Cynthia Babak

Cynthia Babak is a multi-disciplinary theatre artist living in Brooklyn, NY. As playwright, actor and director, she considers comedy an excellent tool for communicating complex ideas and feelings, as well as a good coping mechanism. Cynthia’s full-length play Where I Dwell was first work shopped at The Lanyard Theatre in Bath, Maine (2008), and recently presented as part of Florida Repertory Theatre’s Play Lab (2015)—it is slated for a Fall 2016 Off-Off Broadway production. Her one-act Too Much Candy was produced by Brave New World Rep in conjunction with Company XVI as part of the The Halloween Plays (2010), and her one-act In the Skin was a semi-finalist for the O’Neill Theatre Conference (2007). She directed Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, and Arthur Miller’s The American Clock, also for Brave New World Rep. As actress, she has inhabited a wide range of characters, and especially loves creating roles in new plays. With actress Michael Huston she writes and performs under the dubious title Babes in the Woods; theirs is a character-driven brand of gender-bending sketch comedy that explores social strata and urban life. Cynthia brings her love of theatre to the classroom as a Teaching Artist for Roundabout Theatre Company and a freelance director for NYC area High Schools and Private Schools. She is a core member of Hook & Eye Theatre, having appeared in the devised work The Summoners (2014) and collaborating now on God is a Verb, an exploration of the concepts and life of R. Buckminster Fuller. She is also a founding member of Brave New World Rep Theatre in Brooklyn. In 2016 she completed a play called Life&Death&In-Between, which she been worked on for the last couple of years. She set aside the summer to work on another unfinished play, New York Story. Cynthia also had the opportunity to act this year, with her theater company, Hook & Eye, in a play they devised collaboratively, God is a Verb – about the life, ideas and myth of Buckminster Fuller; and with her comedy partner in some group shows at Dixon Place.

Babesinthewoods.com

This bio/description was originally published in 2015 and updated in 2016. For more current information, please refer to the award recipient's website (if provided).