Benjamin Benne (he/him) is Chance Theater's 2025 Resident Playwright, a Playwrights' Center '23-26 Core Writer, and was named part of "LA Vanguardia: The Latino innovators, instigators and power players breaking through barriers" by the Los Angeles Times. His produced plays include Alma (Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre, American Blues Theater, ArtsWest Playhouse, Curious Theatre Company, Central Square Theater, The Spot Sun Valley, Chance Theater, Passage Theatre Company), In His Hands (Mosaic Theater Company of DC, First Floor Theater), Manning (Portland Stage), and What / Washed Ashore / Astray (Pillsbury House Theatre). Additionally, his plays have been developed by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Public Theater NYC, Roundabout Theatre Company, Playwrights Realm, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Old Globe, Two River Theater, New Harmony Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, among many others. His work explores intimate, realistic relationships mixed with surreal, fantastic, and numinous elements that spur expansive, existential questions about grief and loss, death and the afterlife, faith and the Divine.
Ben is a recipient of the Orange Curtain Review's Award for Best Writing, Ojai Playwrights Conference's Dr. Kerry English Artist Award, Portland Stage's Clauder Competition Grand Prize, Arizona Theatre Company's National Latinx Playwriting Award, Kennedy Center/KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award, American Blues Theater's Blue Ink Playwriting Award, Robert Chesley/Victor Bumbalo Playwriting Award, Playwrights' Center's McKnight Fellowship in Playwriting and Many Voices Fellowship. He has been commissioned by South Coast Repertory and Seattle Repertory and he's an alum of Parley and Primary Stage's Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the David Geffen/Yale School of Drama, where he was the recipient of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting and his teachers included Anne Erbe, Pulitzer finalists Amy Herzog and Sarah Ruhl, and Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney.
He is represented by Luminosity Management and Paradigm Talent Agency. Selected works available to read in full at New Play Exchange.
Ben is a recipient of the Orange Curtain Review's Award for Best Writing, Ojai Playwrights Conference's Dr. Kerry English Artist Award, Portland Stage's Clauder Competition Grand Prize, Arizona Theatre Company's National Latinx Playwriting Award, Kennedy Center/KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award, American Blues Theater's Blue Ink Playwriting Award, Robert Chesley/Victor Bumbalo Playwriting Award, Playwrights' Center's McKnight Fellowship in Playwriting and Many Voices Fellowship. He has been commissioned by South Coast Repertory and Seattle Repertory and he's an alum of Parley and Primary Stage's Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the David Geffen/Yale School of Drama, where he was the recipient of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting and his teachers included Anne Erbe, Pulitzer finalists Amy Herzog and Sarah Ruhl, and Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney.
He is represented by Luminosity Management and Paradigm Talent Agency. Selected works available to read in full at New Play Exchange.
