Les Hunter

Les Hunter. As a playwright Les Hunter’s work contemplates the way that theatre specifically can shed new light on emerging problems of selfhood. His plays include Down by Contact (Dobama Theatre/Playwrights Local), Weimar (Baldwin Wallace University), and To the Orchard (Playwrights Local and JPP 2016 International Jewish Playwriting Contest Top 10 Finalist). He wrote for all three parts of the collaboratively written, NYC hit, The Jackson Heights Trilogy (Theatre 167). His other dramatic works include an American adaptation with Turkish dramatist Ozen Yula of his play, For Rent (LaGuardia Performing Arts Center); a screenplay, Lion (Dubai Film Connection); and a musical, ’99 (Theatre 167), with Ben Morss of the band Cake. Playscripts, Brooklyn Publishers, and Indie Theatre publish and license his plays.

Hunter is the 2019/2020 Cleveland Public Theatre Premiere Fellow and the Ohio Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild of America. He is an associate professor of English at Baldwin Wallace University, where he teaches theater history and playwriting. In 2014, he attended the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University. He is a member of the Playwrights GYM at Dobama Theatre and has received residencies from Ora Lerman and Millikin University. He was previously the Curator of New Plays at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center in New York City, literary director of Theatre 167, and co-founder of the Brooklyn Playwrights Collective.

His articles and reviews have appeared in American Theatre Magazine, The Dramatist, Text & Presentation, HowlRound, Theatre Journal, The Wallace Stevens Review, Ecumenica, Cutbank, Theatre Survey, and the edited collections Experimental O’Neill and Performing the Progressive Era. His creative prose appears in Fiction Southeast, Barnhouse, and the anthology Dating Games. He lives in Lakewood, Ohio with his wife, Elana, their son, Asher, and their Australian Shepherd, Maya.