Award-winning playwright Lloyd Suh joins the Lewis Center for the Arts faculty at Princeton University in July 2024. Photo credit: Karin Shook.
(PRINCETON, NJ) -- Award-winning playwright Lloyd Suh will join the Lewis Center for the Arts' faculty at Princeton University in July. Suh, appointed as a professor of the practice, will teach introductory and advanced playwriting courses in a joint appointment in the Program in Theater and Music Theater and the Program in Creative Writing.
Suh is the author of The Heart Sellers, recently produced at Huntington Theatre and Milwaukee Rep, with upcoming productions at the Guthrie Theater, Aurora Theatre, Capital Stage, Theatreworks Palo Alto, Northlight Theater, and North Coast Repertory. His other plays include The Far Country, a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, The Chinese Lady, Bina’s Six Apples, Charles Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, American Hwangap, and Jesus in India, among others. His plays have been produced across the country, including at Atlantic Theater Company, The Public Theater, Alliance Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Denver Center, Long Wharf Theatre, The Magic Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, and others, as well as internationally at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and with PCPA at the Guerilla Theatre in Seoul, Korea.
A recipient of the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Horton Foote Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Suh served from 2005 to 2010 as the artistic director of Second Generation Theatre Company, and a co-director of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, and from 2011 to 2020 as director of artistic programs at The Lark.
He holds a B.A. in English from Indiana University and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from the Actors Studio Drama School at New School University. He has taught in the M.F.A. programs at Hunter College and Columbia University, and he has served on faculty at the Sewanee Writers Conference and in Atlantic Theater Company’s Global Virtual Conservatory. This past spring, Suh taught “Intermediate Playwriting” as a lecturer in the Lewis Center at Princeton.
Suh is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and a lifetime member of the Actors Studio and Ensemble Studio Theatre. He was elected in 2016 to the Dramatists Guild Council.
“We are delighted to welcome this extraordinary playwright into our community, who brings creative brilliance and passion for mentorship to us, as well as deep curiosity about how language, theater and identity intersect with other fields of inquiry,” said Jane Cox, Director of the Program in Theater and Music Theater. “This historic appointment, the first shared between the programs of theater and creative writing, will build on the work of playwrights R.N. Sandberg and Nathan Davis developing our focus on original works by our undergraduate students.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Lloyd into the Creative Writing Program,” added Acting Director of the Program in Creative Writing A.M. Homes. “His appointment is an opportunity to collaborate with the theater program and expand our offerings to better meet our students’ multidisciplinary interests. Lloyd’s work exploring history and identity and the fundamental questions of who we are and how we live today is a source of inspiration for our students as they take on similar questions in their own creative work.”
A playwright of interest to Princeton theater faculty and students, Suh’s work has been studied in a variety of courses, and students have proposed many of his plays in recent years. These proposals have resulted in productions of his plays The Chinese Lady and Charles Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery undertaken by seniors as their independent work in the Program in Theater and Music Theater.
“It’s an honor to join the ranks of the extraordinary faculty of the Lewis Center for the Arts, which is at the very forefront of cultural, artistic and critical practice,” said Suh. “I feel humbled and excited to be a part of the creative lives of these remarkable students and am eager to get started on deep and innovative collaborations with the entire Princeton community.”
Suh will join Program in Theater and Music Theater full-time faculty Elena Araoz, Brian Eugenio Herrera, Tess James, Chesney Snow, Solon Snider Sway, Rhaisa Williams, and Stacy Wolf, in addition to Cox; Program in Creative Writing full-time faculty Michael Dickman, Katie Farris, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Ilya Kaminsky, Yiyun Li, Paul Muldoon, and Patricia Smith; and a number of distinguished lecturers and fellows in both programs. His appointment is partially supported through the Lewis Center’s Roger S. Berlind ’52 Playwright-in-Residence Fund.
Through the Program in Theater and Music Theater, students can explore playwriting, directing, theatrical design, acting, music theater, and stage management through hands-on studio courses and workshops, as well as courses in dramaturgy and theater history. A minor in theater is offered, and students have the opportunity to participate in a season proposed by the Program’s seniors of more than a dozen productions in all capacities. In the Program in Creative Writing, students can study poetry, fiction, screenwriting, and literary translation, and have the opportunity to minor in creative writing by working on a novel, collection of poems, short stories or translations, or a screenplay under mentorship of a member of the faculty.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Program in Theater and Music Theater, the Program in Creative Writing, and the Lewis Center for the Arts, including the more than 110 courses offered each year and the more than 120 performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts and lectures presented annually, most of them free.
