Lisa Kron facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lisa Kron
Kron hosting the Sixth Annual Lilly Awards in 2015
Born	(1961-05-20) May 20, 1961 (age 64) Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, playwright
Spouse(s)	Madeleine George

Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron (born May 20, 1961) is an American actress and playwright. She is famous for writing the words and story for the musical Fun Home. For this musical, she won two big awards: the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Fun Home also won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. It also received the 2014 Obie Award for its writing in musical theater.

Early Life and Growing Up

Kron was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She often jokes that her life started when her parents traveled to Europe. She said she was "conceived in Venice," but then added it was actually in a nearby, cheaper town.

Her Family Background

Her mother, Ann Kron, was born in 1932. She used to sell old items and was a community helper. In the 1960s, Ann started a group called the Westside Neighborhood Organization in Lansing, Michigan. This group helped bring people from different backgrounds together. Ann became Jewish when she married Lisa's father.

Her father, Walter Kron, was born in Germany in 1922. He was a lawyer who is now retired. He came from a Jewish family and survived a very difficult time called the Holocaust. In 1937, when Jewish people faced great danger, his parents sent him out of Germany. This was part of a program called Kindertransport. After World War II, he went back to Germany. He worked for the U.S. army, questioning people who had committed crimes during the war.

In the 1990s, Lisa Kron and her father visited Auschwitz. He believed his parents were killed there. Later, she found out they were actually killed in Chelmno.

Lisa's brother is David Kron, born in 1963. He works as a sound engineer and has a son. He describes Lisa as "very funny" and someone who "always had her own way of looking at things."

Feeling Like an Outsider

In her play Well, Lisa Kron shared that she felt different even within her own family. She, her parents, and her brother David were the only Jewish people. Her mother's family was Christian. None of her father's Jewish family survived the Holocaust. Her play 2.5 Minute Ride talks about this. She remembered her mother asking her to come home for holidays. Lisa would say, "I don't come home for Christmas Mom. We are not Christians."

In 1965, Kron's family moved to Lansing, Michigan. One of her plays, Well, tells about her time at an elementary school there. This school had mostly African American students. Kron's parents sent her there to help the school become more mixed. Lansing started requiring schools to mix students from different races three years later.

Early Interest in Theatre

Lisa Kron became interested in theatre when she was young. She says her acting started with plays she performed at her synagogue in Lansing. In junior high, she wanted to be the funniest person everyone knew. She did this by telling funny stories, which was something her whole family enjoyed.

She finished Everett High School as the top student in 1979. In her last year, she took special theater classes. Her theater teacher, Robert L. Burpee, was an important early guide for her.

She went to Kalamazoo College and studied theatre. Her professor, Lowry Marshall, helped her get a role with a national touring theater company. She also studied at Chautauqua Professional Actors Studio and in London.

Major Creative Works

Lisa Kron's main works are 2.5 Minute Ride, Well, and Fun Home. The first two are plays about her own life that critics loved. The third is a musical about someone else's life that also received great reviews.

2.5 Minute Ride

2.5 Minute Ride mixes two trips. One is a trip she took with her father, Walter, to Auschwitz. This was a place where his parents were killed. The other is her family's yearly trip to an amusement park in Ohio. Kron explains that the play puts humor and sadness side-by-side. She says you might not know if you are at Auschwitz or the amusement park. The play lets the audience decide how to feel.

The play shares her father's amazing experiences. Kron also talks about seeing a poem at Auschwitz. She repeats the words that moved her: "People burn people here." A memorable part of the play is when her father talks about his parents' deaths. He realized it fully when he was shivering in the cold in Lansing. He thought about how his parents were old and stood outside in the cold, and then they were killed.

Well

Well explores her mother Ann's experiences with helping the community and dealing with illness. The play uses physical sickness to represent problems in society, like racism. Kron describes Well as a play that looks at health and illness in both a person and a community.

Kron describes her mother as a "fantastically energetic person trapped in an utterly exhausted body." She says when her mother had energy, it was amazing. For example, when Lisa and her brother were young, her mother decided she wanted them to grow up in a neighborhood with people of different races. Then, her mother worked to create such a neighborhood.

Fun Home

Fun Home (2013) was Kron's first musical. It was also her first work based on someone else's art. It comes from Alison Bechdel's graphic novel/memoir, also called Fun Home. Kron wrote the story and the song lyrics. Tony-nominated composer Jeanine Tesori wrote the music. The musical is about cartoonist Alison Bechdel growing up in a small town. It shows her journey as a young woman who realizes she is gay, and her father, who was also gay but kept it a secret.

All of Kron's earlier works were about her own life. She talked about adapting someone else's story in an interview. She said that when you adapt something, you have to make it feel new and original. It needs its own energy, so the audience feels like they are having a fresh experience. But at the same time, it should still feel like the original book.

All three of these works were very popular. 2.5 Minute Ride won an Obie award. Well was named one of the best plays of 2003–2004 by the New York Times and received two Tony Award nominations. Critics praised Kron's ability to combine humor with deep personal stories.

The first college performance of Well happened in 2008 at Kalamazoo College, where Kron went to school. Kron visited for a week, and there were special events, including a performance of another play and a reading by Kron herself.

Kron's play In the Wake first opened in Los Angeles in March 2010. It was directed by Leigh Silverman, who also directed Well. The play is about a family gathering after a presidential election. The main character, Ellen, deals with political problems and changes in her own life.

Career in Theatre

Kron's plays are funny and touching. They show life through the eyes of someone who often felt like an outsider. Her experiences as a Jewish woman in a mostly Christian city in the Midwestern United States, or as a gay woman in traditional theatre, give her lots of ideas for her plays. Her observations are smart but not mean. Critic Ben Brantley said that her humor is a key part of how she understands life's unexpected twists.

She describes how she creates her plays in a funny way. She says she keeps "banging my head against the wall until it pops through on the other side."

She moved to New York City in 1984. She worked many different jobs while trying to become an actress. Some of her early adventures in New York are in her play 101 Humiliating Stories. She soon started performing at the WOW Café, a place for women in performing arts in the East Village, Manhattan.

In 1989, Kron and four other women started a theatre company called The Five ... Brothers. This group writes and performs clever, funny plays from a feminist and gay perspective. They chose their name to show that their plays were not just serious or angry. Their plays have been shown in many famous theatres and they have toured across the United States. The group has won the Obie Award and published books like The Five ... Brothers' Guide to Life.

Kron also acted in Paul Rudnick's 1998 play The Most ... Story Ever Told. She played many different characters. One memorable role, according to Ben Brantley, was Rabbi Sharon, a rabbi in a wheelchair.

Kron turned stories about her family into plays about her own life. She performed them in New York and London. Her work was praised by critics. Her play Well opened on Broadway on March 10, 2006. It received good reviews and two Tony nominations. Kron was nominated for Best Actress in a Play. Even with good reviews, Well did not have many audience members and closed on May 14, 2006. It has been performed in Boston since then.

In 2013, while Kron's musical Fun Home was first showing, Kron was also acting in another play called Good Person of Szechwan at the same theatre. This was unusual for her, working on her own play as a writer while rehearsing to act in another.

In 2017, Kron received the 27th Annual Kleban Prize. This award is for the most promising musical theatre writer. It included a $100,000 prize.

In June 2025, it was announced that Kron would act in a new play called Tartuffe at the New York Theatre Workshop.

Personal Life

Lisa Kron has lived in New York City since 1984. She is a full-time actress. She also teaches playwriting part-time at Yale University and New York University. She is married to Madeleine George, who is also a playwright.

Acting Roles

Selected Theatre Performances

Television and Film Roles

• Cater-Waiter 1996
• Law & Order: "Atonement" 1996 CSU Warren
• Law & Order: "Trophy" 1996 CSU Warren
• Law & Order: "Disciple" 1999 CSU Technician Andrews
• Strong Medicine: "Family History" 2002 Nooch
• Stay 2005 Paramedic #2
• Deception 2008 Receptionist
• ... and the City 2008 Junior's Waitress

Selected Publications

Plays

• The Five ... Brothers' Guide to Life by the Five ... Brothers, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN: 978-0-684-81384-4
• Oedipus at Palm Springs – a "Five ... Brothers play" with Maureen Angelos, Dominique Dibbell and Peg Healey (2010). Samuel French. ISBN: 978-0-573-69702-9
• 2.5 Minute Ride and 101 Humiliating Stories, New York : Theatre Communications Group, 2001. ISBN: 978-1-55936-181-1
• Voyage to Lesbos in Five ... Brothers Four Plays, New York : Theatre Communications Group, 2000. ISBN: 1-55936-166-2
• Well, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006. ISBN: 978-1-55936-253-5

Anthologies

• Brave Smiles by the Five ... Brothers, The Actor's Book of Gay and Lesbian Plays, Eric Lane and Nina Shengold, eds. New York: Penguin, 1995 ISBN: 978-0-14-024552-3
• Cast Out: Queer Lives In Theater Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press 2006 ISBN: 978-0-472-09933-7
• Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century New York: Theatre Communications Group 2000 ISBN: 1-55936-155-7
• Out Of Character: Rants, Raves, And Monologues From Today's Top Performance Artists New York : Bantam Books 1997 ISBN: 0-553-37485-0, ISBN: 978-0-553-37485-8
• 2.5 Minute Ride in Talk to Me: Monologue Plays New York : Vintage Books 2004 ISBN: 978-1-4000-7615-4
• Voyage to Lesbos in Five ... Brothers Four Plays New York : Theatre Communications Group, 2000 ISBN: 1-55936-166-2
• Well in The Best Plays Theater Yearbook 2003-2004 New York : Limelight Editions, c2005. ISBN: 978-0-87910-315-6

Articles

"Lithe I'm Not. And Trained I'm Not. But I Danced." The New York Times, December 12, 1999.

Audiobooks

2.5 Minute Ride [ABRIDGED] (Audio CD) New Millennium Audio; Abridged edition 2001 ISBN: 978-1-931056-25-0

Awards and Honors

Lisa Kron has received many awards for her work.

For 2.5 Minute Ride

• Los Angeles Dramalogue Award
• Obie Award
• 2000 GLAAD Media Award

For Well

• Named among the year's best plays by the New York Times and other publications.
• Part of the 2004 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab.

For Fun Home

• 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Fun Home.
• 2014 Obie Award for Fun Home.
• 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score (shared with Jeanine Tesori, making them the first female writing team to win this award).
• 2015 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.

Other Awards

• 1993 New York Dance and Performance Award Bessie Awards with The Five ... Brothers.
• 1994 Robert Chesley Gay and Lesbian Playwriting Award.
• 1994 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in playwriting.
• 1995 Obie Award for The Secretaries with The Five ... Brothers.
• 1997 Cal Arts/Alpert Award.
• 2000 Creative Capital Foundation Grant.
• 2000 NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights.
• 2000 NEA/TCG playwriting fellowship.
• 2003 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, Kalamazoo College.
• 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts grant.
• 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship.
• 2007 The Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwriting Fellowship.
• 2008 Chosen to participate in the 2008 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab.
• 2008 Lark Play Development Center Fellowship.
• 2011 Lilly Award for In the Wake.
• 2017 Edward Kleban Prize for most promising musical theatre writer.

Awards Nominated For

For 101 Humiliating Stories

• Drama Desk nomination in solo performance.

For 2.5 Minute Ride

• Outer Critics Circle Award.
• L.A. Drama-Logue Award.
• Drama Desk nomination in solo performance.
• Outer Critics Circle nomination in solo performance.
• 1999 New York Press Award for Best Autobiographical Solo Show.

For Well

• Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
• Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.
• 2004 Drama League Nomination.
• 2004 Outer Critics Circle Best Play nomination.

Other Nominations

• 1994 Nomination for Drama Desk Award in Solo Performance.

Famous Quotes

"Bizarre Murder!! ... Forces Blind Holocaust Victim on Roller Coaster!" - 2.5 Minute Ride And 101 Humiliating Stories

"…Judaism, you know, is viewed in the Midwest as kind of an accessory that you wear on top of your Christianity." - Well

"I come from a family with a deep distrust of the body. I believe my family would have their bodies surgically removed from their heads if they could figure out a way to still get to the mall." - "Lithe I'm Not. And Trained I'm Not. But I Danced."

Quotes

"Bizarre Murder!! Lesbian Forces Blind Holocaust Victim on Roller Coaster!" - 2.5 Minute Ride And 101 Humiliating Stories

"…Judaism, you know, is viewed in the Midwest as kind of an accessory that you wear on top of your Christianity." - Well

"I come from a family with a deep distrust of the body. I believe my family would have their bodies surgically removed from their heads if they could figure out a way to still get to the mall." - "Lithe I'm Not. And Trained I'm Not. But I Danced."