Mary Hall Surface

Mary Hall Surface is one of the most widely produced playwright/directors specializing in theatre for family audiences in the United States. Ms. Surface’s work has been featured at Seattle Children’s Theatre, Dallas Children’s Theatre, Arizona’s Childs play, Honolulu Theatre for Youth, as well as ten productions at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Touring productions of her plays Most Valuable Player (about the life of Jackie Alexander Calder) and Apollo: to the Moon have been presented in every region of the US, as well as in Ireland, France, Peru, Germany, Italy, and across Canada. An anthology of five of her plays, Most Valuable Player and Four Other All-Star Plays for Middle and High School Audiences was published by Smith and Kraus. She has been nominated for four Helen Hays Awards for Outstanding Direction — for the Round House Theatre’s TinTypes, for TFA's Grimm Tales, Sing Down the Moon and Perseus Bayou (for which she received the award) and for the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play for Sing Down the Moon, Perseus Bayou and Mississippi Pinocchio. She was the director of New Visions 2000: One Theatre World, a national festival of theatre for young people and families, co-produced by Kennedy Center and ASSITE/USA. Her recent projects include, A Light in the Storm, based on the book by Karen Hesse, which opened at the Kennedy Center in 2001 and toured nationally through 2003 and The Odyssey of Telemaca, her sixth collaboration with composer David Maddox, which premiered at Theatre of the First Amendment. She is a National Endowment for the Arts on-site evaluator and 2003 panelist and an advisor to America Theatre Magazine.