Jason
Jason Williamson
RESIDENT PLAYWRIGHT
Jason Williamson is the Resident Playwright of Dramatic Adventure Theatre, who recently commissioned and produced his play A Girl without Wings. The play—called “poignant” by the NY Times—was co-produced by IATI Theater and received a grant from the Jim Henson Foundation. The piece was inspired by time spent in Quechuan villages in the Andes, where he’s directed and devised with DAT on several projects since 2009.
DAT also recently commissioned Jason to write The Rebel Bird, a lyrical thriller inspired by the disproportionate number of Roma affected by the international human trafficking epidemic. The play was inspired by his extensive directing and devising work in Slovakia and recently received a lab production at Divadlo Andreja Bagara, one of Slovakia’s major theatrical institutions. A true cross-cultural collaboration, the production featured Roma, Slovak, and American actors. He is also currently working on a new commission for the Zanzibar International Film Festival Theater Wing inspired by his devising and directing work in Tanzania.
Jason is also a working screenwriter whose feature length film, Silo, is currently in post-production. His television pilot Brink City is optioned by Blood Orange Pictures as well as his most recent screenplay, Into the Abyss, with Orchard Beach Productions. Jason is also the resident playwright of Exit, Pursued by a Bear, who produced his plays Lesser Mercies and Greater Angels, the first two chapters of a trilogy chronicling the Civil War. His work has been produced and developed at the Kennedy Center, the Flea Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, the NY Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Broadway Asia, Abingdon Theatre Company, Stanford Summer Theatre, Drama League, JACK, Stillwater Theatre Company, Speaking Ring Theatre Company, and the NY Fringe Festival.
He has been a finalist for both the O’Neill Conference and the Heideman Award, as well as a two-time finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He won the North Carolina Theatre Conference New Play Award, and both the Dramatists Guild and the Shubert Foundation have granted him fellowships. Jason received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon.