Laura Barbieri is a playwright, actor, and director currently based in Northeast Ohio, where she is an MFA candidate in Kent State University’s North East Ohio Master of Fine Arts (NEOMFA) in Creative Writing. Laura’s scripts have been performed in Chicago, southeast Michigan, and northeast Ohio. Most recently, a one-act version of her play We Call It Family was workshopped at the 2023 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. Other previous productions include (among others): full-length play Pick Your Poison, which was selected for Kent State Trumbull’s “Scripts and Sips” reading series; 10-minute play Are We There Yet?, which was performed at the 2022 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival in Cleveland, Ohio; full-length play Runaway, which received a staged reading by Moody Bible Institute’s Shadowbox.
Laura found her passion for live performance through school productions, and the styles and strengths of educational theatre still inform her work today. Her plays favor ensemble casts and high-energy comedies, because she believes that, at its core, theatre is a hopeful and communal art form. She believes that vivid, truthful, and worthwhile theatre productions can illuminate our intellects, connect our communities, benefit our bodies, and sanctify our souls.
