About the Author of the Play...
NICKEL AND DIMED
PLAYWRIGHT JOAN HOLDEN.
Joan
Holden was principal playwright for the Tony Award-winning San
Francisco Mime Troupe from l967 to 2000: creating, as author or
head writer, a satire a year for the Troupe's annual summer season in
the parks. Longtime San Franciscans may remember THE INDEPENDENT FEMALE
or A MAN HAS HIS PRIDE, THE DRAGON LADY'S REVENGE, FALSE
PROMISES, THE HOTEL UNIVERSE, THE FACTWINO TRILOGY, THE
MOZAMGOLA CAPER, AMERICAN or LAST TANGO IN HUAHUATENANGO, STEELTOWN,
RIPPED VAN WINKLE, SEEING DOUBLE, BACK TO NORMAL, and OFFSHORE.
Since the l980's she has enjoyed parallel
careers as a translator and adaptor of comedies; notably THE ACCIDENTAL
DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST for the Eureka
Theater, THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO
and THE POPE AND THE WITCH
for the American Conservatory Theater,
and VOLPONE and
THE ALCHEMIST for
the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. In
1998 she led a team of Jews and Arabs -- Israeli, American and Palestinian
-- writing the Troupe's Obie-winning SEEING DOUBLE, an argument for a
two-state solution in the form of a
mistaken-identity farce.
With Dan Chumley, she has created shows in collaboration
with artists in Israel, the Philippines, Nepal and Hong Kong. Holden
has served on peer panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the
California Arts Council. She wrote the final
report for the 1994 San Francisco Cultural Affairs Task Force, which
created the City's Cultural Equity Endowment.
She has been honored with Bay Area Critics'
Circle, Dramalogue, Los Angeles Critics' Circle awards; playwriting grants
from the Rockefeller and Gerbode
Foundations; the San Francisco Working Women's Festival Working Woman
of the Year award, and, with the Troupe, the San Francisco Media Alliance
Golden Gadfly Award.
Joan Holden's newest play, MALL*MART, THE MUSICAL!,
made its world debut at Denver's Curious Theatre in May of 2007.
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