Yasmine Rana is a playwright, educator, and drama therapist whose recent work includes Icarus and Amina with Ryan Repertory Company (2021), the Women’s Work Festival of Newfoundland, Canada (2021), After Rome, Paradise and The Fallen with the Jerusalem English Theater and Theater in the Rough (2020), the 2019 International Human Rights Arts Festival at the Wild Project (Leena and Rose at the Barre), Mile Square Theatre and Writer’s Theatre of New Jersey (After Rome) Luna Stage (At the Barre), and Tara Arts of London (Amanda), India’s National School of Drama in New Delhi and Kalyani Kalamandalam Theatre in Kolkata (The War Zone is My Bed), 2020, 2021). The War Zone is My Bed was a Francesca Primus Prize finalist. Plays have been developed at theaters including The Looking Glass Theatre, Nora’s Playhouse (founding member), Los Angeles’ The Jewel Box Theater, La MaMa Experimental Theatre, New Stages Performing Arts Center in the Berkshires, and Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey.
Fellowships and grants include NJ Transit and NJ State Council on the Arts TRANSITional Art Project (2019), New Jersey State Council on the Arts Award in Playwriting (2015), and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Playwriting. Publications include The Alabama Literary Review, Blackbird, The Contemporary European Idea, The Kenyon Review, Lilith, TDR: The Drama Review, Woman Around Town, and anthologies, The Best Contemporary Monologues, The Best Stage Scenes, and The Best Men’s and Women’s Monologues (Smith and Kraus and Applause Books). The University of Chicago Press and Seagull Books “In Performance Series” published The War Zone is My Bed and Other Plays, an anthology of four of Yasmine’s plays. In addition to being a playwright, Yasmine is an educator of ESL, English, and Social Studies at a Northern New Jersey public school, a mentor to new playwrights (Northeastern University, Chicago) and drama therapist (Registered Drama Therapist and New York State Licensed Creative Arts Therapist). She has worked in Bosnia, The Republic of Georgia, and Switzerland where she implemented, with the support of the Jacob Foundation in Zurich, an arts and education summer program for Bosnian youth.
Yasmine received her BFA and MFA degrees in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and her Master of Art in Teaching degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University where she specialized in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. She studied Drama Therapy at the New School’s Creative Arts Therapies Program and International Trauma Studies at New York University. Yasmine is the co-host and co-producer of “Conversations with Ken and Yasmine” and is represented by Susan Gurman in New York.