Callie Kimball

Callie Kimball is a New England-based playwright and MacDowell Fellow whose plays include dark comedies (Things That Are Round, Alligator Road, Dreams of the Penny Gods); historical dramas (Sofonisba, Perseverance, Rush); and literary adaptations (The Impresario, Cows of War, Lucrece and the Two Janes).

Her two newest plays, Show Me Any Heaven and Ned and Nancy and the Alcoholic Lighthouse are currently in development.

Actors and directors she has worked with on her plays include Thomas Sadoski, Julianna Margulies, Michelle Wilson, Sean Daniels, Jim Beaver, Lee Meriwether, Jade King Carroll, Heidi Schreck, April Matthis, Marin Ireland, Eva Kaminsky, and Heidi Armbruster.

Her plays have been produced, commissioned, and developed in New York (MCC Theatre, LaMama ETC/Team Awesome Robot, Project Y Theatre, The Brick, Hunter College, Drama League’s DirectorFest, FRIGID Festival, Lunar Energy Productions, Electric Pear Productions, Recovery Arts Project, and Lark Play Development Center); in Chicago (Halcyon Theatre, Theatre L’Acadie, Artemisia Theatre); in DC (Kennedy Center, Washington Shakespeare Company, Washington Stage Guild, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Rep Stage, Theater J, National Museum of Women in the Arts, The In Series, DC Fringe, Phoenix Theatre DC, DC Dollies and the Rocket Bitch Revue); in New England (Greater Boston Stage Company, Portland Stage, Dramatic Rep, Theatre at Monmouth, Mad Horse Theatre, The Players’ Ring, Boston University, Bowdoin College, PortFringe, Little Festival of the Unexpected); on the West Coast (CapStage, Echo Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Hollywood Fringe, Ashland New Play Festival); and in Texas (Kitchen Dog New Works Festival), Florida (Lost Girls Theatre), and Trinidad and Tobago.

A few films of her short plays are floating around the internet.

Her plays have won the Rita and Burton Goldberg Award (twice) and the Clauder Gold Prize, and have made both the Kilroy’s List and Honorable Mentions. She’s been a finalist or semi-finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award, the Princess Grace Award, Shakespeare’s Sister Award, the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, Clubbed Thumb Biennial Award, the Leah Ryan Boost Award, NY Innovative Theater Award, Broadway World Critic’s Choice Award, Seacoast Spotlight Award, and a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship, among others.

She has also received generous funding for her plays from Bates College, Middlebury College, Shadowcatcher Productions, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and the Brooks Family Foundation.

Scholarly articles about her plays have been published in Comedia Performance: A Journal of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater (Sofonisba) and in Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation (Lucrece and the Two Janes).

Interviews with Callie appear in American Theatre Magazine as well as in Thriving as an Adjunct: Keys to Success for Part-time Faculty, due from Bloomsbury Publishing in March 2027. She has written short nonfiction for NPR and The Dramatist, and her work has been anthologized by Tripwire Harlot, The Kilroys, and Theatre Communications Group. She has also been interviewed on several podcasts, including American Theatre’s “The Subtext,” Halcyon Theatre’s “Moment to Moment,” “The Family Room,” and Ashland New Play Festival’s “Play4Keeps.”

She teaches Playwriting and Literature at Middlebury College. She has also taught or guest lectured at King’s College London Shakespeare Centre, the ACS International School in London, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Bates College, Colby College, Bowdoin College, National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, Maryland Shakespeare Festival, Maine College of Art, Maine Playwrights Festival, and elsewhere. Many of her former students now work in film, television, and theatre.

She began her teaching career by bringing playwriting and Shakespeare into lockdown residential youth facilities.

She started out as a classical actor and movement instructor before turning to playwriting, and was the movement coach for the world premiere of Ariel Dorfman’s Picasso’s Closet. She studied at the Shakespeare Theatre Company and the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive, and earned her MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College under the direction of Tina Howe. While in grad school, she worked as a project and production manager at NBCUniversal in New York for seven years, and also studied at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education.

She is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and The Dramatists Guild, an Affiliate Writer at The Playwrights’ Center, and former Resident Playwright at Theater at Monmouth. 

Some have described her plays as feminist, which is lovely, but really she just writes plays where the main characters have jobs and goals and happen to be women.  

Callie’s interview on American Theatre’s Subtext podcast.

Callie on the New Play Exchange

Callie on the Playwrights' Center