Mary Gallagher’s plays FATHER DREAMS, LITTLE BIRD, CHOCOLATE CAKE (included in WIN/LOSE/DRAW), BUDDIES, DOG EAT DOG, LOVE MINUS, HOW TO SAY GOODBYE, DE DONDE? and WINDSHOOK have been published by Dramatists Play Service and produced at such theaters as American Conservatory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Hartford Stage Company, the Alley Theatre, the Main Street Theatre, the Cincinnati Playhouse, and (in NYC) the Vineyard Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Women’s Project, HOME, the Provincetown Playhouse and the Public Theatre, as well as in many other countries. DE DONDE? was also published in AMERICAN THEATRE and WINDSHOOK is in NEW PLAYS FROM ACT’S YOUNG CONSERVATORY Vol. I and BEST PLAYS BY WOMEN 1996. Gallagher’s short plays ANDRE THE SEAL, BEDTIME, BROTHER, SANDWICH, FIRST COMMUNION, and various versions of PERFECT are anthologized or available from playscripts.com.
Her screenplays for Paramount, MGM, HBO, NBC, CBS, Lifetime and Showtime include NOBODY’S CHILD, co-written by Ara Watson and directed by Lee Grant (Writers Guild Award, Emmy for Marlo Thomas); BONDS OF LOVE, starring Treat Williams, (Best TV Movie of the Year, Banff International Television Festival); and THE PASSION OF AYN RAND, starring Helen Mirren, Peter Fonda and Eric Stoltz, which premiered at Sundance and aired on Showtime (Emmy for Mirren, Golden Globe for Fonda). In 2002-3, Gallagher was a staff writer for JOJO’S CIRCUS, a hit stop-action-animation show on the Disney Channel.
Fellowships and honors: fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation on the Arts; an NEA/TCG Residency Grant, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Rosenthal New Play Prize, the Berrilla Kerr Award, the Heideman Award, three production grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Writers Guild Award and the Luminas Award from Women in Film.
For six years, Gallagher was artistic director of Gypsy, a theatre company in New York’s Hudson Valley which collaborated in creating site-specific mask-and-puppet theatre, including PREMANJALI AND THE 7 GEESE BROTHERS, AMA and THE SCOTTISH PLAY. In 1996-7, she directed the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa. From 2001-2010, she taught playwriting and screenwriting at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and Actors & Writers and an alumna of New Dramatists, where she created and moderated the series, “YOU CAN MAKE A LIFE: Conversations with Playwrights” from 1994-2001.
Current projects include new full-length and short plays, a screenplay, and a 19th century novel called EXQUISITE IN MOURNING.