Cassandra Medley
Cassandra Medley | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 12, 1949 Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Michigan (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | Playwright, librettist, screenwriter, professor |
| Notable work |
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| Awards | Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting Outer Critics Circle Award August Wilson Playwriting Award National Endowment for the Arts Playwright Award |
| Website | cassandramedleyplaywright.com |
Cassandra Medley (born August 12, 1949) is an American playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include A... My Name Is Alice (1984) Ma Rose (1988), Noon Day Sun (2001), Relativity (2004), and Cell (2011). From 1995-1997 Medley served as a staff writer on the long-running ABC series One Life to Live, for which she was twice nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.
In 2023, Medley was awarded the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, “one of the nation’s largest and most significant prizes for playwrights.” Among numerous other career honors, she has been the recipient of an Outer Critics Circle Award, the August Wilson Playwriting Award, and the National Endowment for the Arts Playwright Award. In 1989 she was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Medley’s plays span a rich array of topics, including the African-American family structure, passing, colorism, melanin theory, the prison–industrial complex, folk religion, and social inequality.