Brian Crawley Biography

Brian Crawley is a playwright and screenwriter. He is at work on a commission for a play about jazz performer Valaida Snow, and a new musical DOWN THERE with composer Lewis Flinn. Recently he wrote the book and lyrics for A LITTLE PRINCESS (composer Andrew Lippa) which debuted at Theatreworks of Palo Alto in the summer of 2004. He also wrote the book and lyrics for VIOLET (composer Jeanine Tesori) which was mounted Off-Broadway by Playwrights Horizons in 1997, then remounted in a concert version in 2003 to help inaugurate their new theater.

For the libretto of VIOLET, Brian won the Kleban Award. Prior to the Playwrights Horizons production, and on its behalf, VIOLET was given the Richard Rodgers Musical Production Award and an AT&T OnStage Award. Afterwards, besides a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, VIOLET received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical over all the year's Broadway offerings, as did Paula Vogel's play HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE; the first time two off-Broadway pieces took these top awards in the Drama Critic Circle's history.

Brian's plays have been developed or staged at Lincoln Center, New York Theater Workshop, and the Eugene O'Neill summer theater conference. He majored in Theater Studies at Yale and got an MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Brian is a member of the Dramatists Guild.