Joan Lipkin

Joan Lipkin is a playwright, lyricist, director, educator and social activist with a specific interest in dialogue of all kinds. The pieces shown here are an excerpt from The Conversation, a nine month collaboration with Kim Mosley in which both artists pledged to create a daily piece that incorporated written and visual exchanges. Their only requirement was to be as honest as possible.

As the Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, she specializes in creating work with marginalized populations including people with disabilities, from those with digital hearing aids to those people who use wheelchairs, LGBT youth and women with breast cancer that are accompanied by civic dialogue with the wider community.

She has received commissions from SSM Healthcare, the Greater St. Louis Federal Executive Board, the Foster Care Coalition of Greater St. Louis, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, One Mississippi River, the New York City Gay Men's Chorus, Provident Counseling and the American Civil Liberties Association, among others.

Joan's work has been published and produced throughout North America, Australia and the United Kingdom. Selected venues include the Places des Arts (Montreal), Lincoln Center (New York), Bailiwick Repertory (Chicago), the Old Globe (Los Angeles), Slack Dynamics Theatre (London) and the Cottier Theatre (Glasgow).

Her work is included in Upstaging Big Daddy: Directing Theater as if Race and Gender Matter, Amazon All Stars, Nice Jewish Girls: Growing Up In America, Mythic Women/Real Women: New Plays and Performance Pieces, and Body in Performance among other anthologies as well as American Theatre, Theatre Journal, TDR, New Theatre Quarterly, Critical Quarterly, Dramatists Guild Quarterly, InTheater, Contemporary Theatre Review, National Women Studies Journal and Australian Feminist Studies.

Among others, she has received a Visionary Award, the Missouri Arts Award, a Focus St. Louis Award for Improving Racial Justice and Social Equality, Arts for Life Special Recognition, the John Van Voris Award for Community Enhancement, Special Recognition from the Recreational Council of Greater St. Louis, the Community Enhancement Award from the Governor's Council on Disability, a Women of Worth Award, a Frederick A. Laas Award and the Outstanding Alumni Award from Webster University.

For more info, see her website at http://www.uppityco.com/

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