Discipline: Theatre – playwriting

Shayan Lotfi

Discipline: Theatre – playwriting
Region: Brooklyn, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 2022

Shayan Lotfi is the Tow Playwright-in-Residence at the Atlantic Theater, where his play What Became of Us premiered. He is the recipient of the Horton Foote Award from the Dramatists Guild, a Citation of Excellence from the Laurents / Hatcher Foundation, a MacDowell Fellowship, and is currently under commission from the Atlantic Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, and South Coast Repertory. He is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and an alum of The Working Farm Writers’ Group at SPACE on Ryder Farm and Page 73’s I-73 Writers Group.

In addition to writing, he also works as an urban planning consultant, and holds degrees from New York University, the London School of Economics, and the University of British Columbia. Born in Tehran, his family left Iran as refugees for Canada, where he was raised, and currently he lives in New York with his husband.

While at MacDowell in 2022, Lotfi worked on a play that chronicles multiple generations of one family as well as a TV pilot set at a refugee resettlement agency.

Studios

Schelling

Shayan Lotfi worked in the Schelling studio.

Marian MacDowell funded construction of this studio the year that the organization was established and the first artists arrived for residency. It was called Bark Studio until 1933, when it was renamed in honor of Ernest Schelling, a composer, pianist, and orchestral leader who served as president of what was then called the Edward MacDowell…

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