Playwright Caridad Svich to present May 5 keynote for York College’s JL Smith New Play Festival

OBIE Award-winning playwright Caridad Svich will give the keynote address at this year’s York College JL Smith New Play Festival at 7 p.m., May 5, on Zoom. Svich will discuss her career and what drew her to playwriting, as well as take questions from the audience, who will vote on its favorite 10-minute play during the event.

Produced by York College of Pennsylvania’s Theatre Program, the two-day virtual festival celebrates 10-minute plays and one full-length script from a Pennsylvania-based writer. The JL Smith Festival finishes on May 6 with the reading of the full-length play “The Bergerac Simulation” by Pittsburgh playwright Mora Harris. 

Svich is a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator, born in the United States of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian parents. Her works in English and Spanish have been seen at venues across the United States and abroad, among them Arena Stage, Denver Center Theatre, Repertorio Espanol, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK.

Svich received a 2012 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement in the theatre and a 2013 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. She has won the National Latino Playwriting Award (sponsored by Arizona Theatre Company) twice. Her works are published by TCG, Smith & Kraus, Broadway Play Publishing, and more. She has edited and authored several books on theatre and performance, among them “Fifty Playwrights on Their Craft,” Mitchell and Trask's “Hedwig and The Angry Inch,” and “Toward a Future Theatre: Conversations During a Pandemic.”

Svich was a virtual writer-in-residence during York College’s Fall 2020 semester, and her play “Red Bike” will be produced as part of the Theatre Program’s Spring 2023 season.