Biography

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

Eric Coble’s plays include the Tony- and Pulitzer-nominated “The Velocity of Autumn” (Broadway premiere at the Booth Theatre, starring Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella, directed by Molly Smith), “Fairfield”, “Southern Rapture”,“Bright Ideas”, “The Dead Guy”, “My Barking Dog”, “A Girl’s Guide to Coffee”, and “The Giver” and have been produced Off-Broadway, in all fifty states of the U.S., and on several continents, including productions at Manhattan Class Company, The Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons, Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, Denver Center Theatre Company,  Arena Stage, New York and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, Alliance Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory, Asolo Repertory, Indiana Repertory, Coterie Theatre, Great Lakes Theater Festival, Stages Repertory, Geva Theatre, and The Contemporary American Theatre Festival.   Awards include the AATE Distinguished Play Award for Best Adaptation, an Emmy nomination, the Chorpenning Playwriting Award for Body of Work, the AT&T Onstage Award, National Theatre Conference Playwriting Award, an NEA Playwright in Residence Grant, a TCG Extended Collaboration Grant, the Cleveland Arts Prize, two Cuyahoga Arts and Culture Fellowships, and four Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants.

THE LONG STORY:

People find this hard to believe, but Eric Coble was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and raised on the Navajo and Ute reservations in New Mexico and Colorado, playing with rocks, sticks, seeing 1940’s serials at the movie theatre thirty miles away, and wandering the desert with his friends trying to avoid cactus until he was 15 years old.

Much of that time was spent writing/drawing comics and rigging up poorly built stage shows (much falling out of trees ensued).  Moving off the reservation led to acting in high school, which led to majoring in English at Fort Lewis College (Colorado) before winging it to Ohio University for an MFA in Acting.  Along the way he started writing plays, which (thank god) were well-received enough to spur him on.

Since then he has written a lot of scripts for adults and not-quite adults, including “The Velocity of Autumn” (which opened on Broadway in 2014 and was nominated for a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize), “Bright Ideas”, “The Dead Guy”, “Natural Selection”, “For Better”, “Southern Rapture”, “A Girl’s Guide To Coffee”, “My Barking Dog”, and “The Giver” which have been produced Off-Broadway, in all 50 states, and on several continents, including productions at Manhattan Class Company, The Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons, Arena Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, the Denver Center, New York and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, Alliance Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory, Florida Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Asolo Repertory, Coterie Theatre, Curious Theatre, Actors Theatre of Charlotte, Oregon Children’s Theatre, People’s Light and Theatre Company,  Stages Repertory Theatre, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and The Contemporary American Theatre Festival.

Awards include an Emmy nomination, the 2011 AATE Distinguished Play Award for Best Adaptation, the Chorpenning Playwriting Award for Body of Work, the AT&T Onstage Award, National Theatre Conference Playwriting Award, Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, an NEA Playwright in Residence Grant, a TCG Extended Collaboration Grant, the Cleveland Arts Prize, two Creative Workforce Fellowships from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, and four Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants.

Eric has now traded the cactus of the southwest for the poison ivy of northeast Ohio, where he is a member of the Cleveland Play House Playwrights Unit.  He does miss the mesas, but can’t stop admiring the lush trees and that huge body of water just north of him.