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.
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. (A new and different version of How She Played the Game.) Reading: SUNY Delhi, New York, NYSSSA. Dir 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
THE SPOKEN and THE UNSPOKEN, along with A CONGOLESE REFUGEE LIVES TO SURVIVE, both by Cynthia L. Cooper, are being perfomred at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in Soho, New York City, on April 15, 2018, as part of the art show VIOLATED! by Remember the Women Institute.
Cindy Cooper (Cynthia) has three plays in the "Untold Stories of Jewish Women" at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on March 21, 2018, GRETEL BERGMANN and AT THE TRAIN STATION IN MUNICH perform in the 10 a.m. slot. THE SPOKEN AND THE UNSPOKEN will be at 3 pm.
My short play, THE ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT, directed by Jessica Baumann, is part of the FEISTY WOMEN FESTIVAL, Thursday, March 1, 7:30pm, at the Goddard Riverside Bernie Wohl Center in New York City.
BEND THE ARC is being presented in the UN-Augueration: An Evening of American Voices at the Bernie Wohl, Riverside-Goddard Center in New York City, on Monday, January 29, 2018; a project of the 29th Street Playwrights Collective.
SHE PLAYS is selected to be part of the International Day of Women's Voices in 24 Hours of Women, January 21, 2018, by The Ivy Theater in New York City.