Bess Wohl’s plays include GRAND HORIZONS (Tony Nominations for Best Play and Best Featured Actress, Broadway, Outer Critics Circle Honor, Drama League Award nom), MAKE BELIEVE (NYTimes Critic Pick, Best of 2019, Outer Critics Circle Honor), CONTINUITY, SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS (John Gassner Outer Critics Circle Award, top ten lists in The New York Times, The New York Post, The Guardian and others), AMERICAN HERO, BARCELONA, TOUCHED, IN, CATS TALK BACK and the musical PRETTY FILTHY with composer/lyricist Michael Friedman and The Civilians (Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Musical).
Her plays have been produced or developed at theaters in New York and around the country, including Second Stage, Manhattan Theater Club, Ars Nova, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, Goodman Theater, The Geffen Playhouse, People’s Light and Theatre Company, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, Vineyard Arts Project, The Pioneer Theatre, The Pittsburgh Public Theater, The Northlight Theater, TheaterWorks New Works Fesitval, Ojai Playwright's Conference, the Cape Cod Theatre Project, PlayPenn and the New York International Fringe Festival (Award for Best Overall Production).
In 2015, Bess won the Sam Norkin special Drama Desk Award for “establishing herself as an important voice in New York theater, and having a breakthrough year.” Other awards and honors include the Athena Award for her screenplay, VIRGINIA, a MacDowell Fellowship, and inclusion on Hollywood’s Black List of Best Screenplays. She is an associate artist with The Civilians, an alumna of Ars Nova’s Play Group, and the recipient of new play commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Hartford Stage and Lincoln Center.
She also writes screenplays and has developed multiple original television projects for HBO, ABC, USA, FOX, Disney, Paramount and others. In her previous life as an actress, she appeared onstage in New York and regionally, and in numerous films and TV shows where she has given birth, solved crimes, committed crimes, been wrongly accused, and come back from the dead.
She is a graduate of Harvard and the Yale School of Drama.
While at MacDowell, she worked on a new musical about a castrato in love. Her play Small Mouth Sounds received critical acclaim and she was awarded a special Drama Desk Award for "establishing herself as an important voice in New York Theater." Her other plays include Make Believe, American Hero, Barcelona, Touched, In, Cats Talk Back, and the musical Pretty Filthy with composer/lyricist Michael Friedman and The Civilians
