Barbara Ann Blatner

BARBARA BLATNER is a playwright, poet and composer. In Fall 2010, New York Quarterly Books published her verse memoir, THE STILL POSITION; in March 2012, the same press brought out a second full-length poetry collection, LIVING WITH YOU. Her play YEARS OF SKY will be produced by Scripts Up! at the 59E59 Theaters in February 2013.

Barbara’s verse play for Epiphany, NO STAR SHINES SHARPER, was produced for stage and radio by the Mystic Theatre Company in 2004, published by Baker’s Plays in 1990, aired repeatedly on National Public Radio stations, and acquired by New York’s Museum of Television and Radio. GRASSY KNOLL was produced in the First Annual Boston Theatre Marathon (1999) and appeared in Baker’s Plays anthology of plays selected from that event, and in New York’s Turnip Theatre Short Play Festival (1997). SHADOW PLAY received a workshop production in the Cleveland Public Theatre’s 1993 New Plays Festival. Barbara’s adaptation of Tadeusz Borowski’s THIS WAY FOR THE GAS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN was commissioned by New Voices and staged at the Boston Public Library. THE CHOICE, a video about childbearing written and produced with Diane Woodbrown, was shown in the 1991 International Women’s Video Festival. Upcoming productions include GUERNICA 2003 in the American Globe Theatre’s 15-minute Play Festival, in April of this year.

Work staged in Boston’s New Theatre’s NeWorks series includes YEARS OF SKY (ten-minute version, Honorable Mention, Nina Shengold’s Actors and Writers Short Play Contest), BETTY AND MORTIE (a musical), and MARILYN MONROE IN THE DESERT. CLEARING and WHITE ASHES were finalists in the O’Neill International Playwrights contest, POSTURES was staged by the Capital Repertory Company, and THE FAIR was produced by the Albany Playwrights' Workshop which Ms. Blatner founded and where she worked as director, writer and composer under a CETA grant for four seasons. Compositions include songs for the 1989 Boston Shakespeare Company’s Irish Plays season, a score for the Merrimack Repertory Company’s Young Artists at Play ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and an instrumental score for New Theatre’s 1996 premiere of Rosanna Alfaro’s PABLO AND CLEOPATRA.

Ms. Blatner has taught Creative Writing and Composition at Yeshiva University since 2002. She received a Doctor of Arts in English from the SUNY-Albany, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University, and a B.A. in Music Composition from Vassar College