Author

Bonnie Cohen

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Bonnie Cohen is an actor, director, teacher and playwright. She began her career at the age of fifteen at The Pittsburgh Playhouse and has performed off Broadway, in regional theatres, TV, radio and film. In New York, she acted off Broadway at The Direct Theatre, Perry St. Playhouse, and Soho Repertory Theatre, and regionally with The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Missouri Repertory Theatre, Group Theatre, Oregon Repertory Theatre, and Hangar Theatre. She was a member of None of the Above, an improvisational theatre company that performed at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, Group Theatre, Bumbershoot Festival and toured throughout the western states. Her directing credits include Waiting for Lefty, This is the Rill Speaking, The Children’s Hour, Twelve Angry Men, and Our Town. From 1981-2011, she was a theatre professor at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle where she taught acting and served as the head of the acting area in a BFA professional training program for actors. While continuing to work in the theatre, she received a grant to work with mentally ill actors to create an improvisational theatre company in an effort to break the stigma surrounding their illness. This project received national attention and was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition. She was then hired by The Washington Advocates for the Mentally Ill to create a scripted play, Crazy in the Mainstream, from the true life stories of the people they served. In 1989, Bonnie became a chemical dependency counselor, developing drama therapy techniques to help young people in treatment within a juvenile detention facility. In 1998 the state of Washington commissioned her to go into The Washington State Corrections Center for Women to work with adolescent girls incarcerated as adults. Her play, Day Room Window was inspired by this experience. She has a BFA in Acting from the University of Texas, an MA in Speech and Drama from the University of Missouri, an MFA in Acting from Cornell University and a Certificate in Chemical Dependency Counseling from Seattle University. She is a member of Actors Equity. Bonnie now resides in Pittsburgh where she grew up and began her long artistic life.

Author's Plays