Born in Mexico, Karen Zacarias went directly from college to a job with The National Endowment for Democracy as an assistant Program Officer for Latin America. As she has told Jacqueline Lawton of the “Women Playwrights of DC” website, she “missed creative writing, so I took a night class on playwriting at Georgetown University.” She followed that up with a master’s degree in the same subject from Boston University, where she studied with such notables as Nobel Prize winners Derek Walcott and Elie Wiesel.
Her plays began receiving professional productions in the mid-90s, and have since won a number of prestigious awards, including the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play in 2000. She is also the founder of Young Playwrights’ Theater, which is described by The Playwrights’ Center as “an award-winning non-profit dedicated to enhancing literacy, arts empowerment and conflict resolution through playwriting in Washington, DC area schools.” Ms. Zacarias is also a resident playwright at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and a member of the faculty at Georgetown University, where she teaches playwriting.
She told John Barry of “DC Theater Scene” that much of the material on which she based The Book Club Play derives, not surprisingly, from her own experiences as a member of a book club for fourteen years. “[W]hen you talk to other people at book clubs, they share these amazing stories. It’s about people getting together to talk about how literature affects them. But really, it’s an excuse to share your life and connect with other people. So book clubs can become a really wonderful social gathering place, but also can become a petri dish for feelings and things going wrong as well.”
The play first opened in 2008, and was revised and restaged in 2011 at Arena Stage. This is its Maine premiere.
Her plays began receiving professional productions in the mid-90s, and have since won a number of prestigious awards, including the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play in 2000. She is also the founder of Young Playwrights’ Theater, which is described by The Playwrights’ Center as “an award-winning non-profit dedicated to enhancing literacy, arts empowerment and conflict resolution through playwriting in Washington, DC area schools.” Ms. Zacarias is also a resident playwright at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and a member of the faculty at Georgetown University, where she teaches playwriting.
She told John Barry of “DC Theater Scene” that much of the material on which she based The Book Club Play derives, not surprisingly, from her own experiences as a member of a book club for fourteen years. “[W]hen you talk to other people at book clubs, they share these amazing stories. It’s about people getting together to talk about how literature affects them. But really, it’s an excuse to share your life and connect with other people. So book clubs can become a really wonderful social gathering place, but also can become a petri dish for feelings and things going wrong as well.”
The play first opened in 2008, and was revised and restaged in 2011 at Arena Stage. This is its Maine premiere.