The Orange Garden

About the Playwright

Joanna Garner

A playwright and musician based in Sante Fe, New Mexico, Garner’s work has been developed nationally and internationally, including at the Banff Playwrights Colony, Tofte Lake Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, On the Boards, ZACH Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theater, Great Plains Theatre Conference, groundswell playwrights conference, National Winter Playwrights Retreat, Annex Theatre, Live Girls! Theater, 14/48: The World’s Quickest Theater Festival, the NEWvember New Plays Festival, Theatricum Botanicum, with Austin’s acclaimed Rude Mechs, and at the New York and Hollywood fringe festivals. Her political drama about Iran, The Orange Garden, was a winner of the 2016 Keene Prize for Literature and included on the 2016 Kilroys List.

An accomplished songwriter and musician, Joanna’s original country musical, 100 Heartbreaks, was workshopped in Seattle Rep’s New Play Program, with the Northwest Playwrights Alliance, and was presented at the country’s largest arts and culture festival, Bumbershoot. It premiered at the Sahara Lounge in Austin where it was nominated for an Austin Critics’ Table Award for Outstanding Musical.

Her short play about falling in love with lightning, Charged, was published in the November 2015 issue of Bare Fiction Magazine and another short play, Cat Cafe, was a finalist for this year’s Humana Festival of New Plays Heideman Award. This summer, her immersive exploration of food and sex, Please Open Your Mouth, premiered at Café Nordo in Seattle. Joanna will be the 2018 Resident Playwright at Chance Theater in Southern California, developing two new plays with the support of the company.

She has an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Texas at Austin.

OTR Season Producers

Steve Brown

Mary Kay Fyda-Mar

The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation