AMERICAN THEATRE | The Subtext: Benjamin Benne’s Sound and Imaginative and prescient

Every month on The Subtext, Brian speaks with a playwright about life, writing, and no matter itches we’re scratching.

This month he speaks to playwright Benjamin Benne (a visitor on Offscript in 2022) about how he defines success, which a part of the play-making course of he most cherishes (and which he dreads), his household’s alternating encouragement of and indifference to his work, and the Julio Cortázar story, Axolotl, that “broke his mind” and sparked his creativeness. Benne’s breakthrough manufacturing was Alma at Heart Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre in 2022, which led to stagings of the play at American Blues Theater, ArtsWest, Curious Theatre Firm, Central Sq. Theater, The Spot, and Likelihood Theatre. His different performs embody In His Arms at D.C.’s Mosaic Theater Firm, Manning at Portland Stage, and What/Washed Ashore/Astray at Pilsbury Home Theatre. He’s had performs developed by the Ojai Playwrights Convention, Williamstown Theatre ComPetition, Eugene O’Neill Theater Heart’s Nationwide Playwrights Convention, the Public Theater, Roundabout Theatre Firm, Playwrights Realm, Denver Heart for the Performing Arts, the Previous Globe, Two River Theater, New Concord Challenge, and SPACE on Ryder Farm, amongst many others. His work explores intimate, real looking relationships blended with surreal, implausible, and numinous components that spur expansive, existential questions on grief and loss, dying and the afterlife, religion and the divine.

Benne is a Playwrights’ Heart ’23-26 Core Author and an alum of Major Stage’s Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group. He holds an MFA in playwriting from the David Geffen Faculty of Drama at Yale, the place his lecturers included Anne Erbe, Amy Herzog, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Sarah Ruhl.