Holly Arsenault
PLAYWRIGHT

About

Photo by Kyler Martin

Photo by Kyler Martin

 

Holly Arsenault writes plays. Some of them are funny with sad parts, while others are sad with funny parts. Her plays, which have been called “almost clinically observant,” and “scary af but also charming,” often talk about families—biological, chosen, and circumstantial—and the complicated women who hold them together.

Holly was born in Montréal, Quebec and grew up there and in Maine, and then in Spokane, WA, and then in Seattle. She is currently enrolled in the MFA Playwriting & Screenwriting program(me) at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Her play Court was one of four winners selected from a national pool for the 2020 Ivoryton Playhouse Women Playwrights Initiative. Her play Undo is the recipient of a Theatre Puget Sound Gregory Award for Outstanding New Play and a Seattle Theater Writers Award for Excellence in Local Playwriting. Undo was nominated for the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Awards, and was a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award. It is published in Rain City Projects’ Manifesto v.4, edited by Chay Yew. Holly’s play 24 Pictures of a Pilot was a finalist for the Heideman Award at the National 10-Minute Play Contest at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and is published in Rain City Projects’ Manifesto v. 2, edited by Steven Dietz. Her play The Great Inconvenience was one of five nominees for a 2019 Gregory Award for Outstanding New Play.

Holly’s plays, which include Undo, Advent, The Cut, The Manor, Marvelous, Court, and The Great Inconvenience, have been developed at Seattle Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre, Ivoryton Playhouse, Sacred Fools Theatre, and the National Winter Playwriting Retreat, and produced in Seattle at Annex Theatre, Live Girls! Theater, 14/48: The World’s Quickest Theatre Festival, The Drama School at Seattle Children’s Theatre, Bainbridge Performing Arts, Mirror Stage, and the One-Minute Play Festival. Nationally, her work has been produced in Boca Raton, Detroit, and Chicago.

Holly’s essays have been published in City Arts magazine and The Dramatist, and her short play Scattered Thoughts as I Prepare a Eulogy on the Occasion of the Tragic Death of the Royal Children is published in Caffe Cino magazine, Issue 2, which is available now at caffecinopr.com.

Holly holds a BA from the University of Washington School of Drama. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and an alum of the Seattle Rep Writers Group. Her many day jobs have included shoe salesgal, barista, teaching artist, front-of-house staff, terrible waitress, so-so bookkeeper, marketing and communications person, admissions advisor. From 2005-2016 Holly was the Executive Director of TeenTix, and organization radically dedicated to empowering young arts audiences. She is now a proud board member of TeenTix. For more about her day-jobby stuff, look here.