Claudia Allen papers

Born in 1954, Claudia Allen grew up in Clare, Michigan. After graduating from University of Michigan with an M.A. in English, she moved to Chicago and began writing plays. Allen is an alumni of the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble. She has been affiliated with Victory Gardens Theater for over 20 years, and her plays have been produced in Chicago and across the United States. From the 1990s through the 2000s, Allen also taught at various institutions including DePaul University, Northwestern University College, and the University of Chicago. In 1999, Allen was recognized as Best Playwright by Chicago magazine. She is the recipient of two Joseph Jefferson Awards and five Jeff nominations. She also received the Trailblazer Award from Bailiwick Repertory for demonstrating excellence in playwriting and for moving lesbian plays from the theatrical fringe to the artistic center. Allen is well-known for incorporating lesbian and bisexual characters into her plays, with nearly half of her productions as of 2010 addressing lesbian or bisexual topics. I wrote lesbian-themed plays, because I wasn’t seeing what I wanted to watch. (The Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame website, accessed on June 15, 2016, glhalloffame.org) In 1987, Allen’s play They Even Got the Renzi was one of only two plays by women chosen from over 500 submissions at the Great Chicago Playwrights Expo. In the foreword of a published anthology of Allen’s plays, a colleague describes her work with admiration: Allen’s stage moves beyond literal naturalism to representations of memory, of love lost and reclaimed that move us far beyond the living room, the nursing home, the rooming-house porch, or even the backstage dressing room (She’s Always Liked the Girls Best: Lesbian Plays, 1993). Allen’s most frequently produced play is Hannah Free, which first premiered at Chicago’s Bailiwick Repertory in 1992. The story focuses on a complicated, lifelong lesbian relationship.