Sylvan Oswald is an interdisciplinary artist who creates plays, texts, publications, and video that use metatheatricality and formal irreverence to explore the ways we construct our identities. Sylvan’s plays include Trainers (Gate Theatre, London 2020), A Kind of Weather (Diversionary Theater, San Diego 2020), Sun Ra (Joe’s Pub), Profanity (Undermain Theater, Dallas), Nightlands (New Georges), Pony (About Face Theater, Chicago), and Vendetta Chrome (Clubbed Thumb). Other projects include “Cut Piece,” an essay inspired by Yoko Ono and the history of playwriting; Play A Journal of Plays (2003-2011); “Outtakes,” a web series; and High Winds, a live performance based on his artist’s book of the same name (X Artists’ Books, 2017). Honors include a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Thom Thomas Award for Playwriting from the Dramatists’ Guild Fund, a Rosati Fellowship from the Rubinstein Library at Duke University, the Dorothy Strelsin Playwriting Fellowship from Soho Rep, a Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, as well as residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and Sundance/Ucross.
While in residence, he researched Jean Cocteau for a new play inspired by his life and work. He also polished up Goat Songs, a play he last worked on here in 2006. He is an assistant professor of playwriting at UCLA and an alumnus of New Dramatists. @sylvanoswald
