Brown University’s Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies is pleased to announce that Sibyl Kempson has been named the Head of Playwriting for the MFA Playwriting Program. The MFA Program in Playwriting is a three-year program focused on writing for performance. Deeply committed to innovation and critical engagement, Brown's program is truly unique. Many Brown MFA playwrights have gone on to win major international and national awards, prestigious residencies, and global recognition, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Obie Award.
Theatre Arts & Performance Studies Chair, Patricia Ybarra, states that “Ms. Kempson is at the forefront of experimental playwriting and theatre-making in the United States. Her humor, intellectual curiosity, and commitment to interdisciplinarity make her an ideal member of the Brown community.”
As head of this program, Kempson brings both a commitment to continuity and a distinct vision for the future. Building on the legacy of those who have shaped Brown’s MFA Playwriting Program, including Paula Vogel, Erik Ehn, and Julia Jarcho, Kempson will continue the program's longstanding experimental approach to playwright development. Grounded in what she describes as an “atmosphere of permission,” her curricular approach encourages experimentation and risk-taking while cultivating intuition alongside rigorous critical inquiry. Through generative practice and adaptation, collaboration, script analysis, and the study of aesthetics, students will learn to recognize the formal components of their own work and to examine the assumptions and ideas embedded within their artistic choices.
When speaking of Brown, Kempson said, “I am struck by how warm and open the community is. It is a place where people are intellectually ambitious and generous with one another all at once.” As she begins her tenure, Kempson hopes to build on that spirit by fostering deeper connections between the program, the Providence arts community, and the broader theatre world.
About Sibyl Kempson
Sibyl Kempson writes and makes durational, immersive, and proscenium performance, as well as visual narratives on film and video for the stage, museum, chamber, altar, specific site, and for screens large and small, in the US and internationally. From 1999-2010, she performed and toured in the United States and internationally with experimental theater companies such as Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Richard Maxwell/NYC Players, and Elevator Repair Service.
Since 2006, her plays have been commissioned and produced by - and in collaboration with - theater groups and artists such as Elevator Repair Service Theater (Fondly, Collette Richland), Big Dance Theater (Ich, KürbisGeist), David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group (Restless Eye and the Bessie Award-winning I Understand Everything Better), composer David Lang (the opera true pearl), the Rude Mechs & Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin (From the Pig Pile: The Requisite Gestures of Narrow Approach), Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis (Ich, KürbisGeist & Potatoes of August), and the EMP Collective in Baltimore (Potatoes of August). Works have been presented in the United States at New York Theatre Workshop, the Walker Art Center, New York Live Arts, the Chocolate Factory Theater, the Fusebox Festival in Austin, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, P.S. 122 (now Performance Space New York), Dixon Place, Brown University, Gettysburg College, the University of Virginia at Wise, Duke University, Mass Live Arts, and Theater Bonn in Germany.
In 2015, Sibyl founded the 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co., at the Martin E. Segal Center at the City University of New York and continues to serve as Artistic Director. Named for Brian Sykes’ genealogical theory on mitochondrial DNA, 7 Daughters of Eve unearths and contemplates – in contexts of live performance, ritual, and installation – places in human and non-human history and consciousness where science, religion, and feminism intersect. 7 Daughters’ works have been presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art (12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens), The Kitchen NYC (Sasquatch Rituals, hailed by critic Helen Shaw as her “favorite show of the decade” in Vulture), and in Norway at the Ibsen Awards and Conference (Public Peoples Enemy).
In 2020, Ugly Duckling Presse published “Invisible Horizon: A Religious Pamphlet.” Her plays are published by 53rd State Press, PLAY: Journal of Plays, and Performance & Art Journal (PAJ).
In 2021, her film, The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S., premiered in a screening at The Chocolate Factory Theater in NYC, and was an official selection at thirteen film festivals worldwide, winning Best Animation, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Sound awards in 2022 at several festivals across the globe. The performance text and radio play were published in Winter 2024/25 by 53rd State Press.
In June 2026, a new, multilingual Ibsen adaptation, A Bee in the Heart of Her/Eine Biene in Ihrem Herzen (winner of the Ibsen Scope Award & Grant), premiered at English Theater Berlin, and a new, solo chamber performance, Hexalogy of Hagsploitation, is in the works at the NES Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland.
Sibyl is an alum of New Dramatists (Class of 2017), the recipient of a 2018 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for an American Playwright at Mid-Career, for writers working indisputably at the highest level of achievement, specifically honoring "her fine craft, intertextual approach, and her body of work including Crime or Emergency and Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag." She is a recipient of four Mondo Cane! commissions from Dixon Place, a McKnight National Resident, a USA Artists Rockefeller Fellow, a NYFA fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. She was artist-in-residence at Abrons Arts Center in NYC from 2015-2019, artist-in-residence at the Yaddo Artist Residency and the Centre for Dramaturgy and Curation in Melbourne in 2019, and is a five-time nominee for the Herb Alpert Award.
She holds an MFA in Playwriting from CUNY Brooklyn College, where she studied under the instigation of Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney, and a BA in Drama from Bennington College.
She has taught experimental performance writing, performance, and formal aesthetics at the University of Texas at Dallas, Sarah Lawrence College, Victoria College of the Arts/University of Melbourne, Bryn Mawr College, the Eugene Lang College at the New School, CUNY Brooklyn College, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Bloomfield College. She also serves as an individual mentocreative consultant, conducting courses, writing groups, and workshops through 7 Daughters of Eve.
About Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies:
The Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies at Brown University has a longstanding history of providing a comprehensive and interdisciplinary education. Rooted in the tradition of fostering artistic exploration and critical thinking, the department prepares students to make meaningful contributions to the arts and society. With a commitment to innovation and collaboration, the department continues to evolve, shaping the future of performing arts education.