Elizabeth Olesker

Courses
Playwriting Practicum

LIZZIE OLESKER makes plays and performances that explore the interplay of history, personal memory and the unexpected poetry of everyday experience. Her plays include 5 Stages of Grief, Embroidered Past, Razing Houses, A Kind (of) Mother, Verdure and Dreaming Through History, developed and seen at the Public Theater, New Georges, Clubbed Thumb, Cherry Lane Theater, Dixon Place, HERE and in Seattle at the Intiman Theater and the Annex. She’s received support from New York Foundation for the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, Franklin Furnace and the Dramatists Guild. Her solo object-theater performance Infinite Miniature was presented at Invisible Dog and the Ohio Theater. With filmmaker Lynne Sachs, she co-created and directed Every Fold Matters, a site-specific performance in NYC’s neighborhood laundromats and the hybrid documentary film THE WASHING SOCIETY (2018) shown at many festivals and venues including BAM Cinema Festival, Berkeley Art Museum, National Art Gallery,  Vancouver Film Festival, Punto de Vista (Spain), and on the Criterion Channel. The play script will be published by punctum books, 2025. Also an actor, she's worked with the Talking Band theater company at La Mama and Mabou Mines Theater. Her collaborative play Language of Dolls will be at Touchstone Theater in 2026.