Discipline: Theatre – playwriting

Peter Gray

Discipline: Theatre – playwriting
Region: Astoria, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 2019

Peter Gray has written musicals, plays, short stories, poems and children’s books. He has studied storytelling under Marsha Norman, Donald Margulies, Dan O’Brien, Naomi Iizuka, Deb Margolin, Paul Lazar, and Christopher Bayes, among others. His first play Bug Song gained him admission to the 2017 Sewanee Writers’ Conference and his original musical La Claque explores the colorful arts scene in 1830s Paris and received a reading at Yale in December 2017.

Research for his projects has taken him all over the world, including Copenhagen, Paris, and Israel. In celebration of the centennial of Polish theater director Tadeusz Kantor, Peter collaborated in creation of Zero or More Disposable Lessons, a theatrical piece which explored the mechanics of memory, anatomy of oppression, disposability of bodies, and dancing objects. Zero or More Disposable Lessons was performed at Yale University, Off-Broadway at La Mama, and at the Cricoteka in Krakow. He recently finished a residency with One Company.

At MacDowell, Peter began developing a series of modern day closet dramas, plays designed specifically to be read aloud with a group of friends instead of performed onstage. He also worked on a theatrical version of the Greek myth of Medea called Love, Medea. Love, Medea was scheduled for a reading at the New York Theatre Workshop in May.

Studios

Sorosis

Peter Gray worked in the Sorosis studio.

Sorosis Studio was funded by the New York Carol Club of Sorosis. The small, masonry studio was designed by F. Winsor, Jr., the architect who also designed Savidge Library (1926) and Mixter Studio (1927). At the time of construction, the large porch on the southeast façade offered a spectacular mountain view that has since been obscured…

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