Gary Garrison was recently appointed Executive Director of the Dramatist Guild of America – the national organization of playwrights, lyricists and composers. For the past ten years he has filled the posts of Artistic Director, Producer and fulltime faculty member in the Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has produced the last eighteen Festivals of New Works for NYU, working with hundreds of playwrights, directors and actors. Garrison’s plays include Verticals and Horizontals, Storm on Storm, It Belongs on Stage (and Not in My Bed), Crater, Old Soles, Padding The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou?and When A Diva Dreams. This work has been featured at the Boston Theatre Marathon, Primary Stages, The Directors Company, Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Fourth Unity, Open Door Theatre, African Globe Theatre Company, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New York Rep. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of Your Life, Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten Minute Play, two volumes of Monologues for Men by Men (all Heinemann Press), and the KCACTF’s Best Student Plays of 2006. He is a the program coordinator for the Summer Playwriting Intensive for the Kennedy Center, the former National Chair of Playwriting for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival and recipient of the Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education.
