Melinda Lopez

MELINDA LOPEZ has a secret evil plan: to create complex, Latina women and put them center stage. She is the playwright-in-residence at the Huntington Theatre, Boston. Melinda is currently working on a document-theatre play for Central Square Theatre featuring all BIPOC scientists. She is also creating a radio drama, Mariel, set in 2018 and 1980, during the Mariel Boatlift. Her new play Mr. Parent will be in development at Hartford Theatre Works in spring 2021.

She is the author of Mala (Arts Emerson, Guthrie Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Elliot Norton Award, Best New Play), available on Audible (Spanish and English) and filmed in performance for WGBH. She authored a new adaptation of Yerma, (Huntington Theatre Company), Back the Night (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), Becoming Cuba (Huntington Theatre Company, North Coast Rep.), and Sonia Flew (Elliot Norton Award, Huntington Theatre Company, Steppenwolf, Coconut Grove Playhouse, the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and many others). Ser Cuba and Sonia Se Fue are available in Spanish translation, and were represented at the 2018 National Theatre Festival in Camaguey, Cuba. Other plays include Caroline in Jersey (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Orchids to Octopi (Central Square Theatre, commissioned by the National Institutes of Health), Gary (Steppenwolf First Look Repertory, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), and many others. Mala was developed at Two River Theater’s 2016 Crossing Borders (Cruzando Fronteras) Festival of New Latino plays.

Melinda was awarded the Sustained Excellence Award, 2019, from the Boston Theatre Critics Association for her 20-year career. She was a Mellon Foundation National Playwright Residents (Huntington Theatre Co.), and a Mass Cultural Council Fellow in Dramatic Writing (2019). She was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woollard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a “promising new voice in American Theatre.” She has served as a panel member for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cambridge Arts Panel, and has enjoyed residencies with the Huntington Playwriting Fellows, Sundance, The Lark, New York Theatre Workshop, and Harvard University. Melinda is also an actress and has appeared in regional theatres across the country, and works in film and radio.

She is active providing humanitarian aid for the people of Cuba, and was mentioned by President Obama in his speech to the Cuban and American people in 2016. Mayor Marty Walsh declared October 29, 2016 “Melinda Lopez Day” in the city of Boston.