Bio

Lisa D’Amour is a playwright and interdisciplinary artist and one half of the OBIE-Award winning performance duo PearlDamour.  Her plays have produced by theaters across the country, including Manhattan theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway, Playwrights’ Horizons, HERE Arts Center, Clubbed Thumb, (all in NYC), Children’s Theater Company (Minneapolis), The Wilma Theater (Philadelphia) and Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington D.C.).  

Lisa’s play Detroit premiered at Steppenwolf, directed by ensemble member Austin Pendleton;  Mr. Pendleton also directed the UK premiere at the National Theater with a British cast.  Detroit was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn prize.  PearlDamour is known for creating interdisciplinary, often site-specific works which range from the intimate to large scale.  Their latest performance, Ocean Filibuster, will premeire at A.R.T. theater in Cambridge, commissioned by the Harvard Center for the Environment.  Other recent PearlDamour work includes How to Build a Forest, an 8-hour performance installation created with visual artist Shawn Hall (The Kitchen, New York, 2011, currently touring) andMILTON, a performance created from visits and interviews in 5 U.S. cities named Milton.  

Lisa is the recipient of the 2008 Alpert Award for the Arts in theater, the 2011 Steinberg Playwright Award and is a recipient of the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.  She is a former Jerome Fellow and Core Alum of the Playwrights’ Center and an alumna of New Dramatists.