Claudia Allen

Claudia Allen’s play Hanging Fire premiered in 2004 at Victory Gardens Theater in a co-world premiere with Florida Stage. Author of over thirty plays, she has been widely produced around the country. Her other premieres at Victory Gardens include Winter and Fossils (both starring Julie Harris), Cahoots (Starring Sharon Gless), Hannah Free, Deed of Trust, and the Joseph Jefferson Award-winning plays Still Waters and The Long Awaited. She received a Trailblazer Award in 2000 from Bailiwick Rep.  In 1999, Chicago Magazine named Allen “Best Playwright.” Her play anthology She’s Always Liked the Girls Best  was a finalist for an American Library Association Award and a Lammie. Her play Unspoken Prayers was a finalist for the 2003 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.  Allen was a recipient of the Chicago Adapt Disability Arts and Culture Award.  She teaches playwriting at the University of Chicago, Lake Forest College and the Victory Gardens Training Center.

Recently, she is currently co-executive producer and screenwriter of a film adaptation of her play Hannah Free, filming in Chicago, starring Sharon Gless. Claudia has completed a new play, O'Beast (written by her inner angry fat kid) and she's working on an adaptation of a Willa Cather novel and threatening to do a musical version of her play Movie Queens. Her Jeff-nominated I Sailed with Magellan is being published by Dramatists Play Service.