Mark Bly has intersected with diverse communities across the country in resident theaters, colleges and on Broadway with many gifted collaborators for over the past 40 years, working as a dramaturg, producer, teacher, and advocate for new plays and playwrights. He is an active freelance dramaturg and has worked as a production dramaturg on the world premieres and American premieres of new plays by Suzan Lori-Parks (The America Play at Yale Rep and The Public 1994), Sarah Ruhl (The Passion Play, A Cycle, Arena Stage, 2005) Rajiv Joseph (Gruesome Playground Injuries, The Alley Theater, 2009), Moises Kaufman (33 Variations, Arena Stage (2007), La Jolla (2009), Howard Brenton and David Hare (Pravda, Guthrie Theater, 1989) and on Broadway with Emily Mann (Execution of Justice, 1986) and Moises Kaufman (33 Variations, 2009). Bly has dramaturged for Tony Award winning directors Doug Hughes, Daniel Sullivan, Robert Falls, Rebecca Taichman and Obie Award winning directors David Cromer, and JoAnne Akalaitis. He has recently crossed disciplines as Producing Associate Artist/Dramaturgy for the international film Ecstasy (2020) which had its United States premiere at MOMA. Ecstasy is by the Brazilian director Moara Passoni nominated for an Academy Award as Co- Writer/Associate Producer for the documentary Edge of Democracy (2019). Bly was Director of the MFA Playwriting Program at Yale School of Drama (1992-2004) while also teaching dramaturgy courses and serving as the Associate Artistic Director at the Yale Rep. In the 1980’s, while at The Guthrie Theater Bly was part of a small group of dramaturgs in the regional theaters who triggered and shaped a new era of collaborative dramaturgy in the United States that has led to the diverse, continuously evolving field of new dramaturgy today. Bly edited and contributed to Yale Theater, “American Production Dramaturgs” (1986), a collection of seminal interviews with many of our foremost dramaturgs and literary managers. He followed up this widely used document by creating and editing a trailblazing series Production Notebooks: Theatre in Process: Volumes 1 & 2 featuring the work of eight major national production dramaturgs (1996 & 2001 both still in print). In 1985 he helped to co-found LMDA and became the Board President for LMDA in 2000-2005. Bly was invited to co-lead the first ever LMDA delegation to a Mexico arts conference (Puerta de las Americas Festival) generating an international dialogue and exchange of resources among artists and scholars that continues today. Building upon that Bly was asked to moderate the Keynote Panel for the 2021 LMDA Mexico Conference: Keynote: Mexico City 2006-Mexico City 2021 and Beyond! In 2014 he created and funded the LMDA Bly Creative Capacity Grant/Fellowship Program to support eighteen international projects that advanced the practice of dramaturgy ranging from injecting contemporary astronomy with dramaturgical narratives, dramaturgy that broke down indigenous barriers, and promoting digital dramaturgy. He has been a member of “LMDA Dramaturging the Phoenix Forum” and “LMDA Anti-Racism Task Force” since 2020. Bly is the co-founder and director for the international Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Program. He has also served as a Playwriting Workshop Leader there since 2002. In 2010 Bly received the LMDA Gotthold Lessing Lifetime Achievement Award in Dramaturgy at Banff in Canada. He received in 2019 the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Medallion for Lifetime Excellence in Dramaturgy for his work as someone who has shaped and championed dramaturgy in American theater. In 2020 his latest book New Dramaturgies: Strategies and Exercises for 21st Century Playwriting was published featuring nine unique play generating prompts deployed over the years in workshops featuring playwrights Bly worked with at Yale, Hunter College and Fordham/Primary Stages who have gone on to have major careers in theater and media including Ken Lin, Lindsey Ferrentino, Marcus Gardley, Sarah Treem, and Rolin Jones. In the Spring of 2023 he will be inducted into the prestigious College of the American Theatre whose past and current members include Edward Albee, Lee Breuer, Jane Alexander, Ming Cho Lee, Naomi Iizuka, and Michael Lupu.

Classical and New Play Production Dramaturgy; Teaching Playwriting, conducting Dramaturgy and Playwriting Screenwriting Workshops in person and online.

German, English, Spanish.

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