Bio

RUTH MARGRAFF has been called a leader in the American avant garde for her “audaciously original" (Moscow Times) use of language that provides “layer after layer of richly textured emotion...and imminent danger” (Dallas Morning News). Critically acclaimed for writing martial arts operas DEADLY SHE-WOLF... and a VOICE OF THE DRAGON trilogy with the late composer Fred Ho for the Apollo, Guggenheim Museum, LaMama, Brooklyn Academy of Music and a commercially successful tour with Columbia Arts Management, Inc. to 33 cities in 2003 with support from ICM Artists and the World Music Institute. Ruth’s “Night Wind from Afghanistan” for the play SEVEN, began touring the world in 2008 introduced by designer Diane von Furstenberg, and in 2010 by Hillary Clinton with Meryl Streep at the Broadway Hudson Theater. SEVEN has been translated into more than 20 languages and performed in 32 countries.

Ruth has received awards from Rockefeller, McKnight, Jerome, NEA, TCG, TMUNY, NYSCA, IAC, Fulbright foundations, and is also published by Innova Records, Dramatists Play Service, American Theatre, Theater Forum, Performing Arts Journal, Playscripts, Inc., Backstage Books, Autonomedia, New Village Press, NoPassport Press, Lexington Books/Roman & Littlefield. She is a member of Theater Without Borders, League of Professional Theater Women, Red Tape Theater, a New Dramatist and Playwrights’ Center alumna, a Chicago Dramatist playwright emeritus, and Professor of Playwriting/Writing as Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, represented by the Samara Harris Literary Agency (NYC).

photo: Ruby Images Chicago, Spellbinding Color Concepts