Mary Lynn Owen

1992 Alumna

Cottage: Cedar

Bio: Mary Lynn Owen is an award-winning playwright and actor, an O’Neill National Playwrights
Conference finalist, and a recently named finalist for the 2023-24 Dramatists Guild National
Playwrights Fellows program. Her first full-length play, KNEAD, received its world premiere
production at The Alliance Theatre in November 2018 and its second full production at Aurora
Theatre in January 2024. KNEAD, a one-person play in which Mary Lynn also performs, baking four
loaves of bread in every performance, is the recipient of the 2019 Gene Gabriel Moore Playwriting
Award, The Alliance Theatre’s 2017 Reiser Lab Grant for New Work, and was named a semi-finalist
for the 2017 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Her second full-length play, LADY PARTS,
also a semi-finalist for the 2020 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, was selected for the 2019
Working Title Playwrights First Light Series and Theatrical Outfit’s 2020 Unexpected Play Festival.
Her third full-length play, SALVAGE, a 2022 Finalist for the O'Neill National Playwright's
Conference, was chosen for the 2021 Threshold New Play Festival at Actor’s Express, the 2022
Working Title Playwrights Table Series, the 2023 Ethel Woolson Development Lab, and the 2023
Unexpected Play Festival at Theatrical Outfit. Mary Lynn’s shorter works include HOMING,
commissioned in 2020 by the 22 Homes Project for the Alabama Shakespeare Southern Writers
Festival, and TRAILERS, commissioned in 2019 by MultiShades Atlanta for the MoJo Theater
Festival Monologue Project. She has received a MAP Grant through Synchronicity Theatre for the
development of a play about Women and Work, and in 2022, she was named the Travis Bogard
Artist in Residence at The Eugene O’Neill Foundation/Tao House in Danville, California where she
also received the Carey Perloff Award, given by the Eugene O'Neill Foundation to an established
theater artist who desires to transition to playwriting.
A regular performer on Atlanta’s professional stages, and a veteran of over seventy-five professional
productions, Mary Lynn is a two-time Suzi Award winner for both Outstanding Performer in a
Leading Role and Outstanding Performer in a Supporting Role, an eight-time Suzi nominee, and a
Lunt-Fontanne nominee. She is a frequent collaborator in many of Atlanta's New Works Festivals
including The Kendeda Festival at The Alliance Theater, The Stripped Bare Festival at Synchronicity
Theater, and The Brave New Works Festival at Theater Emory.
Mary Lynn is also a sought-after teacher in Emory University’s Theater Studies Department where
she teaches Introduction to Acting, Teaching as Performance, and the popular, Taller de Teatro en
Español (Theater Workshop in Spanish), a semester-long class designed to improve Spanish
language proficiency using Theater techniques. She has been awarded several teaching grants from
Emory including two Faculty Development and Excellence grants, The Hightower Funding Grant,
The Integrity Project Grant, and The Center for Creativity Grant. In her ongoing collaboration with
Emory’s Spanish Department, Mary Lynn has directed play readings by Spanish and Latinx
playwrights, championed new work by playwrights such as Hilary Bettis, Anne Garcia Romero, and
Alejandra Ramos, worked as a dramaturg for Mark Valdez’ play, THE BUFORD HIGHWAY
PROJECT, about the lives of immigrants in Atlanta, and continued to master her Spanish, the native
language of her mother’s Cuban family.
Mary Lynn’s professional affiliations include The Dramatist’s Guild/full member, Working Title
Playwrights, Actor’s Equity Association, and SAG-Aftra. She has studied playwriting with Marsha
Norman and Joseph Skibell and taken playwriting workshops with Kimberly Senior, Addae Moon,
and Celise Kalke. Her writing residencies include The Eugene O'Neill Foundation/Tao House in
Danville, CA; Cottages at Hedgebrook in Langley, WA; and The Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap,
GA.