Marcus Gardley

Early life and education

Gardley was born and raised in Oakland, California. He originally studied and wrote poetry at San Francisco State University (SFSU), though his poetry professors told him that his poems read like plays. Initially not wanting to admit this, Gardley eventually came around to acknowledge that his poems often did incorporate elements of playwrighting. Regarding this time, Gardley later recalled, "Oh, this is where I belong. I don't like speaking my work, I like hearing my work. What I like about theater is it's like an orchestra. There are these different sounds from different people. I think of my plays as compositions in a way." Gardley earned the SFSU African American Student of Outstanding Achievement Award for 2000–1 and graduated with his B.F.A. Gardley went on to earn his M.F.A. in playwriting from Yale School of Drama in 2004. Upon graduation, Gardley started teaching creative writing at Columbia University.

Career

Gardley is among a new group of young African-American playwrights who have come to prominence during the "Age of Obama". These emerging playwrights are considered to be postblack artists. Gardley's play ...And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi was produced at the Cutting Ball Theater and has earned both positive reviews and two sold-out extensions. ...And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi is a poetic voyage of forgiveness and redemption highly influenced by the myth of Demeter and Persephone. The play encompasses traditional storytelling, gospel music, and a humor to create a rich and vividly imaginative world. According to Gardley, "Jesus Moonwalks is in a lot of ways my signature play. It is based upon a story my great-grandmother used to tell about her father who fled the bonds of slavery and traveled the country in search of his family." In 2010, it was rated as one of the top ten plays in the Bay Area.

His play The House That Will Not Stand had its world premiere with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in January 2014. It was subsequently staged in London at the Tricycle Theatre.

In 2013 Gardley began a three-year term as the Playwright in Residence at Victory Gardens Theater, through the National Playwright Residency Program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by HowlRound. It was renewed in 2016 for another three years.

Awards

He was the recipient of the Helen Merrill Award in 2008 and the Kesselring honor award. His plays This World in a Woman's Hands (2009) and Love is a Dream House in Lorin (2007) have been named as the best plays in Bay Area theater, with Love is a Dream House in Lorin being nominated for the National Critics Steinberg New Play Award. Gardley is the author of the box: play about the prison industrial complex which premiered in Brooklyn in 2014 by The Foundry; black odyssey, which premiered at The Denver Theater Center the same year; The Road Weeps, the Well Runs Dry, which had a national tour in 2013; and Dance of the Holy Ghosts, which premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 2004. He is the recent recipient of the 2014 Glickman Award for his play The House That Will Not Stand, which was commissioned and produced by Berkeley Rep. It had subsequent productions at Yale Rep and the Tricycle Theater in London and was a finalist for the 2015 Kennedy Prize. Gardley was the 2013 USA James Baldwin Fellow and the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. Gardley has won the San Francisco Bay Area's Gerbode Emerging Playwright Award, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Award, the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Scholarship, and the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize. Gardley has an M.F.A. from the Yale Drama School. He is a member of New Dramatists, The Dramatists Guild and the Lark Play Development Center. Gardley was selected as one of 50 talented playwrights for audiences to follow by the Dramatists Magazine.