Martyna Majok facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Martyna Majok
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Majok in 2018
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Notable work
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Martyna Majok (/ˈmaɪoʊk/ MY-ohk) is a talented American playwright who was born in Poland. She won the famous Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2018 for her play Cost of Living.
When she was a child, Martyna moved to the United States with her family. She grew up in New Jersey. She later studied playwriting at top schools like the Yale School of Drama and the Juilliard School. Her plays often explore important social topics. They also use dark humor and new ways of telling stories.
Martyna's first big success was the play Ironbound (2014). As more people noticed her work, she wrote other popular plays. These include Cost of Living (2016), Queens (2018), and Sanctuary City (2021). In 2021, it was announced that she would help create a Broadway musical version of The Great Gatsby. The music for this show will be written by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett.
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Martyna Majok's Early Life
Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, a city in Upper Silesia, Poland. She moved to the United States with her mother when she was young. She spent most of her childhood in Kearny, New Jersey. She also has a half-sister who was born in Newark.
Martyna grew up in a neighborhood with many different cultures and working-class immigrant families. She remembers that everyone worked similar jobs, like in factories or cleaning houses. Her mother learned English after they arrived. Martyna went to public school.
Her first experience with drama was winning a playwriting contest for students in New Jersey. She was the only winner that year who didn't come from a private school. In high school, she wrote short plays for a program that helped immigrant parents and children learn English. When she was 17, she saw the musical Cabaret at Studio 54. This was her first time seeing a professional play, and it really inspired her.
Martyna Majok's Education and Learning
Martyna went to the University of Chicago on a scholarship. There, she took drama classes. At first, she wasn't sure about theater. But then she found plays by Sarah Kane in the library. This made her want to write for the theater, so she could create characters she understood.
To pay for her studies, Martyna worked as a waitress and helped care for people with disabilities. She also received the Merage Fellowship for the American Dream. This award helps immigrant students pay for their education. After Chicago, she continued her studies at the Yale School of Drama and the Juilliard School. She received money to attend these schools too.
Martyna was also a playwright-in-residence for different theater groups. These included the NNPN and The Lark. She was also a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.
Martyna Majok's Career and Writing Style
Martyna Majok is known for writing about people and groups who are not often seen in plays. She often tells stories about immigrants or people who have moved from their homes. She also writes about working-class people and those with disabilities. Her plays explore themes like social class, feeling lonely, and trying to connect with others in America.
Even though her topics can be serious, humor is very important in her plays. Her characters are full of life and have many different sides. The women in her plays are often strong and fight for their respect. Martyna enjoys working with other artists to create plays. She says her mother is one of her biggest inspirations.
Her Breakthrough Play: Ironbound (2014)
Martyna's first big play was Ironbound, which came out in 2014. It tells the story of an immigrant woman from Poland named Darja. She works hard cleaning houses and in factories in New Jersey, just like Martyna's own mother did. The play looks at the idea of the American Dream through Darja's eyes over 22 years. It shows her struggle to find her place in the world.
Critics really liked Ironbound. It won several awards, including the Charles McArthur Award for Outstanding Original New Play or Musical in 2016. The play was also listed as one of the top ten plays on the 2014 Kilroys' List. Ironbound was first performed Off-Broadway in New York City in 2016.
Pulitzer Prize Winner: Cost of Living (2016)
Cost of Living (2016) is the play that won Martyna Majok the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This play explores how people with and without disabilities interact. It also looks at how social class affects people and the challenges of needing help or caring for others.
The play features characters like Eddie, an ex-truck driver, and his wife Ani, who is quadriplegic (meaning she cannot move her arms or legs). It also shows John, a smart student with cerebral palsy (a condition affecting movement), and Jess, his busy caregiver.
A critic from The New York Times wrote that the play is not just about disabilities. Instead, it's about how fear and feeling disconnected are common challenges for everyone. Cost of Living won the Outstanding New Play award at the Lucille Lortel Awards. It has been performed in many places around the world, including New York, London, and Poland.
Queens (2018) and Sanctuary City (2020)
In 2018, Martyna's play Queens premiered Off-Broadway at the Lincoln Center in New York. The story is about a group of immigrant women from different countries. They live together in a basement apartment in Queens, New York, for 16 years. They try to support each other as they face the challenges of daily life. The choices they made in the past come back to affect them. Queens is now being made into a TV series for HBO. Martyna is helping to write and produce it.
Sanctuary City (2020) tells the story of two teenage immigrants. One has recently become a citizen, and the other does not have legal papers. They make a plan for the second teen to stay in the U.S. by getting married. The play takes place in Newark in the early 2000s, when the DREAM Act was first suggested. This act gave young immigrants hope for their future.
Martyna says the play explores how much we are willing to help and sacrifice for someone we love. Especially when people have limited money and few guarantees in life. Sanctuary City was first shown Off-Broadway in March 2020. However, it had to stop performances after only a few days because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It officially opened again in September 2021.
Other Work and Teaching
Martyna Majok's plays have been shown and developed by many other theater companies. These include La Jolla Playhouse, Round House, and Steppenwolf Theatre. Her plays have also been performed internationally in places like London, Toronto, and Sydney.
In April 2021, it was announced that Martyna Majok would adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous book The Great Gatsby for the Broadway stage. Florence Welch and Doveman are writing the music for this new show.
Martyna has also taught playwriting at several universities, including Williams College and Wesleyan University. She has also helped with education projects and was an assistant to playwright Paula Vogel at Yale.
Awards and Honors
Martyna Majok has received many awards and honors for her amazing work:
- 2007 UChicago's Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize in Playwriting
- 2011 and 2018 Jane Chambers Feminist Playwriting Prize
- Champions of Change Award from the NYC Mayor's Office
- Lilly Awards' Stacey Mindich Prize
- American Theatre Critics Association's Francesca Primus Prize
- 2013 National New Play Network's Smith Prize for Political Playwriting – for Ironbound
- Aurora Theatre's Global Age Project Prize – for Ironbound
- 2014 Marin Theatre's David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize – for Ironbound
- 2016 Helen Hayes Awards' Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Original New Play or Musical – for Ironbound
- 2016 Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award
- 2016 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award – for Cost of Living
- The Kennedy Center's Jean Kennedy Smith Award – for Cost of Living
- Ashland New Plays Festival Women's Invitational Prize – for Cost of Living
- 2017 Dramatists Guild's Lanford Wilson Award
- 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama – for Cost of Living
- 2018 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Play – for Cost of Living
- 2019 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award – for Sanctuary City
