05/04/2026
Welcome RITA ANDERSON to Axial Theatre!
Rita Anderson is a neurodivergent playwright from the LGBTQIA community. She has an MFA Creative Writing and an MA Playwriting. Rita served as a Dramatists Guild Regional Representative and as Faculty for Interlochen. She went on scholarship to The O’Neill, and her play, Frantic is the Carousel, was the National Partners of American Theatre nominee. Rita won the Ken Ludwig Playwriting Award, the top national prize from The Kennedy Center for “Best Body of Work,” and she is a 2024 Louise Wigglesworth Excellence in Playwriting Award Finalist. Rita won a PlayPenn Play Development Scholarship (Fall 2026), and she is presenting two workshops at the Green Mountain Playwright Retreat in Vermont this summer. She has had over 100 productions and literary publications to include Smith & Kraus’s BEST NEW 10-MINUTE PLAYS, BEST MEN’S MONOLOGUES, and BEST WOMEN’S MONOLOGUES (2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026). Early Liberty, Final Conversations, The 27 Club, Woman Hollering Creek, and Saint Somebody are “Best Selling Plays,” and Rita has a play in She Persisted: Thirty New Ten-Minute Plays by Women 40+. (Introduction by Theresa Rebeck.) Rita was Playwright in Residence at Lakeview Performing Arts Center, and she has developed work with The 24-Hour Plays Project, Soul Rep Theatre, The Barrow Group, Axial Theatre, Woven Theatre & The Loom New Works Festival, Creede Repertory Theatre, The PlayGround Experiment, Pegasus Theatre, Madison New Works Laboratory, Reading Theater Project, Texas State University, Illinois College, Missouri State University, James Madison University, Moving Parts Theatre (Paris, France), and Rita was a pilot playwright for Hyde Park Theatre Writers’ Group, but the highlight of her emerging career so far was sitting on a playwriting panel with Christopher Durang, and sharing a playbill with Caridad Svich. Rita is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for her books: The Entropy of Rocketman, and Watched Pots (A Lovesong to Motherhood). Rita is a Moderator of HONOR ROLL!, an advocacy group for womxn playwrights 40+ whose goal is our equal representation in theatre.
