Keen’s Midwinter Bash

Julia Jordan’s musical, MURDER BALLAD, premiered at Manhattan Theater Club, transferred to Union Square Theater, and was produced on the West End, regionally and internationally (nominated for Best New Musical by the Lortels, Outer Critics Circle, and Off-Broadway Alliance). Other musicals include: SARAH, PLAIN AND TALL, THE MICE, BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR, and CAKE OFF (Helen Hayes Nomination). Julia’s first play SMOKING LESSON gained her entry to the Juilliard Playwriting Program. In 2004, she had four plays in one NYC season: ST. SCARLET, TATJANA IN COLOR, BOY at Primary Stages (starring TR Knight, Susan Blackburn Smith honorable mention), and an adaptation of SUMMER OF THE SWANS at Theaterworks USA.  She adapted her 2006 play DARK YELLOW (produced by Michael Imperioli) into a short film, directed by Glen Luchford and starring John Hawkes (winner: Best Short Film at the 2008 Jackson Hole Film Festival). Additional honors include The Kleban, Jonathan Larson Award, Francesca Primus Prize, Lucille Lortel Fellowship, Manhattan Theater Club Fellowship, Heideman Award, The American Spirit Award, and she’s been shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award three times. Her plays have been developed at The O’Neill, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Center, The MacDowell Colony and Sundance Playwrights Lab. Julia is one of the founders and the former Executive Director of The Lilly Awards Foundation, which celebrates and advocates for women in theater.  She is co-creator of The Count (with Marsha Norman), the Family Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm (with Pia Scala Zankel and Emily Simoness) and the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative (sculpture and Hansberry-Lilly Fellowship with Lynn Nottage), and the online publication 3Views (with Sarah Ruhl).  She is currently working on a new musical with Emeli Sande and a documentary theater project (with support from The Ford Foundation) that will be unveiled in the coming year at Harvard, Stanford and in a public performance in NYC.

Marsha Norman is a prolific playwright, screenwriter and novelist who since the early 1980s has been one of the best-known writers in American drama. She has won the Pulitzer Prize, Tony Awards and a long list of other major honors. The first of Norman’s 14 stage plays, GETTING OUT was produced at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and then Off Broadway in New York in 1979. Norman’s play ‘NIGHT MOTHER won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in drama, a Drama Desk Award and a Tony Award nomination. Norman adapted THE SECRET GARDEN into a musical, and it won her Tony and Drama Desk awards in 1992. She went on to write the book for the Broadway musical of Alice Walker’s novel THE COLOR PURPLE, earning a Tony nomination for the original 2005 production. A revival production won the 2016 Tony Award. Her five musical adaptations for theater also have included THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, and THE RED SHOES Norman has been a prolific writer for television and film, with credits on a dozen projects. She won a 2009 Peabody Award for her work on the HBO series “In Treatment.” Norman’s other awards include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Academy of Arts & Letters and the William Inge Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in Theater. She is a member of the Theater Hall of Fame. Norman has received awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, along with 18 honorary degrees from American colleges and universities. She was co-chair of playwriting at Julliard for 25 years until her retirement in 2020. She is a co-founder of The Lillys and a co-creator of The Count. She lives in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts.