Sibyl Kempson

MFA - Playwriting
City University of New York - Brooklyn College - 2007

BA - Drama - Acting, Costume Design
Bennington College - 1995

The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.  2025 - Play script

Invisible Horizon: A Religious Pamphlet  2020 - Pamphlet

Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag  2015 - Play script

The Secret Death of Puppets (or) How Do Puppets Die? (or) Puppets Die in Secret 2012 - Play scripts

Restless Eye  2012 - publications

Ich, KürbisGeist  2012 - Play script

Crime or Emergency  2009 - Play script

Potatoes of August  2009 - Play script

Nominee, Herb Alpert Award [2023, 2021, 2020, 2017, 2014] -

Ibsen Scope Award, A BEE IN THE HEART OF HER - [2022]

Best Animation, MAERY S. - LA Independent Film Channel Festival [2022]

Best Actress in a Supporting Role, MAERY S. - Melbourne Independent Film Festival [2022]

Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a Playwright in Mid-Career - PEN America [2019]

Fellowship - New York Foundation for the Arts [2016]

Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theater, MAERY S. - New Dramatists [2016]

Rockefeller Fellowship - USA Artists [2014]

Nominee, Doris Duke Impact Award - [2014]

Fellowship - MacDowell [2010]

Program Head, Playwriting MFA
City University of New York - Brooklyn College [2023–2025]

Visiting Assistant Professor, Advisor for the Helen Holborn Gray Fellowship
Bryn Mawr College [2022–2023]

Affiliate Artist Faculty, Graduate Thesis Advisor
Sarah Lawrence College [2014–2023]

Instructor, Mentor, Creative Consultant
7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. [2019–2025]

Mentoring Artist
Atlantic Center for the Arts [2021–2021]

Visiting / Teaching Artist
Victorian College of the Arts / University of Melbourne [2017–2020]

Lecturer
The New School, Eugene Lang College [2013–2013]

Lecturer
City University of New York - Brooklyn College [2006–2012]

Instructor
Fifth Avenue Committee [2006–2009]
ESL, GED-Prep, Adult Basic Education, Family Literacy

Lecturer
Bloomfield College [2007–2007]

A Bee in the Heart of Her / Eine Biene in Ihrem Herzen

2026/06–2026/11 A new play with music, literally weaving together the stories of several Ibsen heroines, in a workshop at a run down community center in a nameless European city. Together they each reclaim and retell their own stories from an Animist and Symbolist perspective.
To premiere at the English Theater Berlin and at the National Theater of Luxembourg in 2026, with support from the Ibsen Scope Award Grant.  

The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.

2013/10–2022/10 A new play and film with music by Austin-based composer Graham Reynolds, combining literary and dramatic narrative with eye-witness accounts of Sasquatch encounters culled from the internet, reinventing as many versions of the Frankenstein author Mary Shelley as there are definitions of the word “Gothic.” In this work, a string of financial, maternal, and familial misfortunes causes Shelley—referred to in this production as Maery S.—to spawn a monstrous creative expression, which takes on its own life and violent history. Maery cannot help but fall in love with her Monster, only to see it “collected” and imprisoned by charitable funding at a mandatory artists’ residency.
Official selection at 13 film festivals worldwide in 2022
Winner Best Animation & Best Actress (Dee Beasnael) LA Independent Film Channel Festival
Winner Best Actress in a Supporting Role & Best Sound Design (Chris Giarmo) Melbourne Independent Film Festival

The Percipients

2018/02–2025/10 A new, mixed reality, musical play with Australian composer Paul Castles, exploring people's encounters with a creature whose existence defies logical explanation or human understanding. With lyrics loosely translated from Rilke's Love Poems to God as well as certain poems by Mary Oliver. 

true pearl

2018/10–2018/11 Libretto for an in-ear opera for five Renaissance tapestries, on the life and death of the Persian King Cyrus the Great. With composer David Lang, vocal group Roomful of Teeth, and pianist Stephen Drury.Commission for Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens

2016/03–2018/12 A series of site-specific performance rituals taking place on every Solstice and Equinox from 2016-18. Developed partly in residence at the Watermill Center, Watermill, NY; exhibition and student performance, Madelon Powers Gallery, East Stroudsburg University, PA.With 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co.

Segue Series

2025/03 Reading of new work at Artists Space, NYC. With poet Timmy Straw. 

"Intuitive Research"

2017/01–2023/12 University of Texas at Austin, East Stroudsburg University, Muhlenberg College, University of Virginia at Wise, University of Melbourne/Victorian College of the Arts, Great Plains Theater Conference, Bryn Mawr College, CUNY Brooklyn College, and others, various dates 2017-2023.

“The Art of Stacking the Deck”

2019/01–2019/01 Symposium exploring Mac Wellman’s impact on American theater, with Erin Courtney, Haruna Lee, Young Jean Lee, Anne Washburn, Karinne Keithley Syers, Eliza Bent, and Young Jean Lee, as part of the Mac Wellman Festival, the Flea Theater.

“Process-Based Theatrical and Dramatic Structures”

2018/01–2022/12 University of Connecticut, East Stroudsburg University, University of Virginia at Wise, Atlantic Center for the Arts, College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico, various dates 2018-2022.

“Introducing 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co., Retrospective and Future Vision of the Work of Sibyl Kempson”

2015/04 City University of New York, Martin E. Segal Center, April 6, 2015. 

The Gothic Gets into My Dream World: A Conversation with Sibyl Kempson

Interview with poet and playwright Darcie Dennigan, for Culturebot.

"Road-Tripping with Frankenstein's Monster in 'Maery S.'

NYT Review of the radio play version of The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S. 

“Review: Joinification Ceremony for the Church of FemAnimism”

Review of the founding ceremony of the Covid-era Church of Femanimism by 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co., by artist Janaki Ranpura.

"Of Goddesses and Monsters: Helen Shaw on Sibyl Kempson/7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co."”

In ArtForum, June 20, 2018

Ralph Lemon on Sibyl Kempson

“Kempson’s theatrical writing, her plays, if you want to call them that, are anarchic scripted actions, destablizing the framework of even experimental theater. I recently saw her Fondly, Collette Richland (2015) performed and directed by members of the ensemble Elevator Repair Service. Both philosophical and delirious, with rapidly shifting epochs and geographies, the piece seemed to completely disrupt the headlong momentum that the innovative group is known for. Yeah, keep tearing down those walls—and the Whitney will thrive.”

New Dramatists

2010/09–2017/08
Alum, class of 2017