Playwrights Ensemble
Gloria Bond Clunie
Gloria’s new play, Living Green, received an award and reading at the 2008 New Professional Theatre Writers Festival in New York, was a 2006 finalist in the Chicago Dramatist Many Voices National Playwriting Project and premiered in the 2008-09 Season at Victory Gardens. Her new play Drip opened the 2008-09 Season at ETA Creative Arts Foundation in Chicago. Quark was one of two finalists in the 2007 STAGE International Script Competition for the best new play about science and technology sponsored by the Professional Artists Lab and the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received a 2006 Illinois Scriptwriting Fellowship and in 2005 Sweet Water Taste was awarded a Theodore Ward Prize for African-American Playwriting, included in the New Stages Series at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and given an Honorable Mention by the Stage 3 Theatre Fest in Sonora, Ca.
Clunie is proud to be an original member of the Playwriting Ensemble at the Victory Gardens Theater and to have received their Scott McPherson Playwriting Award for 2000. VG’s production of her play Shoes, directed by Andrea J. Dymond, was recognized as the best new play of 2005 by the Chicago Black Theatre Alliance. Additional produced credits include North Star (published by Dramatic Publishing Company; winner of 1995 Chicago Jeff Award for Best New Play, Victory Gardens Theater, directed by Sandy Shinner; 1994 Theodore Ward African-American Playwriting Award, Columbia College directed by Chuck Smith; 1999 American Alliance for Theater and Education Distinguished Play Award; included in Seven Black Plays edited by Chuck Smith with a forward by August Wilson), Secrets, the musical Sing, Malindy, Sing!, Dreams, as well as two children's plays Basket of Wishes, Bucket of Dreams and the adaptation of Patricia McKissack’s award-winning book Mirandy and Brother Wind which was commissioned by Northwestern University and recently performed at the 2009 National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta. She is currently working on a new play Mercy Rising.
Additional writing awards include the 1997 Alice Walker Short Fiction Award from the Gwendolyn Brooks Center, a 1996 Illinois Playwriting Fellowship and a 1993 Arts Education Fellowship (NEA/CBE). Her novel Dear Cora was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and a semifinalist in the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition.
In 1979 she founded and for eight years was the Artistic Director of the Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre in Evanston, Illinois. While there, she directed over twenty-five productions including Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, Home, Raisin and Ain't Misbehavin'. She received a B.S. in theater and an M.F.A. in directing from Northwestern University and since 1981 has been a full-time drama specialist in Evanston’s School District 65. In 1986 she was given the Evanston Mayor’s Award for the Arts and has been recognized for her contributions to both the arts and education by many organizations including the NAACP, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, The Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Chicago’s Black Theatre Alliance and the American Alliance for Theater & Education. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Originally from Henderson, North Carolina, Gloria now lives in Evanston, Illinois. She and her husband Basil are the proud parents of one daughter, Aurelia.
