Lori Marra is currently enrolled in Spalding University’s MFA playwriting program. She will graduate in 2025.
Lori began the craft of playwriting in 1999. Since then, she has experienced successful local, national and international productions. In 2006, No Smoking premiered at the GADOC in the U.K. and won a full play production at the Spokane Civic Theatre in 2007. In 2009, Hold Up at the Continental Garage premiered at ATA in NYC and ran again at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre. Mystic Castle, a drama about serial killer Arthur Shawcross, won Geva Theatre Center’s Regional Playwrights Competition and advanced to Geva’s Festival of New Theatre (FONT) staged readings series. Marra’s full-length trilogy, Three American Women, ran as part of the Midtown Manhattan Festival. Lori has also had several readings of her new works premiered at subsequent Rochester Fringe Festivals. Lori was an artist-in-residence at MuCCC Theatre from 2010-2020. In April of 2021, Lori received the Waterman’s Community Theatre residency in North Haven, Maine. There she transformed one of her plays, Dinosaur Man from stage to radio drama.
Lori has attended Kenyon College's Playwrights Conference where she studied with accomplished playwrights including Steven Dietz, Wendy MacLeod, and Phil Dawkins. She has also attended workshops given by Lynn Nottage, Jeffrey Sweet, Paula Vogel, and Terrence McNally.
Lori taught full time in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology where she also served as advisor to the RIT Players, the university’s drama club with over 60 active members.
Plays
It’s 1963. Betty Parsons, the "den mother" of abstract expressionism, is about to lose her famous art gallery to a rival dealer who lured away her "giants of the art world" including Pollack. Simultaneously, Betty's career as an artist is being reignited. As the fiery Parsons dreams of her perfect gallery, a royal court with Betty as the Queen, she must face a world of loss including her former lover. Will Betty reclaim her gallery, or will losses so great destroy her?
When serial killer Arthur Shawcross learns that John Ehrlich, a reporter from his hometown, now lives in his new city of residence, Shawcross decides to allow Ehrlich his only interview on the anniversary of his first year in prison. Twenty years after hearing the name “Shawcross” as the child killer in his hometown, John Ehrlich finds himself sitting across from the man he believed was the true “boogie man” from his childhood. In his interview, Ehrlich confronts the mind of a serial killer and the unknown demon from his past.
With a new boss who hates smokers, Richard Coburne, a middle-aged middle manager, realizes that to keep his job, he must quit smoking. He walks in to a smoking cessation clinic and encounters Vivian DuBois, his smoking “sensation”-al counselor.
Through Vivian’s unconventional and outrageous techniques, Richard gains self- confidence and the courage to follow his heart while Vivian retreats to her mundane life