Joan ackermann playwright biography

Starting  March 17 and going through March 19, Shakespeare and Company is presenting readings of plays by Joan Ackerman. Joan lives in the Berkshires. Thirty-five years ago she and Gillian Seidl co-founded  Mixed Company,  a theatre in Great Barrington.  Mixed Company  not only produces Joan’s plays, but also the work of contemporary British and American playwrights.   

Joan has written for magazines and   television. When her play Off the Map  was made into a movie, she wrote the script. We had the pleasure of talking with Joan and  look forward to a first reading of her new play, Out of the Blue  Sunday, March 19. For a complete schedule of the readings of Joan’s plays, go to Shakespeare and Company’s website by clicking below after listening to the interview with Joan.

Interview with Joan Ackermann

Shakespeare and Company website

Biography

Joan Ackermann is co-founder and Artistic Director of Mixed Company theatre in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, now in its twenty-third year. Her plays include Zara Spook and Other Lures, Stanton's Garage, The Batting Cage, Don't Ride the Clutch, Bed and Breakfast, Rescuing Greenland, A Knight at the Theatre, My New York Hit, Back Story, Off the Map, Marcus is Walking, and Isabella: a Young Physician's Primer on the Perils of Love, a musical for which she wrote the music and lyrics. She adapted Off the Map into a screenplay directed by Campbell Scott and starring Joan Allen and Sam Elliot. Her plays have been produced at the Vineyard Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, Circle Rep, the George Street Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Shakespeare & Company, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Mark Taper Forum, and the Atlantic Theatre Company.

Plays by Joan Ackermann

• The Second Beam

  by

  Joan Ackermann

  • commens

• Ten-Minute Plays from the Guthrie Theater: Volume 3

  by

  Joan Ackermann

Joan Ackermann, a contemporary American playwright, is one of the freshest voices in modern theater, so much so that one of her most recent plays has already been filmed and released as a major motion picture. Off the Map has won acclaim not only on stage, but also as a film directed by Campbell Scott. The movie starred Joan Allen and Sam Elliott, was screened in competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and then received a limited release around the country in 2004.

Ackermann is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of Mixed Company theatre in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The company has been in existence for 23 years. Ackermann is a prolific playwright and, in addition to Off the Map, her many works include Zara Spook and Other Lures (1990), Bed and Breakfast, Rescuing Greenland, and Isabella: a Young Physician's Primer on the Perils of Love. Isabella: a Young...