Lisa Loomer

Susan Smith Blackburn Prize

Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award

Back Stage West Garland Award for Playwriting

Imagen Award 

Playwright

Screenwriter

Brandeis University

The Waiting Room

Jane Chambers Playwriting Award

Lisa Loomer is a playwright and screenwriter who has also worked as an actress and stand-up comic. She is best known for her play The Waiting Room (1994), in which three women from different time periods meet in a modern doctor's waiting room, each suffering from the effects of their various societies' cosmetic body modification practices (foot binding, corsetry, and breast implantation). She also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Girl Interrupted. Many of her plays deal with the experiences of Latinos and Hispanic-Americans, and with various aspects of contemporary family life. Though within Loomer's play The Waiting Room, it discusses issues such as body image, breast cancer, and non western medicine.

Lisa Loomer was born in New York and moved to Mexico with her family in her late teens. Loomer studied theatre at Brandeis University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. After graduation she started working as an actress, after becoming frustrated by the lack of roles available to women, or Latinas, she starting writing her own monologues with the help of her mentor María Irene Fornés. Loomer started out by writing under the pseudonym Jane da VInci. Loomer's early writings became several one woman shows that were preformed in the early 1980's. Loomer is an alumna of the New Dramatists and was a 1985 playwright-in-residence at the Intar Theatre in New York City.

Loomer is married to composer and painter Joe Romano; they have one son, Marcello. For about 20 years Loomer lived in Los Angeles writing for Hollywood. Loomer's play Living out premiered in 2003 and was directed by her longtime collaborator Mr. Raunch. Living Out was inspired by Loomer's experience of raising her son.