets is identifiable with Gotham or David Mamet with Chicago,” wrote Bob Verini in Variety. Mednick’s most recent production of his play, VILLON was nominated for ‘best new play’ by the Stage Raw committee in 2015.  In 2017, Open Fist Theatre Company produced Mednick’s seven-play cycle THE GARY PLAYS at the Atwater Theatre, in Los Angeles, California. The production was nominated for (4) 2017 Ovation Awards. In 2018, Theatre Planners production company, in conjunction with Padua Playwrights, produced Mednick’s MAYAKOVSKY AND STALIN,” at The Lounge Theatre in Hollywood. The production moved to the Cherry Lane Theatre in NY City October 2019. Mednick’s latest play BLACKOUTS was produced online through YouTube live for 2 weeks in June, 2020.

Murray Mednick
Murray Mednick