Susanna Speier’s scripts have been performed at The World Financial Center, HERE Arts Center, The Cocteau Theater, Cornelia Street Café, Bowery Poetry Club and Collective Unconscious, in New York City and at AIA in Burbank, CA. Internationally, her work has been performed at The Green Room in Manchester, England; Dartington College of Arts in Devon, England and Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Her work has been covered by The New York Times, which stated, “Ms. Speier’s ear here is excellent,” the Villager, Newsday, offoffoff.com, The Drama Review, Le Petit Zine, Digital Culture Magazine and as a primetime story on the Dutch Public Television Station, VPRO. She has lectured at The Rietveld Academie in The Netherlands, Parsons in New York City and done residencies with Artward Bound at Wild Meadows, Dorset Writer’s Colony in Vermont and The Writer’s Room in NYC. She has received grants from The Dramatists Guild, the PEN American Center Writers Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Arts Recovery Fund.
She earned her BA at Hampshire College during which time she studied at the theatreschool conservatory in Amsterdam, The Netherlands for a semester and studied playwriting under the mentorship of Constance Congdon at Amherst College. She earned her MFA degree in Playwriting from Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y. where she studied with Mac Wellman and studied screenwriting as a guest student at Boston University’s MFA Screenwriting program and television writing with Ellen Sandler.
After completing her degree, she relocated to Los Angeles and worked as a Writing Department Intern on CSI and CSI: NY. She is being mentored by Rod Lurie through the 2008 WIF Mentor Program and scripting a feature screenplay in collaboration with Barney Cohen of Pterodactyl Productions. Memberships include Arts and Science Collaborations, Inc., The Dramatists Guild and Los Angeles Women in Film.
