Artist Profile
Erica Bennett is a dramatist and retired community college faculty librarian. Her 2017 short film I Only Cried Twice is based on her play by the same title. KOCE-TV‘s (now PBS) the OC Channel was granted a perpetual license to her documentary film, Mendez v. Westminster: Families for Equality, in October 2010.
Other produced Bennett plays include Bender, a full-length play with music, and Love, Divine, a short play. They were produced by the OC-Centric New Play Festival, and New Voices of Orange County, respectively.
Orange County Playwrights Alliance, Truman State University, White Horse Theater Company and Fullerton College Playwrights Festival have staged readings of her work. A Waffle Doesn’t Cure Insomnia was selected for publication in the Best American Short Plays 2011-2012.
Bennett received a B.A. in Theater Arts from California State University, Fullerton, where she studied acting with Donn Finn and Jose Quintero. Upon graduation she moved to Los Angeles where she studied acting with Stella Adler and Arthur Mendoza. She was featured in Benicio Del Toro’s short film Submission with Matthew McConaughey and Valeria Golino, and worked for nearly ten years in dramatic television production on such shows as The Young Riders, Gabriel’s Fire, Under Suspicion, and The Big Easy as a writer’s and development assistant.
Bennett holds a Master of Library & Information Science from UCLA with an emphasis in Archival Studies. She is an Associate Member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and a member of the Orange County Playwrights Alliance.
