Uggs for Gaza
Writer / Director
All Saints Day
Writer
Brooke Berman is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and memoirist whose work has been produced and published across the US and abroad. Originally trained as an actor and solo performer in the experimental theater, Brooke began performing her own work on the Lower East Side of Manhattan before receiving formal training in playwriting from the Juilliard School and Maria Irene Fornes. Her play Hunting and Gathering, which premiered at Primary Stages, directed by Leigh Silverman, was named one of the Ten Best of 2008 by New York Magazine. She has written films for Natalie Portman, The Mark Gordon Company, Vox Films, Red Crown, and Fugitive Films. She is currently raising money for her feature POLLY FREED, produced by Rebelle Media, and most recently developed her play A MODEL CITY with Leigh Silverman for Stacy Mindich Productions.
Brooke wrote and directed the short film UGGS FOR GAZA. UGGS premiered at the Aspen International ShortsFest where it won an Audience Special Recognition award and later played festivals including Toronto and Santa Fe. ALL SAINTS DAY, a short film she wrote, directed by Will Frears, won Best Narrative Short at the Savannah Film Festival and played at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008. She developed Polly Freed with support from New York Stage and Film’s Filmmakers Workshop and NYWIFT’s From Script to Pre-Production.
Brooke’s plays have been produced and developed across the US at theaters including: Primary Stages, The 2nd Stage, Steppenwolf, The Play Company, Soho Rep, Williamstown Theater Festival, Naked Angels, MCC, New Dramatists, New Georges, The Womens Project, The Humana Festival, and The Bay Area Playwrights Foundation. In the UK, her work has been developed at The Royal Court Theatre, The National Theatre Studio and Pentabus. Her plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing, Playscripts, Backstage Books and Smith & Kraus.
Brooke’s memoir, No Place Like Home, published by Random House, was called “Highbrow/Brilliant” by New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix. The book made Elle.com’s “Top Ten Summer Reads,” LA Magazine’s summer reading roundup and the EW piece “If You Like GIRLS, You’ll Love …” She is the author of two other nonfiction books, including the popular writing manual Nine Juicy Weeks to A Wonderfully Imperfect First Draft.
Awards and grants include: Berilla Kerr Award, a Helen Merrill Award, two Francesca Primus Awards, two LeCompte du Nuoy awards and a commissioning grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. She was a resident playwright at New Dramatists, where she served on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, earned a Calloway Award, and developed countless plays. She has received support for her work from the MacDowell Colony and the Corporation of Yaddo and commissions from Arielle Tepper Productions and CTC in Minneapolis.
Brooke attended Barnard College and is a graduate of The Juilliard School. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, PEN and an alumna of the MCC Playwrights Coalition and New Dramatists.
As a teacher, she was a guest artist in the New York City public school system through MCC Theater, and has taught at NYU Film School, Bard College, ESPA, Eugene Lang College, UCSB, Fordham University and Barnard College as well as privately through the “24 With 5 Teaching Collective” which she co-created at New Dramatists. She spent five years as the Director of the Playwrights Unit for MCC Theater’s Youth Company, a free after-school program for NYC youth.