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) and “one insightful and confident woman with a devilish sense of humor” (HuffPo), Megan Cohen (b. 1983) is also a fairly friendly playwright, opera librettist, game writer, and writing coach.
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, and they would run away in fear.
As the smallest child in her class, it gave her a brief, wonderful, unforgettable taste of the experience of being both incredibly cute and absolutely terrifying.
She dropped out of high school but went on to Stanford University (BA, Drama with Honors) where she was lucky to study Brecht’s works under the direct mentorship of his friend Carl Weber. She even won the Eleanor Prosser Prize for her original research on U.K. devised theater ensemble Forced Entertainment, thereby being awarded departmental honors and standing out as a certified dork among a very competitive pool of fellow book-drunk nerds and dweebs.
In the decades 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 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 theater, opera, and other kinds of fictional narrative writing. Creating real experiences for real people by inventing made-up things.
The majority of her life (childhood, teenhood, adulthood) has been based in San Francisco, CA.
If you have questions or would rather hire me to write for you, you can email or tweet me.
Thank you for coming to my website!I made it myself, but put most of it in third-person to sound more “professional” since that is industry standard.Do you think it should be industry standard?I have mixed feelings about the idea of “professionalism.”I like that “professionalism” shows respect, but dislike that it creates distance.
“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–