Meet the Playwright

Kyle Bass

Kyle Bass is the author of Possessing Harriet, which received its world premiere at Syracuse Stage, was subsequently produced at Franklin Stage Company, and will be produced next year at the East Lynn Theater Company in New Jersey. His new play salt/city/blues will have its world premiere in Syracuse Stage’s 21/22 season. Script consultant on Thoughts of a Colored Man, Kyle is a two-time recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (for fiction in 1998 and playwriting in 2010), a finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Award, and Pushcart Prize nominee. His other full-length plays include Tender Rain, Baldwin vs. Buckley: The Faith of Our Fathers, Bleecker Street, and Separated, a piece of documentary theatre about the student military veterans at Syracuse University, which was presented at Syracuse Stage and at the Paley Center in New York, directed by Robert Hupp. Kyle is the co-author (with Ping Chong) of Cry for Peace: Voices from the Congo, which had its world premiere at Syracuse Stage and was subsequently produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York, and the libretto for an opera based on the life and music of legendary folk singer and guitarist Libba Cotten, commissioned by the Society for New Music. As dramaturg, Kyle worked with acclaimed visual artist Carrie Mae Weems on her theatre piece Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, which had its world premiere at the 2016 Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina, subsequently produced at Yale Rep and the Kennedy Center. As a screenwriter, Kyle is the co-author of the original screenplay for the film Day of Days (Broad Green Pictures, 2017), which stars awardwinning veteran actor Tom Skerritt. His plays and other writings have appeared in the journals Callaloo, Folio, and Stone Canoe, among others, and in the essay anthology Alchemy of the Word: Writers Talk about Writing. Kyle has taught in the Colgate Writers Conference, has been guest lecturer in playwriting at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, was faculty in the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at Goddard College from 2006 to 2018, and from 2005 to 2018 he taught playwriting in Syracuse University’s Department of Drama and theatre courses in the Department of African American Studies, and was the 2019/20 Susan P. Stroman Visiting Playwright at the University of Delaware. Kyle is currently full-time faculty as assistant professor in the Department of Theater at Colgate University where he previously served as the Burke Endowed Chair for Regional Studies. Kyle holds an M.F.A. in playwriting from Goddard College, is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and is represented by The Barbara Hogenson Agency.