Madeleine George is an American playwright and author. Her play ''The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence'' was a finalist for the

Pulitzer Prize for Drama The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were a ...

in 2014 and she won the 2016

Whiting Award The Whiting Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, ...

for Drama. George works as a writer and executive story editor on the Hulu comedy series ''

Only Murders in the Building , creator = Steve Martin & John Hoffman , starring = {{Plainlist, * Steve Martin * Martin Short * Selena Gomez * Aaron Dominguez * Amy Ryan * Cara Delevingne * Adina Verson * Michael Cyril Creighton , music ...

''.

Early life

George grew up in

Amherst, Massachusetts Amherst () is a city in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Connecticut River valley. Amherst has a council–manager form of government, and is considered a city under Massachusetts state law. Amherst is one of several Massach ...

, and attended Amherst Regional High School. She began writing plays as a student, and participated in the Young Playwrights Festival at

Playwrights Horizons Playwrights Horizons is a not-for-profit American Off-Broadway theater located in New York City dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to the production of their new work. ...

and The Public Theatre when she was a teenager. The ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' critic

Ben Brantley Benjamin D. Brantley (born October 26, 1954) is an American theater critic, journalist, editor, publisher, and writer. He served as the chief theater critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1996 to 2017, and as co-chief theater critic from 2017 t ...

called her play ''Sweetbitter Baby,'' written when George was 17, "a portrait of a romance going sour in the course of a night...it...leaves its affecting residue of a sense of unbridgeable isolation." George holds a B.A.,

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

, summa cum laude, from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, from which she graduated in 1996, and an M.F.A. from NYU's

Tisch School of the Arts The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (commonly referred to as Tisch) is the performing, cinematic, and media arts school of New York University. Founded on August 17, 1965, as the School of the Arts at New York University, Tisch ...

."Bard Prison Initiative: Who We Are"
retrieved February 22, 2017.

Career

Theater

In 2003, George became a founding member of 13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.), an Obie-Award-winning collective, along with playwrights such as

Anne Washburn Anne Washburn is an American playwright. Life Washburn graduated from Reed College and from New York University, with an M.F.A. Her plays have been produced in New York City by Cherry Lane Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Vineyard Theat ...

Sarah Ruhl Sarah Ruhl (born January 24, 1974) is an American playwright, poet, professor, and essayist. Among her most popular plays are ''Eurydice'' (2003), '' The Clean House'' (2004), and '' In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play)'' (2009). She has been ...

, and

Young Jean Lee Young Jean Lee (born 1974) is an American playwright, director, and filmmaker. She was the Artistic Director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, a not-for-profit theater company dedicated to producing her work. She has written and directed ten s ...

. ''Precious Little,'' a drama about a linguist who learns that due to a genetic abnormality, the child she is carrying may never learn to speak, was produced in New York by

Clubbed Thumb Clubbed Thumb is a downtown theater company in New York City that commissions, develops, and produces "funny, strange, and provocative new plays by living American writers." Since its founding in 1996, the company has earned five OBIES (including ...

as part of its Summerworks series in 2009. It has subsequently been produced by the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago, City Theatre in Pittsburgh,

Shotgun Players The Shotgun Players is a California East Bay regional theatre group located in Berkeley, California. It runs 6 to 7 productions per season. Its main stage is the Ashby Stage located in the Lorin District near the Ashby BART station. About The ...

in Berkeley, and many other theaters. The Nora Theatre Company at Central Square Theatre in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

, produced the play in 2017. George's dark comedy ''The Zero Hour'' was presented by 13P at Walkerspace in New York in 2010, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Drama. ''Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England,'' "a screwball sex comedy about the perils of monogamy, certainty, and academic administration", was originally produced by New Jersey's

Two River Theater Two River Theater is a professional, not-for-profit, regional theater company producing plays and educational programs for audiences from central New Jersey and beyond. It is located in Red Bank, New Jersey, on the peninsula between the Navesink ...

in 2011 and named the Best Play of 2011 by the ''

New Jersey Star-Ledger ''The Star-Ledger'' was the largest circulation newspaper in New Jersey. It is based in Newark, New Jersey. The newspaper ceased print publication on February 2, 2025, but continues to publish a digital edition. In 2007, ''The Star-Ledger''s ...

''. ''The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence'' was produced by

in 2013, and subsequently won an

Outer Critics Circle Award The Outer Critics Circle Awards are presented annually for theatrical achievements both on Broadway and Off-Broadway. They are presented by the Outer Critics Circle (OCC), the official organization of New York theater writers for out-of-town news ...

. George was inspired to write the play after watching an episode of

Jeopardy! ''Jeopardy!'' is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead g ...

featuring the supercomputer Watson. In naming it a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the committee praised it as "a cleverly constructed play that uses several historical moments—from the 1800s to the 2010s—to meditate on the technological advancements that bring people together and tear them apart." George won the 2016 Whiting Award for Drama. The selection committee called her "a playwright at home in the messiness of us. She writes rigorously about love and its great sacrifices, and we are pulled to her scenes and words because she will not compromise how complicated we truly are. Conceptually rich and perfectly paced, every particle of language—from a character's speech to a stage direction—contributes to the vivid construction of a world." George's play ''Hurricane Diane,'' which "combines suburban New Jersey housewives, gardening, climate change, and Greek tragedy", premiered at the

in 2017. In 2016, George began a three-year term as the Playwright in Residence at Two River, through the National Playwright Residency Program, funded by the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, commonly known as the Mellon Foundation, is a New York City-based private foundation with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the product of the 1969 merger ...

and administered by

HowlRound HowlRound Theatre Commons is a non-profit service organization based out of Emerson College's Office of the Arts. Its aim is to support developing theatre practitioners and facilitating dialogue within not-for-profit theatre and performance arts f ...

. ''Hurricane Diane'' opened off-Broadway at the

New York Theatre Workshop __NOTOC__ New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) is an Off-Broadway theater noted for its productions of new works. Located at 79 East 4th Street between Second Avenue and Bowery in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it h ...

in 2019, in a production directed by

Leigh Silverman Leigh Silverman is an American director for the stage, both off-Broadway and on Broadway. She was nominated for the 2014 and 2024 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the musicals '' Violet'' and '' Suffs'', and the 2008 Drama Desk Awar ...

Books

George is the author of two young-adult novels, ''Looks'' (2008) and ''The Difference Between You and Me'' (2012), both published by

Viking Press Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer and then acqu ...

. ''Publishers Weekly'' called ''The Difference Between You and Me'' "a frank and funny account of opposites attracting

hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...

provides remarkable insight into teenage romance." It was a Kirkus Best Teen Book of 2012, a selection of the Junior Library Guild, and an ALA Rainbow List selection.

Television

George works as a writer and executive story editor on the Hulu comedy series ''

''.

Bard Prison Initiative

George is a Fellow for Curriculum and Program Development at the

Bard Prison Initiative The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) is a program of Bard College that provides college education to people in prison. BPI currently enrolls 400 students full-time across seven prisons in New York State. It engage students in the full breadth of libera ...

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains within the Hudson River Historic District ...

. She was site director of the Bard Prison Initiative campus at Bayview Correctional Facility in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

from 2006 until it closed in 2012 after

Hurricane Sandy Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as Superstorm Sandy) was an extremely large and devastating tropical cyclone which ravaged the Caribbean and the coastal Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States in late ...

Personal life

George is married to the playwright

Lisa Kron Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron (born May 20, 1961) is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book for the musical '' Fun Home'', for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Awar ...

.Spaner, Whitney
"How Lisa Kron's Biggest Admirer Became Her Life Partner"
Playbill, April 25, 2015

References

External links

www.madeleinegeorge.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:George, Madeleine Living people American lesbian writers American LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights LGBTQ people from Massachusetts American women dramatists and playwrights 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights 21st-century American women writers Year of birth missing (living people) Cornell University alumni Writers from Amherst, Massachusetts Tisch School of the Arts alumni Amherst Regional High School (Massachusetts) alumni