Marcus Gardley

Marcus Gardley is an award-winning poet and playwright from West Oakland, California. He is the recent recipient of the 2014 Glickman Award for his play The House That Will Not Stand, which was commissioned and produced by Berkeley Rep. It had subsequent productions at Yale Rep and the Tricycle Theater in London and was a finalist for the 2015 Kennedy Prize. Gardley was the 2013 USA James Baldwin Fellow and the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. The New Yorker describes Gardley as "the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello and Tennessee Williams." He is an ensemble member playwright at Victory Gardens Theater where his play The Gospel of Loving Kindness was produced in March and won the 2014 BTAA award for best play/playwright. His most recent play An Issue of Blood premiered at the same theater in 2015 to critical acclaim.

Gardley was born and raised in Oakland, California. He originally studied and wrote poetry at San Francisco State University (SFSU), though his poetry professors told him that his poems read like plays. Initially not wanting to admit this, Gardley eventually came around to acknowledge that his poems often did incorporate elements of playwrighting. Regarding this time, Gardley later recalled, "Oh, this is where I belong. I don't like speaking my work, I like hearing my work. What I like about theater is it's like an orchestra. There are these different sounds from different people. I think of my plays as compositions in a way." Gardley earned the SFSU African American Student of Outstanding Achievement Award for 2000–1 and graduated with his B.F.A. Gardley went on to earn his M.F.A. in play-writing from Yale School of Drama in 2004. Upon graduation, Gardley started teaching creative writing at Columbia University.

Gardley is among a new group of young African-American playwrights who have come to prominence during the "Age of Obama". These emerging playwrights are considered to be postblack artists. Gardley's play ...And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi was produced at the Cutting Ball Theater and has earned both positive reviews and two sold-out extensions. ...And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi is a poetic voyage of forgiveness and redemption highly influenced by the myth of Demeter and Persephone. The play encompasses traditional storytelling, gospel music, and a humor to create a rich and vividly imaginative world. According to Gardley, "Jesus Moonwalks is in a lot of ways my signature play. It is based upon a story my great-grandmother used to tell about her father who fled the bonds of slavery and traveled the country in search of his family." In 2010, it was rated as one of the top ten plays in the Bay Area.

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