Sheila Callaghan

Callaghan's writing has been described as "comically engaging, subversively penetrating",{{cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/01/DDGL5JMVEL1.DTL|title=Achingly funny comedy that has serious issues with capitalism|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle | first=Robert | last=Hurwitt | date=2006-07-01}} "whimsically eloquent",{{cite news|url=http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/261602,0,5839666.event|title= Dazzling 'Crumble' is stalwartly screwy|newspaper=Los Angeles Times}} "unique and completely contemporary",{{cite web|url=https://www.offoffonline.com/offoffonline/2022|title=Bloomsday Revisited|date=31 May 2006 |publisher=offoffonline}} and "downright weird".{{cite news|url=http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=dram30&date=20050930&query=sheila+callaghan|title="Weird" play christens new theater space|newspaper=The Seattle Times | first=Leah B.|last=Green|date=2005-09-30}} The New York Times has said Callaghan "writes with a world-weary tone and has a poet's gift for economical description,"{{cite news|url=http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/06/02/theater/reviews/02dead.html|title='Dead City': It's a Wonderful, Lively Town, Where the Dead Men Speak|work=The New York Times| first=Jason | last=Zinoman | date=2006-06-02 | access-date=2010-05-23}} and the Philadelphia Weekly has called Callaghan a "provocative playwright" with a "national following" who "creates work that's realistic and unpredictable, dark and funny, reassuring and disturbing."{{cite news|url=http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/arts/a-list/article_3c666df0-6ddf-5b25-865a-619f242166b8.html|title=Review|newspaper=Philadelphia Weekly}}

Callaghan is a founding member of feminist advocacy group The Kilroys, who created the Kilroys' List. She is also a founding member of the playwrights' collective 13P and an alumni member of New Dramatists.{{cite web|url=http://newdramatists.org/sheila-callaghan|title=Sheila Callaghan|website=New Dramatists}}

Callaghan is the recipient of several writing awards, including the 2000 Princess Grace Award,{{cite web|url=https://www.pgfusa.org/award-winners/browse/by-year/2000/|title=Princess Grace Foundation-USA : 2000 Award Winners}} the 2014 Ted Schmitt Award for the world premiere of an outstanding new play by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle,{{cite magazine|url=http://www.playbill.com/article/2014-los-angeles-drama-critics-circle-award-winners-announced-com-344284|title=2014 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award Winners Announced!|magazine=Playbill|date=2016-03-09}} and the 2007 Whiting Award for Drama.{{cite news|url=http://www.tcnj.edu/~magazine/07Fall/whiting.html|title=Alumna wins 2007 Whiting Writers' Award|publisher=TCNJ Magazine}} She also won a Robert Chesley Award from Publishing Triangle in 2002.[http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/06-2002/christopher-shinn-and-sheila-callaghan-win-chesley_2297.html "Christopher Shinn and Sheila Callaghan Win Chesley Awards"]. TheatreMania, June 2002. In 2007, her play Dead City won a Special Commendation Award for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.{{cite news|url=http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/03-2007/sheila-callaghan-among-blackburn-award-winners_10214.html|title=Sheila Callaghan Among Blackburn Award Winners|publisher=TheaterMania|date=2007-03-02}}

She has also received a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwrights' Center, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a grant from New York Foundation for the Arts, and a New York State Council on the Arts grant.

Callaghan has taught playwriting and English at the University of Rochester, The College of New Jersey, Spalding University, Brooklyn College, LaGuardia Community College, and Florida State University.

She is married to composer and producer Sophocles Papavasilopoulos, with whom she has a son.{{cite news|url=http://tcg.org/publications/at/oct08/callaghan.cfm|title=Blow Me Up, Lay Me Down|publisher=American Theatre Magazine|date=2008-10-01|first=Sarah|last=Hart|access-date=2008-12-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161002162333/http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/oct08/callaghan.cfm|archive-date=2016-10-02|url-status=dead}}

Her most well-known play to date is Women Laughing Alone With Salad,{{cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-sheila-callaghan-20160309-story.html|title=Sheila Callaghan plays with gender identity in 'Women Laughing Alone With Salad'|newspaper=Los Angeles Times|date=2016-03-09|first=Jessica | last=Gelt}} which was featured on The Kilroys' List in 2014.{{cite web|url=http://thekilroys.org/list-2014|title=THE LIST 2014: The Top 46|date=3 November 2016 }} Her other plays have been produced and developed with Soho Rep, Playwrights Horizons, The Flea Theater, South Coast Repertory, Clubbed Thumb, The LARK, PlayPenn, Collision Theatre Company, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, New Georges, the Bloomington Playwrights Project, Theatre of NOTE, Impact Theatre, foolsFURY Theater Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and Moving Arts, among others.

Internationally, her plays have been produced in New Zealand, Norway, Germany, Portugal, and the Czech Republic. She has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, South Coast Repertory, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Several of her plays are published by Playscripts, Inc., Samuel French Inc., and S. Fischer Verlag (in German translation), and she has been anthologized in the New York Theatre Review and others. A collection of her plays was published in 2011 by Soft Skull Press.

List of long plays:

• Scab
• Lascivious Something
• Dead City
• Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) (originally produced by Clubbed Thumb)
• Crawl, Fade to White
• Kate Crackernuts
• Star-Crossed Lovers
• We Are Not These Hands
• Fever/Dream
• That Pretty Pretty (Or, The Rape Play) (originally produced by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater)
• Roadkill Confidential (originally produced by Clubbed Thumb)
• Everything You Touch
• Port Out, Starboard Home (created with FoolsFURY Theater and produced by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club)
• Elevada (originally produced by Yale Repertory Theatre)
• Bed
• Women Laughing Alone With Salad (originally produced by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company)
• (Not) The Water Project

List of short plays:

• New Shoes
• Tumor
• American Jack
• Blue Lila Rising
• Ayravana Flies or A Pretty Dish
• The Transit Plays
• He Ate the Sun
• Soak
• Hold This

Other:

• (contribution to:) Uncle Sam's Satiric Spectacular: a vaudevillean collaboration

Callaghan is a writer/producer on the hit FX series Dying For Sex starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. She was also a writer/producer on the Showtime series Shameless for six seasons, United States of Tara for two, and the Hulu comedy series Casual for one. Her pilot Over/Under was filmed for the USA Network, starring Steven Pasquale and Caroline Dhavernas.

{{Portal|Theatre}}

• The Biology of Luck

{{Reflist}}

• [http://sheilacallaghan.com Official site]
• [http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsC/callaghan-sheila.html Information on Sheila Callaghan by doollee.com]
• [http://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/sheila-callaghan#/ Profile and Production History at The Whiting Foundation]
• {{cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-sheila-callaghan-20160309-story.html|title=Sheila Callaghan plays with gender identity in 'Women Laughing Alone With Salad'|newspaper=Los Angeles Times|date=2016-03-09|first=Jessica | last=Gelt}}
• {{cite news|url=http://tcg.org/publications/at/oct08/callaghan.cfm|title=Blow Me Up, Lay Me Down|publisher=American Theatre Magazine|date=2008-10-01|first=Sarah|last=Hart|access-date=2008-12-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161002162333/http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/oct08/callaghan.cfm|archive-date=2016-10-02|url-status=dead}}
• {{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/theater/16bloo.html?ei=5088&en=b7fb65886ca631a0&ex=1308110400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1162946581-ozndkxKgf00LxhgKhdbeTw|title=Playwright of 'Dead City' Substitutes Manhattan for Dublin|newspaper=New York Times|date=2006-06-15 | first=Campbell | last=Robertson | access-date=2010-05-23}}
• {{cite web|url=http://www.maestrocompany.com/arts/la/2005Callaghan.html|title=Interview|last=Rennie|first=Adrian|date=2005-10-07|publisher=Maestro Arts and Reviews}}

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Category:1973 births

Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights

Category:Living people

Category:The College of New Jersey alumni

Category:Spalding University faculty

Category:University of Rochester faculty

Category:American women dramatists and playwrights

Category:Princess Grace Awards winners

Category:21st-century American dramatists and playwrights

Category:Writers from Queens, New York

Category:American women screenwriters

Category:American women television writers

Category:American television writers

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:Screenwriters from New York (state)

Category:Screenwriters from Kentucky

Category:Brooklyn College faculty