Artist Profile
Joanna Garner is a playwright and musician based in Santa Fe, NM, where she is the Senior Narrative Director for Meow Wolf. Her work has been developed nationally and internationally, including at the Banff Centre Playwrights Lab, Tofte Lake Center, The Finnish National Opera, Seattle Repertory Theatre, On the Boards, ZACH Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theater, Great Plains Theatre Conference, National Winter Playwrights Retreat, Theatricum Botanicum, with Austin’s acclaimed Rude Mechs, and at the New York and Hollywood fringe festivals. Her political drama about Iran, The Orange Garden, was a winner of the 2018 Izzy Award, the Keene Prize for Literature and included on the 2016 Kilroys List. Her immersive exploration of food and sex, Please Open Your Mouth, premiered at Café Nordo in Seattle. Her original country musical, 100 Heartbreaks, was workshopped in Seattle Rep’s New Play Program, with the Northwest Playwrights Alliance, and at the country’s largest arts and culture festival, Bumbershoot, before getting this next stage of development of Chance Theater. Joanna was Chance’s 2018 Resident Playwright, and is so glad to be back in Orange County. She was recently commissioned by Seattle Repertory Theatre for a new play with music (and coyotes) called Burn Me Down. She has an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Texas at Austin.