France-Luce Benson
France-Luce Benson is a two-time recipient of the Shubert Foundation Fellowship Award. Her screenplay, Healing Roots, was awarded the $10,000 prize in the Alfred P. Sloan competition in 2007. Her full length stage play, Fati’s Last Dance, won an Honorable Mention prize in the Kennedy Center’s Lorraine Hansberry Award for Playwriting; and is now a finalist for the Theodore Ward prize given by Columbia University in Chicago. Fati’s Last Dance was also one of six plays selected for the Ignition Festival at the Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago, which took place in August 2008.
She recently graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, and holds a B.F.A. in Theatre from Florida International University. In Florida, she served as founder and Artistic Director of Adunde Theatre Company in Miami. Her play Silence of the Mambo was co-produced by Adunde and Leslie Neal Dance. She also collaborated with African Heritage Cultural Center and Coconut Grove Playhouse on various theatrical ventures in S. Florida. Out of Focus and Noplace, Somewhere premiered in Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh Playwright’s Theatre and Bricolage theatre respectively. Floating Under Water received a workshop at Bricolage in May 2008, where she has been named a resident playwright.
In New York, she was honored as the Playwright in Residence for the Negro Ensemble Company, and was commissioned to write Barbara’s Keys which premiered at the Lamb’s Theatre. She has participated in Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Going to the River Festival, 2002 - 2007. Her plays Silence of the Mambo, Destiny’s Edge, Ascension, and Floating Under Water have all had readings and/or workshops there. Da Beat Trap, a one woman show written and performed by Ms. Benson, co-produced by NEC, debuted at the Producer’s Club as part of the Shakespeare N. Haarlem Theatre Festival. Ms. Benson has served as a Teaching Artist for Manhattan Theatre Club, and the Paul Roberson Theatre. She is currently a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., and lives in New York.
France-Luce Benson was awarded a Screenwriting grant at Carnegie Mellon in 2007 for Healing Roots