Monica Raymond
Affiliated Writer
Cambridge, MA
Biography

Monica Raymond is a prize-winning poet and playwright. She was a Jerome Fellow for 2008-09 at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, and a 2013 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Playwriting.

Raymond's most recent production was Paper or Plastic, a short eco-opera for which she wrote the libretto, at the American Repertory Theater’s Outside the Box Festival (Summer 2013). A to Z (Ruby Lloyd Apsey Award 2011 for plays about race/ethnicity) follows the relationship of two women, Annie and Zafiya, through forty years of US history (1968-2008) and all of the letters of the alphabet. The Owl Girl, about two families in the Middle East who both have keys to the same house, won the Clauder Gold Medal (Portland Stage), the Peacewriting Award, and the Castillo Theater Award in political playwriting. Other plays include Martina’s Story (The Internationalists, Long Distance Affair), Safe House (Panelists Choice Award, LastFrontier Theater Conference; O'Neill Finalist); Creche (Dramatic Publishing 35 in 10); Lindsay (Subversive Theater, 2005 Montreal and NYC Infringement Festivals); Novices (Best ShortPlays of 2009) and many others. Her short play Hijab has been performed widely, including at the Boston Theater Marathon, the Vital Theater (NYC), the Samuel French Festival, and as part of "Occupied Territories: Palestinian- and Jewish-American Plays about the Middle East" at Boston Playwrights Theatre.

Raymond hosted a panel "Making Theatre about Palestine/ Israel" at the Conference of the Association for Theater in Higher Education, and toured as a performer in An Olive on the Seder Plate, a play by and for American Jews about human rights in Israel/Palestine. She has performed her own monologues and performance scores at Mobius, the Boston Museum School, and as part of Joe Chaikin's "Disability Project" at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

She has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony, a fellow at BIARI (Brown International Advanced Research Institute), and has received grants from the Book of the Month Club, the Cambridge Arts Council, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.

Raymond holds degrees from the University of Chicago (BA Humanities), Columbia University (MA English) and Smith College (MFA Theatre/Playwriting) and has taught writing and literature at Harvard, CUNY, and the Boston Museum School.

Successes

I wrote the lyrics/librettos for two short duets/trios for  "Rubble and Dust," set in the West Bank/Palestinian territory after a house explosion (music Helena Michelson); and "We'll Finally Get to See the Grandkids," (music Josh Brown) part of the larger opera "Eruption: An Opera of Volcanic Proportions."

These are part of the September 2021 Aria Institute Brunch Edition showcase, which just went online on Saturday, October 9, 2021.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sU99FRZClw&ab_channel=ReallySpicyOpera

My flash fiction UNCLE SKANK, part of  a series of poems and short tales inspired by the surreal photocollages of Fran Forman, has been nominated for "Best of the Net" by Oyedrum.

UNCLE SKANK appeared in Oyedrum's online Sex Issue in Winter 2021.

https://oyedrum.com/i-am-spring-green-two-stories-by-monica-raymond-art-...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My eighteen minute audio play The Telemarketer ran as part of Atlanta Fringe's Audio Festival, December 2020-May2021. It was recorded in 2010 by the Shoestring Radio Players and it's also running on Alan Carlow's youtube page https://youtu.be/im_VNcWTngE

 

My "13 Short Plays for Elijah McClain" is published in the current issue of Some Scripts. It's on page 253, the last piece in the issue. The piece was inspired by a call by Erik Ehn to write plays of 25 words each in honor on what would have been McClain's 25th birthday, on February 25th, 2021.

 

My "13 Short Plays for Elijah McClain" is published in the current issue of Some Scripts. It's on page 253, the last piece in the issue. The piece was inspired by a call by Erik Ehn to write plays of 25 words each in honor on what would have been McClain's 25th birthday, on February 25th, 2021.

https://issuu.com/somescriptslitmag/docs/some_scripts_issue_4_pdf_june_3...

My monologue "A Ventilator" was part of Theatre is the Cure's online anthology on Friday, May 29th, 2020. It will be forthcoming in Monadnock writers' anthology "Penning the Pandemic" in August 2020.