Ruth Margraff

Playwright/Librettist
New York, New York USA

Where do you look for inspiration? For so long it was opera and Roma gypsy music always but lately I’ve been obsessed with paintings. There’s a lovely one on the back cover of my new book of plays painted by one of my students at the Art Institute.

What’s your favorite guilty pleasure / cocktail? 30 Rock, Indian mystic poetry, candles and snow – oh and you made me remember – I need to have a Campari and orange again! I always forget about Campari and drink red wine.

What production changed your life? Reza Abdoh’s Quotations of a Ruined City (1994).

Is there anything you still dream of doing? A million things! I want to have my own rehearsal/ performance/ gallery space with a wood-burning fireplace. I want to tour everything I’m writing everywhere. To archive everything I’ve done. To see one of my operas in an opera house from an opera box. To work with Atom Egoyan, Ivo van Hove, Nick Cave, Emir Kustrica and whoever designed the Ziegfeld Follies girls’ costumes.

I am most myself when I am in between writing on my fainting sofa and my accordion.

Best escape? My bicycle, running to the lake or river or sea or strolling through plazas of some place I’ve never been.

What’s the one thing nobody knows about you? I just bought some flamenco shoes!

Ruth Margraff’s plays have toured the world, received awards from Rockefeller, McKnight, Jerome, NEA/TCG, NYSCA, Fulbright foundations, published by Dramatists Play Service, American Theatre, Theater Forum, Performing Arts Journal, Playscripts, Inc., Backstage Books, Autonomedia, New Village Press, Innova Records, NoPassport Press. New Dramatist, Chicago Dramatist, and Associate Professor at the Art Institute of Chicago.