Kristin Idaszak is an internationally produced playwright, essayist, and cultural critic whose recent work focuses on the intersection of the climate crisis, gender, and chronic illness.
Bio
Kristin Idaszak (she/they) is a two-time Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellow. Her play Second Skin received the Kennedy Center's Paula Vogel Award and Jean Kennedy Smith Award, and her play Another Jungle was a Relentless Award Honorable Mention. She was the Shank Playwriting Fellow at the Goodman Theatre and a member of the Goodman Playwrights Unit. She has received commissions from EST/The Sloan Foundation, Cleveland Play House, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, and The New Coordinates. She was the Kennedy Center Fellow at Sundance Theatre Lab.
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Nationally, her work has been seen at or developed through the Goodman Theatre, The Playwrights' Center, La Jolla Playhouse's WoW Festival, The Drama League, Ensemble Studio Theatre, SPACE at Ryder Farm, Pasadena Playhouse, the Williamstown Theatre Festival Directing Studio, Circle X, Renaissance Theaterworks, Palm Beach Dreamworks, Perishable Theatre, and others. With choreographer Erin Tracy, she has co-created Better Metaphors, which premiered at the Blurred Borders international dance theatre festival in San Diego, and Commence, for the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective. She received a residency at the Qualcomm Institute IDEAS series to develop her play Radiance (a witch hunt). Kristin has been a finalist for the Princess Grace Fellowship and at Hedgebrook, New Harmony, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival.
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In Chicago, Kristin's plays have been produced or developed by Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, The New Coordinates, Shattered Globe, Wild Claw Theatre, and 20% Theatre Company. She has received an Incubator grant and an Individual Artist Program grant from the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She also received Stage Left Theatre's Downstage Left Residency. She was nominated for a Jeff award for Best New Work for co-writing Theatre Seven's We Live Here.
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As a professor and scholar, Kristin has served as an adjunct professor at The Theatre School at DePaul University where she was Acting Head of the Dramaturgy/Criticism BFA program (Winter/Spring 2022), Northwestern University, and Westmont College. She was a visiting scholar and has guest lectured on Staging Climate Change at FLAME University in Pune, India. She has also been a visiting Guest Artist at Southern Illinois University, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College, Coe College, and Michigan State University. She has also taught master classes and seminars at the Playwrights' Center, KCACTF, and Chicago Dramatists. Additionally, she has mentored youth artists through the Pillsbury House + Theatre Chicago Avenue Project as well as the American Theatre Company's docudrama project the Chicago Chronicle.
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Kristin is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Cloudgate Theatre, a company dedicated to telling fiercely theatrical stories through a queer feminist lens. Cloudgate presented her play Another Jungle in April 2018 in co-production with The Syndicate and Strange Heart Beating in July 2019. Previously, she served as the Associate Artistic Director and Literary Manager for Caffeine Theatre and the Associate Artistic Director of Collaboraction. She has worked in the literary departments at the Goodman Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Trinity Rep, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. She is a former board member of Chicago Dramatists, where she chaired the Artistic Affairs Committee.
As an essayist and cultural critic, Kristin's work appears or is forthcoming in Fourth Genre, HowlRound, Rescripted (where she is a staff writer), and Bending Genres.
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She was awarded her MFA in Playwriting at the University of California, San Diego. She received her BFA in Theatre Arts from The Theatre School at DePaul University, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a double major in philosophy and was the first Theatre School student to graduate from the Honors Program.