LISA LEWIS
WRITER

"Competing drives and complicated ethics fuse in Lisa Lewis’s sexy and snarled SCHOOLED." 

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Photo by Matthew Murphy

"FOUR STARS!  WISED-UP and WHIP-SMART, and handled with REMARKABLE HUMOR and subtlety. This seriocomic love triangle moves smoothly and bristles with apt, STINGING lines and RICH, UNPREDICTABLE characters."

"Lisa Lewis is A WILDLY TALENTED PLAYWRIGHT. SCHOOLED is a complex power-play in which there is no predator or victim, but an intricate intertwining of ambitions from which

NO EGO EMERGES UNSCATHED."

"Questions of who has the right, or, more accurately, the privilege to make art, drive the CRACKLING PLOT, as the characters lob verbal grenades at one another. SCHOOLED has the makings of one of the Fringe premieres that ends up making a mainstream splash."

WINNER of the New York International Fringe Festival Overall Excellence Award for Playwriting, SCHOOLED had a critically acclaimed sold-out run directed by James Kautz, and was extended as part of the Fringe Encore Series at Soho Playhouse. Published in The Best Plays from American Theater Festivals 2015, Applause Books. Finalist, ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition 2020 (Judge: Stephen Adly Guirgis).

It's about what happens outside the classroom

SCHOOLED is a fiercely funny and gripping new play about privilege, ambition, and the lengths we’ll go to succeed. Two film students vie for a competitive grant from their roguish professor in a taut threesome that tests their romantic relationship and their ethics. A biting drama with surprising humor, SCHOOLED is an examination of the lies we tell ourselves, and the truths we refuse to believe.

Click here to read an excerpt

The cast of SCHOOLED: Quentin Maré, Lilli Stein, Stephen Friedrich. Photo by Darren Cox

Peter Friedman, Phoebe Strole, James Kautz, Mara Davi at New Ohio Theatre

ABOUT LISA

Called “sexy and snarled” by The New York Times and “wised-up and whip-smart" by Time Out New York, Lisa Lewis’ plays capture dangerous conversations between people blinded by their assumptions. Her gentrification comedy THE HOUSEWARMING  was a semi-finalist for the 2020-21 Playwrights Realm Fellowship. Her play the THE ONE-FIFTH was a finalist for the 2020 ScreenCraft Competition. 

Her play SCHOOLED had a critically acclaimed sold-out run at the New York International Fringe Festival where it received a Time Out New York Four Star Critics’ Pick review, was praised in The New York Times, and won the Fringe Overall Excellence Award for Playwriting. It was extended in the Fringe Encore Series at Soho Playhouse and published in the Applause anthology, The Best Plays From American Theatre Festivals 2015.   

A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been developed & presented by The 24 Hour Plays (starring Homeland’s Amy Hargreaves), Naked Angels, Maven Pictures, Davenport Theatricals, The New Ohio Theatre, Core Artist Ensemble, and New Helvetia Theatre’s Sacramento New Works Festival where she was an artist in residence. 

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If you'd like to learn more, you can check out her resume here. 

In addition to her theatrical writing, Lisa has written and directed numerous high-profile television commercials as part of her work as a Creative Director at SpotCo Entertainment Advertising.

The Housewarming

Twenty-five years after the Brooklyn Crown Heights riots, newlyweds Alysha and Corey have bought a renovated duplex in the gentrifying neighborhood. When Alysha's college best friend Franny and her boyfriend Oscar come by to help them unpack, long-simmering resentments rise to the surface in a collision of race and class that threatens to destroy the bonds that connect them all.

Semi-Finalist

The Playwrights Realm 2020-21 Fellowship

> Read an excerpt here

THe

One-Fifth

A childless, middle-aged journalist and his lesbian twin sister try to convince their respective, resistant partners that they should become a sperm donor family. A story of love, responsibility, and the sometimes unbridgeable gap between what we want for ourselves and what we owe to each other.

Finalist

ScreenCraft Stage Play Award,

Judge: Stephen Adly Guirgis, 2020

> Read an excerpt here