Kelley Girod

Meet Kelley: Playwright, Producer

Kelley Nicole Girod is an award-winning playwright (Atlantic Launch New Play Commission 2019, Sheen Center Fellow 2019, Stein and Liberace Fellow 2007, John Golden Fellow 2008) whose work has been developed/presented at Atlantic Theater Company, Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, The Fire This Time Festival, Harlem 9, Primary Stages, Project Y, Poetic Theater Productions, Classical Theater of Harlem, Frigid NYC, Planet Connections Theater Festival, The Field, and Dixon Place. She has recently been commissioned by Stanford University’s TAPS Program and is completing The Fire This Time's first anthology of plays with Bloomsbury Publishing. Kelley has had the pleasure of working with Frederick Zollo, Keith Beauchamp and Michael JP Reilly as script consultant on Zollo Productions’ film The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (2018). Kelley’s essay "About Alice, or When Social Distancing Ends" was recently published in The Flashpaper: Theater's Thoughts on Right Now, and was also published in American Theatre Magazine 2020. Kelley also works as a producer in NYC and founded the OBIE Award-winning, groundbreaking new play festival for Black playwrights, The Fire This Time Festival, going into its 12th season this year and currently featured on PBS AllArts, the NY Times, and Playbill. Outside of the festival, Kelley has produced and curated at The Sheen Center and served as Producing Director at The Billie Holiday Theater from 2014-2015. Kelley has also served as a guest lecturer at Yale School for Drama, Stanford University’s Theater Department, and Cal State - Fullerton. Kelley is a 2008 Graduate of Columbia’s MFA Playwriting Program.

Kelley’s favorite roles are as the mother of Penelope Evelyn and Noelle Anamaria, and wife of the amazing Dr. David L. Fernandes.