Benjamin Benne (beh-nay) is a playwright from Los Angeles & Orange County who is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. He is a 2026 Page 73 Writers Group member and was named part of "LA Vanguardia: The Latino innovators, instigators and power players breaking through barriers" by the Los Angeles Times. He began pursuing playwriting in 2013, following the passing of his father; his work explores intimate, realistic relationships mixed with surreal, fantastic, and numinous elements that spur expansive, existential questions about grief and loss, death and the afterlife, faith and the Divine.
His produced plays include Alma (Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre, American Blues Theater, ArtsWest Playhouse, Curious Theatre Company, Central Square Theater, The Spot Sun Valley, Chance Theater, Passage Theatre Company), In His Hands (Mosaic Theater Company of DC, First Floor Theater), Manning (Portland Stage), Wave After Wave (Actors Theatre of Louisville), and What / Washed Ashore / Astray (Pillsbury House Theatre). Forthcoming productions in 2026 include Manning (West Coast Premiere: Crowded Fire in San Francisco, CA) and at the very bottom of a body of water (World Premiere: Boston Court Pasadena in Los Angeles, CA; LA New Play Project Award Winner). Additionally, his plays have been developed by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Great Plains Theatre Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Public, Roundabout Theatre Company, The New Group, Playwrights Realm, Colorado New Play Festival, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Old Globe, Two River Theater, New Harmony Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and The Lark, among many others.
Ben is a recipient of the Robert Chesley/Victor Bumbalo Playwriting Award, Arizona Theatre Company's National Latinx Playwriting Award, Kennedy Center/KCATF Latinx Playwriting Award, American Blues Theater's Blue Ink Playwriting Award, Portland Stage's Clauder Competition Grand Prize, Ojai Playwrights Conference's Dr. Kerry English Artist Award, and Orange Curtain Review's Award for Best Writing. He's a Playwrights' Center Affiliated Writer (Many Voices Fellowship, McKnight Fellowship in Playwriting, Core Writer) and an alum of Parley, Primary Stage's Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, and Chance Theater's Resident Playwright program. He has been commissioned by South Coast Repertory and Seattle Repertory. He received his MFA in Playwriting from the David Geffen/Yale School of Drama, where he was the recipient of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting and his teachers included Anne Erbe, Pulitzer finalists Amy Herzog and Sarah Ruhl, and Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney.
CLASS DESCRIPTION
Revision is a critical and inevitable stage in a play’s development.
Revision can be intimidating. How do you know what to change about your play?
Revision can be scary. What if you ruin your play by changing it?
Revision can be daunting. Where do you even start?
In this class, students are going to explore vocabulary for playmaking and tools for revision, and then apply them to their playmaking.
This class is for you if you:
- Feel frozen in your revision process.
- Are looking for new revision strategies.
- Want to learn how to be your own dramaturg.
- Need help dissecting your play and identifying what changes to implement.
- Are interested in learning more about Benjamin Benne’s work and approach to writing.
What to expect:
- Work with the instructor to identify specific goals for your next draft, and create a map for your rewrites.
- Connecting and engaging with students and the instructor online via Zoom and Google Classroom.
- Accountability while sharing, reading, and responding to the work of your peers.
Class Modality: Hybrid Asynchronous – Alternates between online meetings and online lessons/assignments on your own via Google Classroom.
Class Dates: Every other Thursday, January 25th through March 14th
- 5 total “in-person” sessions: January 25th, February 8th, February 22nd, March 7th, and March 14th
- 3 total Google Classroom lessons: February 1st, February 15th, February 29th
Revision can be exploratory. Rest assured: one can always revert back to a previous version of the play.
Revision can be illuminating. The time spent with our play allows us to enhance our understanding of our work and strengthen it.
Revision can be playful. I believe in writing into as many different versions of a play, exploring many alternate choices along the way, to discover the optimal version of the play.
Benjamin Benne
