Center for the literary arts in New York State
AUTHORS THEATRE
Marcus Gardley: Staged reading
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Conversation/Q&A with WAMC's Joe Donahue
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203 See map.
The multi-talented Marcus Gardley — playwright, poet, and screenwriter —reimagines Shakespeare’s "King Lear," set within the world of a Black church, where a dying father’s legacy must be carried on by one of his children. But who should take his place, when ideologies clash, and everyone has their own ideas about what it means to be a leader? This staged reading will be the very first of this work-in-progress, from a writer The New Yorker calls “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello and Tennessee Williams.”
Gardley, whom The New Yorker describes as “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello, and Tennessee Williams,” most recently wrote the screenplay for the reimagining of The Color Purple (2023), which won 11 NAACP Awards - the most nominations and wins in history.
He won the 2022 WGA award for Best Adapted TV Longform Series for "Maid" (Netflix). In 2019, he was named the Library Laureate of San Francisco by the city’s mayor, and on September 26th, the city of Oakland celebrated “Marcus Gardley Day” in his honor.
He is the recipient of the 2019 Doris Duke Artist Award, the 2019 Obie Award for his play The House that will not Stand, the 2015 Glickman Award, and a finalist for the 2016 and 2015 Kennedy Prize. Other plays include X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation, black odyssey (2023 Drama Desk nomination), The Gospel of Lovingkindness, every tongue confess, …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, and the road weeps, the well runs dry.
On television, he has written for several series, including Boots Riley’s "I'm a Virgo" (Amazon), "The Chi" (Showtime), "Foundation" (Apple), "NOS4A2" (AMC), "Tales of the City" (Netflix), and "Mindhunter" (Netflix). His Marvin Gaye biopic was picked up by Warner Brothers with Allen Hughes attached to direct.
Gardley was born and raised in Oakland, California. He is the current Co-Chair of the Playwriting Program at The David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.
Authors Theatre was created to bring dramaturgy and audience response into the creative process. Featuring staged readings of original plays-in-progress or adaptations of work from other genres, Authors Theatre is designed to focus on dramatic writing as literary text and to provide a mechanism to assist playwrights in the creation of new work.
Presented by the UAlbany Theatre Program and the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute.
