Stacy Ross with puppeteers Charlie Gray and Miyaka P. Cochrane in “Free For All” at Cutting Ball Theater, 2019. (Photo: Ben Krantz.) 
Eliza Shea and Karen Johal in “Truest” at American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 2016. 
Indiia Wilmott in “The Horse’s Ass” at Repurposed Theatre, 2015. (Photo: Ted Davis) 
Marlene Yarosh with carrots in “The Horse’s Ass” at Repurposed Theatre, 2015. (Photo: Ted Davis) 
Sarah Moser in “A Three Little Dumplings Adventure” at Threshold Theater, 2011. (Photo: Clay Robeson) 
Julie (Stacy Ross) watches her cook John (Phil Wong), with house puppeteers Miyaka P. Cochrane and Charlie Gray in “Free For All” at Cutting Ball Theater, 2019. (Photo: Ben Krantz.) 
Indiia Wilmott and Marlene Yarosh brandish carrots in “The Horse’s Ass” at Repurposed Theatre, 2015. (Photo: TwentyTwentyStudios) 
Devin McNulty and Kate Jones in site-specific “Babe City, U.S.A.!,” produced by Pianofight. (Photo: Daniel James Burke) 
Ryan Hayes and Paul Rodrigues in “Two for One,” at Repurposed Theatre, 2015. (Photo: Ted Davis.) 
Stacy Ross and Phil Wong celebrate the end of the world in “Free For All” at Cutting Ball Theater, 2019. (Photo: Ben Krantz.) 
Evan Johnson and Ryan Hayes in “Storytime with Billy” at Repurposed Theatre, 2015. (Photo: Ted Davis) 
Me in a rehearsal during my first week as a San Francisco Neo-Futurist, 2013. (Photo: Adam Smith)
Called “a ruthless innovator” (SF Weekly) with “a devilish sense of humor” (HuffPo) and “a bottomless capacity for feeling” (SF Chronicle), Megan Cohen (b. 1983) is also a fairly friendly playwright, librettist, game writer, and writing coach.
Places to Start
- I’m writing a whole blog about writing If you care about me, you might care about taking some of my best approaches and habits and applying them to your own creative work. Come sniff around at How To Write Something.
- You can listen to my GRAMMY-nominated art song “Woman Walking” at the links below and/or click here to read the Woman Walking lyrics. This collaboration with composer Nell Shaw Cohen appears two commercial releases; one studio album and one live recording.
Woman Walking – Studio Album
40 @ 40. This record was nominated for the 2023 GRAMMY award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album after debuting at #1 on the Billboard Classical chart. It’s such an honor to be a small part of it as the lyricist for this track about a woman finding a moment of beauty during a solitary walk on busy city streets. Soprano Laura Strickling and pianist Daniel Schlosberg have created a gorgeous anthology of new art song, so I suggest you listen to the whole album of 40 @ 40. But if you only listen to one track, I hope it’s ours.
Woman Walking – Recorded Live
SAUNTERING SONGS. In her evening-length cantata, composer Nell Shaw Cohen has created a 70-minute work of incredible richness and musical breadth that explores the experience and meaning of walking for different bodies in different cultural contexts. Along with soloist Megan Roth’s rendition of “Woman Walking,” this project for Skylark Vocal Ensemble features a diversity of vibrant texts about walking as a personal, political, and spiritual practice. I suggest you listen to the whole record of Sauntering Songs, but if you only listen to one song, I hope it’s mine.
Personal History (Megan’s Version)
Her first stage experience was as a very small child, when her kindergarten did a show about the sea.
She got to play a shark with a cardboard fin. The other children played fish. Her job was to chase them. As they ran away in fear, Megan knew she’d achieved her heart’s desire: to be both cute and terrifying.
An intoxicating blend. She has never recovered and never will.
After being bitten by the theater shark, Megan played a lot of squirrels and things in kids’ theater until puberty hit and she started doing teen slam poetry with SF Bay Area non-profit YouthSpeaks. She did drop out of high school but went on to Stanford University where she was lucky to study Brecht’s works under the direct mentorship of his friend Carl Weber. She read a lot of books and even won the Eleanor Prosser Prize for her original research on U.K. devised theater ensemble Forced Entertainment, thereby standing out as a certified dork among a very competitive pool of fellow book-drunk nerds and dweebs.
In the decades of adulthood since then, she has mostly been incredibly cool. She has worn fantastic haircuts, toured as a performance artist, and (briefly) cruised around San Francisco in a huge white slightly-broken Cadillac with members of an actual rock band. Given all those facts it’s weird she hasn’t done more drugs, but she was always cool enough without them.
She worked many jobs: Literary Manager for an award-winning theater, Communications and Engagement Manager for big-hearted performing arts companies with small budgets, and even Social Media Manager for a climate change non-profit. In addition to being all of those managers, she was also a million-pageview blogger under a still-pretty-secret pen name. During her web content era she briefly worked as an official blogger for Bill “The Science Guy” Nye’s TV show, and wrote miscellaneous internet articles about things like how to ride a skateboard.
Mostly though, she has done fictional narrative writing. Stories. Imaginary stuff that feels or becomes real when it meets an audience. Over a hundred scripts onstage, some operas, some video games. Decades of stories.
The majority of her life so far (childhood, teenhood, adulthood) has been based on unceded Ohlone and Pomo land (colonized as the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA.)
Now an “elder millenial,” she knocks out a million words annually as a writer and offers her 20+ years of experience to others as a respectful, honest, and f*ckin’ friendly writing coach (online, sliding scale.)
On the deepest level, she continues to be a SECRET TO ALL WHO WISH TO KNOW HER. But you can catch glimpses of whatever she’s doing via her e-mail newsletter and social media.
Artistic Practice (Megan’s Work)
Work 1:1 (Megan’s Coaching)
“In the sui generis mind of theater artist Megan Cohen, silliness intermingles with oh-no-she-didn’t moxie; searing smarts blend seamlessly with surreal reverie and a bottomless capacity for feeling.” –San Francisco Chronicle–
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Done with the site? Listen now to my short story about money, magic, and a weedwhacker.