L.M.Feldman-Tpl-New-Jersey_MACD-19-089_191
L M Feldman is a queer, feminist, GNC playwright who writes theatrically audacious, physically kinetic, ensemble-driven plays that are both epic & intimate – usually about outsiders, often about searchers, always about the human connection. She writes plays that shift the prism, plays that quest & grapple, plays without answers. Plays about the women and queers she finds in the shadows & footnotes & margins. Plays wrestling with voice & agency, opportunity & access, history & its wake. Plays that explode space & time & dramaturgical form. Plays in which something TRANSCENDENT transpires – for the community both onstage and off.
So far, her plays include S P A C E (EST/Sloan commission, Playwrights’ Center, Drama League, Fresh Ground Pepper, Sue Winge Award); THRIVE, OR WHAT YOU WILL [AN EPIC] (American Shakespeare Center, Kitchen Dog New Works Festival, New Georges Audrey Residency, Page 73 Residency, InterAct Core Playwrights); ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE (Colorado New Play Festival, FEWW Prize Honorable Mention, Magic Theatre Play Festival, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, PlayPenn Conference, Playwrights Realm Fellowship); SCRIBE, OR THE SISTERS MILTON, OR ELEGY FOR THE UNWRITTEN (Playwrights’ Center, Emerson Stage, Georgetown University, Northwoods Ramah Theatre commission); THE EGG-LAYERS (Jane Chambers Honorable Mention, New Georges/Barnard College co-commission); GRACE, OR THE ART OF CLIMBING (Denver Center, Brown Paper Box Co., Art House Productions, Nice People Theatre, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award Nomination, Barrymore Nomination); A PEOPLE [A MOSAIC PLAY] (Terrence McNally Award Finalist, Orbiter 3, YiddishFest, Jewish Plays Project); and a TYA stage adaptation of the poem-novel TROPICAL SECRETS: HOLOCAUST REFUGEES IN CUBA by Margarita Engle (Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Kindness Project commission).
Her ensemble-devised works include GUMSHOE (New Paradise Labs + the Free Library of Philadelphia + the Rosenbach Museum), WAR OF THE WORLDS: PHILADELPHIA (Swim Pony + Drexel University), AND IF YOU LOSE YOUR WAY, OR A FOOD ODYSSEY (The Invisible Dog, New York Innovative Theatre Award Nomination), LADY M (Philadelphia Live Arts Festival), the circus-theater show TINDER & ASH (SummerStage NYC, Orchard Project Residency, TOHU Residency), and many others.
L and her work have been nominated for the Venturous Award, Herb Alpert Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Barrie & Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award, and twice for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her work was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Drama, the Jane Chambers Award, and the FEWW Prize. She couldn’t be more grateful for the validation each of these has offered.
L is also ongoingly thankful to have been a fellow at MacDowell, the Playwrights Realm, New Georges, InterAct Theatre, and the Dramatists Guild; a winner of Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries; a member of Orbiter 3 (Philadelphia’s producing-playwrights collective); an alum of both the Yale School of Drama (M.F.A. in playwriting) and the New England Center for Circus Arts (major in duo trapeze, minor in handbalancing); a current thought partner with the 2022-2023 Artistic Caucus (Baltimore Center Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Long Wharf, & St. Louis Rep); and a current Core Writer with The Playwrights’ Center (2021-2024).
As a contemporary circus artist, L performed duo trapeze at festivals around the world. She continues to teach & dramaturg for circus artists around the country. She is passionate about theater that MOVES, and circus that DELVES.
L has lived in seven cities and is currently based in Philadelphia, where she writes, devises, dramaturgs, advocates, teaches (all over the place), and handstands (also all over the place).