Claire Soleil Gardner is a multi-disciplinary playwright, poet, director, dramaturg, and performer with a B.F.A. in theatre arts from Boston University. Gardner is a proud diasporic Métis-Cree individual whose passion for history, education, and social justice are central to their work. They are a 2026 finalist for the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.
Based in NYC and the Northeast, recent work includes selection of DEVIL GIRL for LimeFest at The Tank, playing “Zanj” in Into Your Hands by Tomi Endter at The Public, the New to the Neighborhood playwright residency commissioned by What Will the Neighbors Say?, Assistant Direction of Number Our Days: A Photographic Oratorio at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, selection of Virtual Rez-ality for Native Voices Short Play Festival 2025, performing as “Moon” in Two Spirit F(l)ag by Ty Defoe in the Say Gay Plays festival, and co-writing The Kittie Knox Plays commissioned by Plays in Place.
At MacDowell, Gardner researched local Abenaki history to write an Indigenous adaptation of Our Town by Thornton Wilder.
Claire Soleil Gardner
Studios
Monday Music
Claire Soleil Gardner worked in the Monday Music studio.
Given to the residency by the Monday Music Club of Orange, NJ, Monday Music Studio is sited next to an enormous boulder deposited by glaciers thousands of years ago. A small dormer once pierced the east slope of the roof, but after damage suffered in the 1938 hurricane, the roof was…