Draft:Honor Molloy

Honor Molloy
Honor Molloy in Tribeca, c. 2015
Born	Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Playwright, novelist
Nationality	Irish, American
Alma mater	Brown University, New York University
Notable works	Crackskull Row, Smarty Girl: Dublin Savage
Notable awards	National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Radcliffe Fellowship Pew Fellowship

Honor Molloy (born May 22, 1961) also known as Honour Kane, is an Irish-American playwright and novelist. Her plays include The New York Times Critic’s Pick, Crackskull Row (Irish Repertory Theatre), In Pigeon House (Irish Theatre of Chicago), Madame Killer (Clubbed Thumb Summerworks), Monument (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival), Rehearsing the Granda (The Public Theater), Sticky n Juicy on da Senate Floor (The Public Theater), and Maiden Voyages (New Georges).

Molloy's novel, Smarty Girl: Dublin Savage, was published by Simon & Schuster Audio in 2012, and received international distribution through Audible. Throughout her career, she has been in receipt of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Biography

Early life

Molloy was born in Dublin, Ireland, where she developed an early love for theatre. Her father, John Molloy, was an actor and playwright at the Abbey Theatre, and her mother Yvonne Molloy was a writer and director for RTÉ and BBC Radio. In a 2017 interview with the Irish Repertory Theatre, Molloy recalled that,

"In the 1950s and 60s, my mother and father worked together in Dublin theaters – from Madame Cogley's Pocket Theatre to The Pike, to The Gaiety, to The Gate. I was in and out of those theaters since I could walk – backstage, in the dressing rooms, waggling my shoes while waiting in the velvet seats for the play to begin. Actors and producers, writers and musicians dropped by our house when they were in the neighborhood. There was no separation between theatre and life. My big sister Siobhán told me stories – many of them Irish myths. So when I come up with the notion for a new play that's set in Ireland – immediately there are ghosts, and mystery, and shifting theatrical worlds."

As a child Molloy appeared as Noeleen Feeney, the daughter of her father's character Oliver Feeney, on the RTÉ drama serial Tolka Row. Set in a fictional housing estate on the northside of Dublin, the drama ran for five series from 1964-1968.

Molloy later immigrated to Pennsylvania with her mother.

Education

Molloy attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where she obtained a BFA in Drama. She later attended Brown University, where she studied under the playwright Paula Vogel and received an MFA in Creative Writing.

Career

Susan Hefner & Company

From 1990 to 1994, Molloy authored original text for experimental dance pieces by Susan Hefner & Company, including "Attempted Flight" at Judson Memorial Church, "Marrow Clamor" at One Dream Theater TriBeCa, "Eve of Consumption" at Theatre Row, and "Unruly Graces" at Dia Chelsea. In reviewing the latter piece for The New York Times, Jennifer Dunning noted

""Unruly Graces" consisted of 11 scenes that flowed together to make a single, eveninglong piece. Honor Molloy, who wrote the text, touched on such topics as imperialism, the smugness of the ruling class, 19th-century women's emancipation and the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing in which four children were killed... Dance and verse came together in one searing moment in "Lifting as She Climb" that communicated the force of the church explosion and of the flight of one girl's body upward. The simplicity and plain-spokenness of Ms. Molloy's dialogue made a touching portrait of a fierce yet timid Angelina Grimké, a 19th-century abolitionist who was the first woman to address the Massachusetts State Legislature."

Susan Hefner & Company have continued to perform versions of these pieces and others around the world.

Maiden Voyages

Maiden Voyages was first developed at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1990 via a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship. Subsequently, the play was selected for further development by the Boston Women in Theatre Festival. Maiden Voyages was later produced by New Georges at Theatre Row in 1993. The production, which was initially directed by Jessica Bauman, depicts an Irish midwife working in a Dublin maternity ward. In a 2011 interview with The New York Foundation for the Arts, Molloy said

"Maiden Voyages, my first full-length play, starts with a woman arriving at a maternity hospital with a dead fetus inside her. She's been badly beaten by her husband. Many of my plays repeat some version of this scene".

Maiden Voyages was subsequently staged at the Liberty Hall Theatre in Dublin, Ireland.

Rehearsing the Granda

Rehearsing the Granda premiered at The Public Theater as part of JoAnne Akalaitis' "Special Projects Series," running February 4th-19th, 1992. The production was directed by Julie Nichols. Rehearsing the Granda was subsequently included in The Best Plays Theater Yearbook of 1991-1992.

Sticky and Juicy on da Senate Floor

Sticky and Juicy on da Senate Floor premiered at The Public Theater as part of JoAnne Akalaitis' "Special Projects Series," running June 2nd - 17th, 1992. The production was directed by Jimbo Flynn, and featured Molloy and Donna Villella in the titular roles. Sticky and Juicy on da Senate Floor was subsequently included in The Best Plays Theater Yearbook of 1991-1992.

Monument

Monument premiered at the Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the 26th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, which ran from March 3rd - April 13th, 2002. The one-act tells the story of two emergency telephone operators as they navigate a terrifying series of calls on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. In a review from Booklist, Jack Helbig noted

"Louisville's annual Humana Festival is famous as a showcase for new plays and playwrights. The 2002 festival included new works by such big guns as Anne Bogart, Tina Howe, Julia Jordan, Charles L. Mee, and Adam Rapp, while emerging playwrights were relegated to Humana's National One-Act Play Contest. Of these, Honor Molloy's moving meditation on 9/11 is the most haunting."

Monument was subsequently published by PlayScripts, Inc. and has been performed regionally across the United States.

Madame Killer

Madame Killer was first developed in 2002 by Lincoln Center Theatre and The Royal Court Theatre as part of the Audrey Skirball-Kenis Playwright Exchange. Subsequently, the play was selected for further development by The American Place Theatre, New Dramatists, and the 92nd Street Y's Makor Theater Project, featuring Marsha Mason in the titular role. Madame Killer later had its world premiere at Clubbed Thumbs' Summerworks, in 2005. The production was directed by Wier Harman, and featured an ensemble of Marsha Stephanie Blake, Aedin Moloney, Maria Porter, Jonathan Rose, Mark Shanahan, and Melinda Wade. The play is a "gothic noir" about Ann Lohman, a British-born American abortion provider and midwife who practiced in New York City. For Molloy,

"Lohman was a paradigm of capitalism, worth millions ... but she had secrets. This fair doctor owned a black book filled with incriminating evidence about all the women she serviced over the years, striking fear in both rich and poor if this information ever got out!"

Madame Killer was included in The Best Plays Theater Yearbook of 2004-2005, and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Playwright Award. The play had it's international premiere at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney, Australia as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival.

In Pigeon House

In Pigeon House was first developed at The Irish Repertory Theatre in 2002, via a New York State Council on the Arts Fellowship. The play later premiered at The Irish Theatre of Chicago in 2012. The production was directed by Brian Shaw, and featured an ensemble of Ira Amyx, Katherine Schwartz, Barbara Figgins, and John Mossman. According to a press release from BroadwayWorld,

In Pigeon House weaves together vaudeville, music hall, and cinema in a “love letter to traveling shows.” Moving between time and genres, “the itinerant players Basher, Masher, Rasher and Dolly rip up the stage with a furious tornado of language and moving pictures.” A startlingly theatrical and darkly comic oeuvre, In Pigeon House at once explodes and upholds the romantic myth of the wandering player. The play owes its inspiration to the "fit-ups," traveling shows that toured Ireland's countryside in the first half of the twentieth century. Farmers and villagers "starved for a bit of culture" prized the indigenous touring companies from whose talented and highly accomplished ranks emerged such actors as Cyril Cusack and Milo O'Shea. John Molloy, Molloy’s father, began his own career in the fit-ups before moving on to star in Ireland's first soap opera, Tolka Row.

The production had a five week engagement, from October 14 - November 18th. In a review from The Chicago Reader, Tony Adler noted:

"In Pigeon House is ultimately a tribute to the spirit of stage play through the generations. I'm sure I'd have caught a lot more if I were Irish, but patience is rewarded here by Molloy's cunning and surreal sensibility—channeling a whole slew of Irish bards, from Beckett to Martin McDonagh and Enda Walsh—and by the fit-upish elan of The Irish Theatre of Chicago's own cast of artistes under the direction of Brian Shaw."

Crackskull Row

Crackskull Row was first developed at the Inishbofin Arts Festival in 2000. More than a decade later, the play was included on the 2015 edition of The Kilroys' List, a gender parity initiative designed to end the "systematic underrepresentation of female and trans playwrights" in the American theater industry. Crackskull Row premiered the following year at The Workshop Theatre, produced by Nancy Manocherian's the cell and directed by Kira Simring. Set in 1999, "Rasher Moorigan is finally released from prison after serving time for a monstrous crime he committed more than 30 years earlier. After reuniting with his mother, an old woman haunted by a vanished Dublin, they confront the ghosts of the past and an uncertain future." The New York Times deemed the play a "Critic's Pick" writing,

"This is a piece of Irish gothic; other practitioners include Conor McPherson, a specialist in haunting conversations, and Martin McDonagh, the poet of dark comedy. Now Ms. Molloy enters the ring, exploring rage, dissolution, sexual perversity and family history with a bleak and penetrating acuity... The performers, are uniformly on point, Siena Zoë Allen's costumes, drab but with bursts of color and pattern, complement the glowing hues in Gertjan Houben's lighting. But it is Ms. Molloy's salty, slangy yet singsong dialogue that most resonates. Mr. McPherson and Mr. McDonagh might have to set another place at their table."

Crackskull Row subsequently transferred to the Irish Repertory Theatre for an additional eight week engagement in 2017.

Smarty Girl: Dublin Savage

Molloy's novel and accompanying audiobook, Smarty Girl: Dublin Savage was published by Simon & Schuster Audio in 2012, and is distributed internationally through Audible. The voice cast includes Molloy, Kevin Holohan, Aedin Moloney, and Susan McKeown. According to the books' press release, it is set in 1960s Ireland and "depicts the turbulent life of the O'Feeney family, seen through the eyes of youngest daughter, Noleen".

In a review for The Irish Voice, Cahir O'Doherty said

Smarty Girl: Dublin Savage is a lighthouse intelligence that doesn't miss a stitch... The richness of the telling and the lessons of it can be weighed in every line. Many Irish books will be released this year, but few will be this candid or this complete.

While on her book tour, Molloy performed excerpts of Smarty Girl at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the New York Public Library, the Boston Public Library, the Dublin City Library & Archive, Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side, and The Irish Arts Center.

Personal life

From 1983 to 1984, Molloy was married to House of Lies creator Matthew Carnahan.

Molloy publicly identifies as queer and serves on the organizing committee of St. Pat's for All.

In addition to her work as a writer, Molloy is also a prolific editor. She spent ten years as an Acquisitions Editor at Simon and Schuster. Currently she serves as Editorial Director of GeistM, an subsidiary of the international tech and media incubator Gramercy Labs, with offices in New York, London, and Dublin.

She has taught courses in english and creative writing at Columbia University, the City University of New York, and Brown University.

Molloy lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Awards and Honors

• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• Radcliffe Fellowship
• Pew Fellowship
• New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting/Screenwriting
• New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting
• New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction
• New York Foundation for the Arts, City Artists Corps Grant
• New York State Council on the Arts Fellowship
• Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship
• New Dramatists, 7 Year Residency
• 2 Residencies at MacDowell
• 2 Residencies at Yaddo
• 2 Residencies at Annaghmakerrig
• Residency at Millay Arts
• Residency at Hedgebrook
• Residency at the Edward F. Albee Foundation
• The Berrilla Kerr Award for Playwriting
• The Frederick Loewe Award for Dramatic Composition
• Kaufman & Hart Prize for New American Comedy (Finalist)
• Origin 1st Irish Theatre Festival, Best Playwright Award