Tammy Ryan's award-winning plays have been performed, commissioned and developed across the United States and internationally at such theaters as The Alliance Theater, City Theater Company, The Dorset Theater Festival, Florida Stage, Marin Theater, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Pittsburgh Festival Opera, Portland Stage Company, Theater Lab and 29 th Street Rep among others. She is the inaugural recipient of the 2024 Leah Ryan Fund’s “Boost” commission award to write The Boy King in Queens centering around the transportation of the King Tut exhibit to the Met in 1978. Other recent commissions include Seven Cousins For A Horse for Thrown Stone Theater Company and North of Forbes, an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles for the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s PlayTime series.
Honors include the Francesca Primus Prize, awarded by the American Theater Critics Association for Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods (Premiere Stages) and The Wake, (winner, Premiere Stages Play Festival); Molly’s Hammer (Repertory Theater of St. Louis) was supported by a grant from the Heinz Endowments and nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the ATCA Steinberg New Play Award and a St. Louis Theater Critics Circle Award; Tar Beach (Luna Stage) was also nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and included on the Kilroy’s List. Other plays include Soldier’s Heart (Pittsburgh Playhouse) Lindsey’s Oyster (Garag Istanbul) and Baby’s Blues which was performed at the National Center for Performing Arts in Mumbai, India and presented by Surnai Theater in a touring production in 2023-24. Ryan’s work for young audiences includes, We Are Antigone, commissioned as part of the Alliance Theater Company’s Collision Project, published by Playscripts and produced at high schools across the United States and Australia. The Music Lesson, commissioned by Prime Stage, professionally premiered at Florida Stage in 2000, received a Carbonell award for best production and the AATE Distinguished New Play Award in 2004. The Music Lesson has since had well over fifty productions nationally and in Canada.
Ryan is an alumna of the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Playwrights Collective, a 2020 Haas Fellow and a resident playwright of New Dramatists class of 2027. Her work has been supported by The Map Fund, The New Harmony Project, Sewanee Writers Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hambidge Center, The Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the National New Play Network. Her plays are available from Dramatists Play Service, Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., Dramatic Publishing Company and Playscripts. For more information: www.tammyryanplays.com.
