Spotlight | Bess Wohl - Playwright and Filmmaker

Welcome to Broadway Stages’ Spotlight, where we feature local shops, restaurants, organizations, individuals, and venues. We encourage our readers to support these establishments and advance local economic growth. For Women’s History Month, we are shining the spotlight on a few of the women-owned or women-oriented businesses and organizations in the neighborhoods where we work. This week, we present Brooklyn-born playwright and filmmaker Bess Wohl.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Bess Wohl was exposed to the rich world of storytelling through the New York theater. She continued this journey at Harvard College, where she earned a BA in English. At Harvard, she studied with Antiguan-American novelist and essayist Jamaica Kincaid and Irish Nobel prize-winning poet and playwright Seamus Heaney. Her time in their schooling was fruitful. She was awarded the Rona Jaffe Writing Prize and the Tennessee Williams Scholarship and ultimately graduated magna cum laude.

From Harvard, she attended Yale School of Drama as a recipient of the Rebecca West Scholarship. She would garner an MFA in acting after writing the play “Cats Talk Back.” Harry Forbes of Backstage wrote that this work was “tightly written” and called it “a winner.” Indeed, it was a winner, taking home the prize for Best Overall Production at the New York International Fringe Festival.

Wohl credits her background as an actor for her career as a storyteller. She said, “My start in playwriting came when I was getting an MFA in acting at Yale School of Drama. I had all these actor friends and wanted to write plays for them. So the first play that I wrote was for five of my classmates in acting school.” She added, “I was like, ‘This is kind of cooler than the thing that I’m in school for.’ So that was the moment that really opened my eyes. And then I just kind of kept doing it from there and writing parts for my friends.”

In the years since, her plays have been produced on and off Broadway, regionally, and internationally. Her works include the play “American Hero,” which premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her work “Small Mouth Sounds” won the John Gassner Outer Critics Circle Award, while her play “Make Believe” won the NYTimes Critic Pick. Her 2020 play “Grand Horizons,” starring Jane Campion and Oscar winner James Cromwell, received Tony Nominations for Best Play & Best Featured Actress.

In addition to writing plays, Wohl worked on “Pretty Filthy,” an original musical about the adult entertainment industry, in collaboration with the composer/lyricist Michael Friedman and the Civilians. This work was nominated for Outstanding Musical from Drama Desk. She was awarded the Sam Norkin special Drama Desk Award for “establishing herself as an important voice in New York theater.”

In 2022, Wohl wrote and directed the movie Baby Ruby, starring Noémie Merlant and Kit Harington. This film (now available on the streaming service Hulu) premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post called Wohl’s work “an intriguing and impressively assured writing-directing debut.”

Wohl said, “It’s fun to have an acting background and be a playwright because I find myself really inspired by actors and by acting. I love watching their process. I feel like a lot of what drives me as a playwright is trying to create roles that are fun for actors and make them a little playground to play in.” And her joy shines through in her work. Broadway Stages will be watching Wohl’s Instagram page to see what comes next from this gifted woman.