Martyna Majok facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Martyna Majok
|
|
|---|---|
Majok in 2018
|
|
| Born | |
| Education |
|
| Occupation | Playwright |
|
Notable work
|
|
| Awards |
|
Martyna Majok (pronounced MY-ohk) is a writer who creates plays for the theater. She was born in Poland and moved to the United States as a child. In 2018, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Cost of Living. The Pulitzer Prize is a very important award for achievements in journalism, literature, and music.
Martyna grew up in New Jersey. She studied playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and the Juilliard School. Her plays often explore important social topics. They also use humor and sometimes play with how stories are told over time.
Her first big success was the play Ironbound in 2014. As more people recognized her talent, she released other plays. These include Cost of Living (2016), Queens (2018), and Sanctuary City (2021). She also helped create a musical version of The Great Gatsby. This musical is called "Gatsby: An American Myth."
Martyna Majok lives in Manhattan with her partner, actor Bobby Conte.
Contents
Early Life and Inspiration
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. They lived in a neighborhood where many working-class immigrant families lived.
Martyna remembers that her mother learned English after they arrived. Everyone in their community worked similar jobs, like in factories or cleaning houses. Martyna went to public school.
When she was in high school, Martyna won a playwriting contest. She was the only winner that year who did not come from a private school. This was her first experience with writing for the stage. She also wrote short plays to help immigrant parents and children learn English.
At age 17, Martyna saw the musical Cabaret at Studio 54. This was her first time seeing a professional play. She had won $45 playing pool to buy the ticket. This experience greatly inspired her.
Education and Fellowships
Martyna Majok attended the University of Chicago on a scholarship. There, she started taking drama classes. At first, she wasn't sure about herself. But she began to get involved in theater after discovering plays by Sarah Kane in the library.
She realized she loved writing for the theater. It allowed her to create characters and stories she could relate to. To support herself, she 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 in writing.
After Chicago, Martyna continued her studies at the Yale School of Drama and the Juilliard School. She received financial support for both programs. She also held several special writing positions. These included being a playwright-in-residence for the NNPN (2012–13). She was also a Playwrights of New York (PoNY) Fellow at The Lark (2015–16). In 2018–19, she was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.
Career and Playwriting Style
Martyna Majok is known for writing about people and communities that are not often seen in plays. She often tells stories about immigrants or people who have been displaced. Her plays also feature working-class individuals and people with disabilities.
Her work explores themes like social class, longing, and loneliness. It also looks at how people try to connect with each other 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 strong and fight for their respect.
A critic once said that Majok "specializes in anti-sentimentality." This means her plays are honest and don't try to be overly emotional.
Martyna enjoys working with other artists to develop her plays. She finds inspiration in her mother's life. She also remembers how Cabaret influenced her. She said that Cabaret was set in dark times but was still funny and inviting. This taught her that even sad stories can have humor.
Notable Plays by Martyna Majok
Ironbound (2014)
Ironbound was Martyna Majok's breakthrough play. It tells the story of Darja, a Polish immigrant. Darja works hard as a house cleaner and factory worker in New Jersey. The play shows her life over 22 years. It explores the idea of the American Dream and what it means to fight for your place in the world. The story is based on experiences from Martyna's own mother.
Critics praised Ironbound. It won several awards, including the 2016 Helen Hayes Award's Charles McArthur Award. The play was also listed among the top ten plays on the 2014 Kilroys' List. Ironbound opened Off-Broadway in 2016.
Cost of Living (2016)
Cost of Living won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play looks at how people with and without disabilities interact. It also explores differences in social class and financial struggles. The story shows the delicate balance of needing help and giving care.
The play features characters like Eddie, an ex-truck driver, and his wife Ani, who is quadriplegic. It also includes John, a smart doctoral student with cerebral palsy, and Jess, his busy caregiver. A critic from The New York Times wrote that the play shows how a wheelchair can mark someone as "disfavored." But the critic also said it's not just about disabilities. It's about common human challenges like fear and feeling disconnected.
Cost of Living has been performed in many places around the world. These include New York, London, Toronto, Poland, and Israel. It also won the Outstanding New Play at the 2018 Lucille Lortel Awards.
Queens (2018)
In 2018, Martyna Majok's play Queens premiered Off-Broadway. The story follows a group of immigrant women from different countries. They live together in a basement apartment in Queens, New York. The play covers 16 years of their lives. It shows how they try to support each other while dealing with daily struggles. The choices they made in the past come back to affect them.
Queens is being turned into a TV series for HBO. Martyna Majok is writing the script and will help produce it.
Sanctuary City (2020)
Sanctuary City premiered in 2020. It tells the story of two teenage immigrants in Newark in the early 2000s. One teenager recently became a U.S. citizen, and the other is undocumented. They come up with a plan for the undocumented friend to stay in the country. This was a time when the DREAM Act was being discussed. Young immigrants hoped it would help their uncertain status.
Majok's story asks how much we are willing to sacrifice for someone we love. The play had a short run Off-Broadway in March 2020. It was stopped after a few days because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The production officially reopened in September 2021.
Other Work
In April 2021, it was announced that Martyna Majok would adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous book The Great Gatsby for the stage. The musical, called Gatsby, premiered in 2023. Martyna worked with Rebecca Frecknall on this project.
Awards and Honors
Martyna Majok has received many awards and honors for her work. Some of them include:
- 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 – Ironbound
- Aurora Theatre's Global Age Project Prize – Ironbound
- 2014 Marin Theatre's David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize – Ironbound
- 2016 Helen Hayes Awards' Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Original New Play or Musical – Ironbound
- 2016 Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award
- 2016 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award – Cost of Living
- The Kennedy Center's Jean Kennedy Smith Award – Cost of Living
- Ashland New Plays Festival Women's Invitational Prize – Cost of Living
- 2017 Dramatists Guild's Lanford Wilson Award
- 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama – Cost of Living
- 2018 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Play – Cost of Living
- 2019 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award – Sanctuary City
