Faculty

Profile

Alice Eve Cohen is an award-winning playwright, solo theatre artist, and author, whose plays have been performed for over 200,000 people on four continents. Winner of the Jane Chambers Feminist Playwriting Award, the National Jewish Playwriting Contest, a 2025 NYFA Artist Fellowship in Playwriting / Screenwriting, and a 2025 NYS Council on the Arts Individual Artist Award, her award-winning play OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR premieres at La MaMa in December, 2025. Her acclaimed memoirs, The Year My Moher Came Back (Algonquin) and What I Thought I Knew (Penguin) are honored with the Elle Magazine Literary Grand Prix for Nonfiction, Oprah magazine's 25 Best  Books of Summer, and Salon's Year's Best Books. She has written children's television for Nickelodeon, CBS, and CTW, and has toured her solo shows internationally. Alice received her BA from Princeton and MFA from The New School Creative Writing Program. She teaches playwriting and Creative Writing at The New School, where she received the Distinguished University Teaching Award. More at www.AliceEveCohen.com

Degrees Held

MFA in Creative Writing, The New School

BA, Princeton University

Certificate in Screenwriting, School for Media Studies

Certificate in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) The New School

Professional Affiliation

Ensemble Studio Theatre 
Ensemble Studio Theatre Playwrights Unit
Authors Guild
Dramatists Guild
New York Theatre Workshop, Usual Suspect
Honor Roll!
Jewish Theatre Circle
Open Hearts Initiative (housing justice organization)

Recent Publications

Plays on New Play Exchange:
In the Cervix of Others
Oklahoma Samovar
Days of Awe
Hannah and the Hollow Challah
Mrs. Satan and the Nasty Woman

Excerpts from Cohen's plays are published in:
The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2025, Smith & Kraus
The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2024, Smith & Kraus
The Best Men’s Stage Monologues 2022, Smith & Kraus
The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2022, Smith & Kraus
Best Monologues for Women 2020, Applause Theatre Books
She Persisted: 100 Monologues by Women Over 40, Applause Theatre Book
Words of Choice: Repro Freedom Arts

Memoirs:
The Year My Mother Came Back (Algonquin Books, 2015)
What I Thought I Knew (Penguin Books, 2009)

Performances and Appearances

Oklahoma Samovar premieres Dec 5-21, 2025 at La MaMa ETC in NYC

Cohen’s plays have been performed at (partial list)
National: La MaMa ETC, New York Theatre Workshop, the Kitchen Theatre, Duluth Playhouse, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Georges, Here, Berkshire Theatre Group, The Tank, Axial Theatre, Vivid Stage, Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival, Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western NY, Six Points Theatre (St Paul), Ko Festival, All for One Theatre, Axial Theatre, Vivid Stage, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Nuyorican Poets Café, DTW (Dance Theatre Workshop), 14th St Y, Theatre for the New City, 78th Street Theatre Lab, Performing Garage, Franklin Furnace, Women’s Project, LA Women’s Theatre Festival, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Hudson Opera House, KiMo Theatre, RVCC Arts, Princeton University, U of Michigan, Barnard College, Fordham University, Smithsonian Institution Discovery Theatre, Emelin Theatre, Kravitz Ctr, Artpark, Bayview Women’s Correctional Facility.
International: Bema Productions, Victoria, Canada; Galway Theatre Festival; Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Oslo Experimental Theatre Festival, Norway; Jerusalem’s Theatre Bama; Astor Theatre in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

TALKS, PANELS
Princeton University:
• Success Without Fame or Fortune: A New Paradigm (workshop designer) at Princeton’s She Roars Conference
• Master Storytellers (alumni panel) Theatre Intime Centennial
• Putting It Together (alumni panel) Program in Theater 50th year conference
• Featured Artist in All Her Power, a documentary film about Princeton’s history of co-education.

The New School Public Programs: Guest Author, Nonfiction Forum

Augsburg University MFA Program:
• Guest speaker, Telling the Same Story in Different Genres
• Playwriting panel: Looking to the past to shed light on the present (moderator/organizer)

AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) National Conferences
• Cancer and Creativity: Turning Personal Challenges into Plays (moderator)
• Extreme Exposure: Going Public with Deeply Personal Stories (moderator)
• The Ethics of the Artist: Writing about Family (panelist)
• Can You Go Home Again? (moderator)
• Juggling from Within: the Art of Voice (panelist)

 

Research Interests

Theatre, plays and playwrights, solo theatre, housing justice, political theatre, memoir, fiction, feminism, creativity

Awards And Honors

AWARDS INCLUDE:

2025 NYFA Artist Fellowship in Playwriting / Screenwriting

2025 NYSCA Individual Artist Theatre Commissioning Award for Oklahoma Samovar

2025 Fellowship, Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Playwriting residency

2025 La MaMa Umbria International Playwrights Retreat

2025 Finalist, Berkeley Rep Ground Floor play development, Fault Line

2025 Finalist, Houses on the Moon, Garden Live Series, Hotel Limbo

2025 Finalist, Ashland New Plays Festival, Oklahoma Samovar

2025 Finalist, ThinkTank TYA PlayFest, Oklahoma Samovar

2025 Selection, Duluth Playhouse Festival of New Plays by Women, Days of Awe

2025 Semifinalist, Premiere Stages New Play Festival, Oklahoma Samovar

2021 National Jewish Playwriting Contest winner

2020 DISTINGUISHED TEACHING AWARD, The New School

2019 JANE CHAMBERS PLAYWRITING AWARD winner

O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, 2-time finalist
Elle Magazine Literary Grand Prize: Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year
Oprah magazine 25 BEST BOOKS OF SUMMER
Salon's Best Books of the Year

Nominated for 5 Broadway World Awards
Indie Next List Notables
VCCA Fellow
JANE CHAMBERS Playwriting Award, Honorable Mention
Playwriting Fellowships, NYS Council on the Arts

Literature Fellowship, NYS Council on the Arts

Production grants NYS Council on the Arts and NEA
A Year of Reading: Best First Lines