Cynthia L. (Cindy) Cooper is a New York City based playwright. She was twice a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights' Center, where she also directed a Women's Playwriting Conference and served as the Interim Director. Her plays--10 full-length, 20 short, a half-dozen for young audiences--are published in 15 volumes and have been performed in regional theaters, New York,Europe, Canada.
How She Played the Game was produced off Broadway by the Women's Project and by Primary Stages;and has appeared in 100 venues, including Budapest, Helsinki, and Montreal. Silence Not, A Love Story, premiered in Israel. Other plays: Strange Light, Sisters of Sisters, Slow Burn, Sentences and Words, Works of Art, Sor Juana, 24 Hours in the Life of the Belted Sandfish, Strange Bedfellows, Second Sight, Outermost House, Walls, The Dwelling Place, Words of Choice (toured to 20 states), more. Her plays have won awards from Pen and Brush, Malibu Internat'l Play Festival, Off-Broadway Short Play Festival, and others. She is also the author of seven nonfiction books, one of which was filmed as a CBS-TV movie, and dozens of published articles. She teaches at Columbia University.
Plays
Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, released from re-education camp in 1999, struggles with his conscience and tries to find his footing in a quest for freedom of speech and democracy in China. Spurred by his encounters with Ding Zilin, founder of the Mothers of Tiananmen, and the Lost Souls of 1989, Liu Xiaobo charts a path of peaceful resistance. But, as his wife, poet and artist Liu Xia, discovers, the consequences can be harsh.
Readings: Urban Stages, NYC, sponsored by the Visual Artists Guild; HBO Play Reading Series of the TV Academy, NYC. Workshop: Urban Stages, directed by Keira Loughran, Nov 2015, NYC.
Finalist, New Works Festival, Kitchen Dog Theatre, 2018; SemiFinalist, PlayPenn2015; SemiFinalist, Bay Area Playwrights' Festival.
"'Stones of Tiananmen' was so engaging... People in the audience were laughing and crying.” "The audience applauded with excitement." Jing Zhang, Women's Rights in China.
Two women performers explore six characters from sports history, and the challenges and successes that people encounter on any field of endeavor. Stories include: Althea Gibson, Gertrude Ederle, Wilma Rudolph, Gretel Bergmann, Gertrude Ederle, Mamie 'Peanut' Johnson. Reading: SUNY Delhi, NYSSSA 2018, featuring Stacey Linnartz and Abigail Ramsay, directed by Tasha Gordon-Solmon; Dramatists Guild Foundation Music Hall, NYC, featuring Stacey Linnartz and Krystel Lucas, directed by Tasha Gordon-Solmon; Michael Warren Powell Creative Center, New Circle Theatre Co; SUNY Delhi, New York, NYSSSA 2017, directed by Michelle Bossy, featuring Stacey Linnartz, Krystel Lucas; 24 Hours of Women, The Ivy Company, International Women's Voices Day at Unarthodox, NYC.
In the uncertain economic times of Germany in the early 1930s, an idealistic young Jewish woman joins with a rebellious Catholic craftsman, to resist the rise of Nazism while deepening their love for humanity and each other. Drawn from the true stories of Gisa Peiperand Paul Konopka, this is a story of courage and love that thrive despite the dangers, telling of the hope and art of speaking out for the highest human values in the most pressing of times.
Production, Center Stage Theater, The Merkaz, Jerusalem, Israel. Directed by Gabriella Willenz. World Premiere. Production, Beit Avi Chai, Jerusalem, Israel. Staged Reading, Wellstone Center, St. Paul,Directed by Carolyn Levy. Sponsored by The Konopka Institute of the University of Minnesota, in celebration of the Life and Legacy of Gisa Konopka; The Anne Frank Center USA, New York, Reading, directed by Joanne Edelmann; Justice Talks Radio; Library, East Stroudsburg, Publisher, Gihon River Press; Hamline University,at the Anne Simley Theatre, St. Paul, MN directed by Carolyn Levy. Geraldine Page Center for the Arts, New York. Finalist, Original Play Contest, Shawnee Playhouse, PA., Julia's Reading Room, NYC; Remember the Women, Center for Jewish History; Reading, Primary Stages, NYC, directed by Ludovica Villar-Hauser; More Jewish Women You Should Know, Anne Frank Center USA; Norwalk Public Library, Monroe Public Library, PA; Worthington Players at Shawnee Playhouse, PA; Nov 2010: Staged Reading, Pocono Playhouse, East Stroudburg University, Margaret Ball, dir.; Book Event, E.Stroudsburg Library, PA; U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC. Published, Gihon River Press: Best Historic Drama.
"The play is innovative in a number of ways." "A heady, beautifully written play." "You leave feeling ennobled and elevated."
Successes
Just Released -- anthology, Short Plays on Reproductive Freedom, edited by Cindy Cooper (also included works). More than 30 diverse writers. Plays and performance pieces in all styles from the Reproductive Freedom Festival and Words of Choice, on reproductive health, rights, freedom and justice.
Cindy Cooper will participate in a weeklong Laboratorium Residency on Governor's Island, NY, sponsored by Rising Sun Performance Company to develop new devised work on contemporary women's issues and the Living Newspaper format, working in combination with Ego Actus Theater and Words of Choice.
Running on Glass by Cindy Cooper will be performed on July 17, 2018 at SUNY Delhi, New York State, as part of the New York Summer School of the Arts.
Cindy Cooper's RUNNING ON GLASS will be presented in New York on June 4 at the Dramatists Foundation Music Hall, and June 7 at the Michael Warren Powell Artists Center of the New Circle Theatre Company.
STONES OF TIANANMEN by Cynthia L. Cooper was a Finalist for the New Works Festival of the Kitchen Dog Theatre, Dallas, TX.