melissa toomey

writer. playwright. screenwriter. performer

mel toomey is an emerging playwright and a member of the Dramatists Guild, based in New York.

she is currently developing Upstage(d), a play with music, for Premiere Stages, adapting her play ashland to a play-with-music with composer Cedric Allen Hills, writing a dark folk concept album based on her play danse macabre: a kiss of death, and in early development of Hell Bent, a graphic novel based on her episodic project of the same name.

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her work has been described as “Sam Shepard meets the supernatural.” she mostly writes wild, Western-gothic stories about the outcasts, the crazy ones, the gravely misunderstood. the mystical in the mundane. magic as realism. the times we speak to the gods and the times we become them. the steps we take alone into the unknown. she is preoccupied with the American experience seen through the stories of “crazy,” left behind, homeless, nomadic, addicted, lonely, and rural Americans, and inspired heavily by the landscapes of the American West, and the Jersey-scapes of her home state of New Jersey.

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She has recently developed plays with Premiere Stages, The Actors Studio, Luna Stage Company, The Tank, Fresh Ground Pepper, INKubator @ Art House Productions, NJ Play Lab, Theatre for the New City, and more. Her work was recently published by Smith & Kraus and Next Stage Press. She is a recent alum of the INKubator New Play Program at Art House Productions, current member of The Actors Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit, and BRB Artist-in-Residence with Fresh Ground Pepper's Eco Theatre program. Alum of the 2021 Kennedy Center Playwriting Residency with Gary Garrison and Mark Bly.

She has recently been a Semi Finalist for the Premiere Stages Play Festival (2022), Pipeline Play Lab @ Pipeline Theatre Company (2024, 2021), Valdez Theatre Conference (2022), NJ Play Lab Residency (2022), and the Women's Playwrights Circle @ Speranza Theatre Company (2021).

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She creates outdoor theatre whenever possible, most recently with her group, Leave No Trace Theatre (www.leavenotracetheatre.org). She was once a full time traveler. She once lived at the Grand Canyon.

BFA, Acting: SUNY Purchase.