KAREN HARTMAN WRITER
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The Denver Center's
production of Rattlesnake Kate,
directed by Chris Coleman  (2022).

RATTLESNAKE KATE wins 8 Henry Awards, including Best New Work!
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Denver Production
Rattlesnake Kate Feature
Rattlesnake Kate Video Profile
Book by Karen Hartman
Music and Lyrics by Neyla Pekarek

World Premiere Denver Center, 2022
Winner: BEST NEW WORK in Colorado


Hartman joins forces with singer-songwriter Neyla Pekarek (formerly of the Lumineers) to unearth the legend of Kate Slaughterback, Colorado native, rattlesnake slayer, and fast fashion queen of 1927. Western lore meets a modern eye, raising the spirit of a woman who played by no one's rules. Larger than life and stranger than fiction, with heart-stopping folk harmonies, RATTLESNAKE KATE sings forgotten history into an American tale for today. 
ALICE BLISS  World Premiere!
​TheatreWorks Palo Alto, July 12 - August 6, 2023
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Buy Tickets


How do you hold onto normal when life is anything but? Set in upstate New York during the Iraq War, this intimate, stunning, and heart-wrenching new musical tells the story of losing everything and living anyway; of a girl who hits rock bottom, finds her mom there, and begins to grow up. Full of humor, hope, grief, and sheer teenage joy, ALICE BLISS presents
a breathtaking exploration of family and community coming together to find hope in the face of uncertainty.

Winner: Weston-Ghostlight New Musical Award.

Book by Karen Hartman, Music by Jenny Giering, Lyrics by Adam Gwon
based on the novel by Laura Harrington
directed by Mark Brokaw


GOOD FAITH at YALE REP featured in THE NEW YORK TIMES!
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"Over four years of research, Ms. Hartman — who lived in New Haven while a graduate playwriting student at Yale School of Drama — sat in on training sessions at the fire academy, rode in fire trucks and hung out among first responders."
READ FEATURE:  GOOD FAITH at Yale Rep 2019

Plays

Watch Video: Audience Responses from Victory Gardens Production
National New Play Network 2017/18 Rolling World Premiere
Highest Grossing Show in Everyman Theatre's History!
Roz & Ray
at Samuel French
​Read the raves!
Project Dawn
at Samuel French
Read the raves!
The Book of Joseph
​at Samuel French 
​As The Lucky Star
​Read feature in American Theatre
​
​Read the raves!

Other Published Plays

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Trade Edition 
Acting Edition
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Acting
Edition
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Acting Edition
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Trade
​Edition
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Acting
Edition

​Anthology
(Divine Fire)
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Acting
Edition

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Acting
Edition

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Trade
​Edition
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Trade
Edition

More on Roz and Ray
​

A gripping medical drama about intimacy, trust, and sacrifice at the onset of the AIDS crisis. Ray is a devoted single father desperately trying to keep his hemophiliac twins alive. Roz is a brilliant doctor who offers a cutting-edge miracle treatment for Ray’s boys. The two form an intimate bond until the miracle goes wrong, forcing impossible choices.
"Powerful. Moves fast and is unafraid of the political force of this intensely committed writing. Exceptionally complex and moving pieces of acting."
​-Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune 
​ | Read More Press
Cast: 1W 1M

​Awards:  Edgerton Foundation New Play Prize, McKnight New Play Residency & Commission, 2016 Kilroys List
​
Productions: 
Seattle Repertory Theater 2016
Victory Gardens 2016
San Diego Repertory 2017, Theater J 2018

More on Project Dawn
​

Philadelphia is home to a revolutionary – and shockingly funny - treatment court for prostitute women. In Project Dawn, seven actresses double as a staff members and court participants, probing the thin lines between freedom and slavery, activism and obsession, on both sides of the law.
“An artistic achievement that lights a way forward to a more empathetic justice system."
-
Delaware County News Review | Read More Press
Cast: 7 or 8W

​Awards:  NEA Art Works Grant, New Play Frontiers Residency, 2017-18 National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere
​
Productions: 
Peoples Light 2017
Horizon Theater 2017, Unicorn Theater 2018
Featured in American Theatre Magazine 
Read Karen's words about the process in Howlround

More on The Lucky Star (formerly The Book of Joseph)
​
Every family has its secrets. Richard Hollander’s remained in an unopened suitcase for fifteen years. The Book of Joseph maps the primal need to understand those who came before. 

"You may lose count of the number of times a chill runs down your spine."
​
-Time Out Chicago. | Read More Press 
Cast: 5-6 W, 4M
​

Productions: 
Chicago Shakespeare Theater 2017
Everyman Theatre 2018

SuperTrue
​

On the porch of an almost-charming cabin in the Catskills, an interacial couple reckons with the moment when Plan A slips away but Plan B has not emerged. In other words, they're turning forty. How will they forge a new truth?
Cast: 1W 1M 1 Puppet
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​Produced: Know Theater, Cincinnati 2018

Awards: 2015 Kilroy's List
 

Going Gone
​

An intimate epic, Going Gone follows the phenomenon of the author’s grandfather Harry Hartman, an unathletic Jewish immigrant who, as the first radio baseball announcer for the Cincinnati Reds, coined the phrase “Going, Going Gone.”  ​
Cast: 2W 3M

Produced:
Cincinnati Playhouse 2004
​

Winner: NEA Special Project Grant

Gaza Rehearsal
​

A play within a play, a tragedy inside a comedy. A group of faculty and students at a large public university stage a little-known political drama, Goliath. The writer of that political drama is on faculty, directing her own play, desperate to “spark dialogue.” And she does.
Cast: 3W 2M

Workshop: ​Victory Gardens Ignition Festival, 2016


Goliath
​

On a single tense day during the 2005 Israeli pullout from Gaza, an American settler, her teenage zealot son, their Palestinian employee, an Israeli Army commander, and a young Ethiopian soldier face off over ideal, economics, and home. In the contemporary Middle East, who is David and who is Goliath? ​
Cast: 3W 2M

Commissioned: National Foundation for Jewish Culture with McCarter Theater

Award: Dorothy Silver New Play Prize
​
​
Workshop Production: Open Fist Theater (Los Angeles) 2009
HARTMAN
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Copyright © 2021-2023  Karen Hartman, All Rights Reserved.​
Website design by Jocelyn Kuritsky.
Photos of Hartman by
​Lou Daprile


NY Times photo by An Rong Xu
Blackburn Award photo by Richard Termine