PLAYS IN PROGRESS MENTOR
VICTORIA Z. DALY
Victoria is a Plays in Progress Mentor for Plays. Her mentor interests: character-driven, conflict, strong character arc, theatricality, dramatic physicality. Request Victoria as a PIP Mentor.
“I’m drawn to plays about complex, flawed humans struggling to connect with each other and themselves. Characters with big needs and stakes. Plays that explore fundamental questions about the way the world, and the humans in it, work. My main goal as a dramatist-mentor is to recognize the impulse and intention in your play and to help you, the playwright, fulfill your intention.
I’m especially excited to work on plays whose stories can only be told on the stage. Lighting, mixed media, non-linear structure, metaphor, heightened language — whatever you can dream up to tell the story and help illuminate the characters, I’m up for it. I’d be less effective working on plays that are highly plot-driven or message- driven.
After we’ve explored each of our questions about your draft, I’ll aim to have you fired up to start the next one.”
VICTORIA Z. DALY earned an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts and a Certificate in theater from L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
She is the Founder and Director of The 9th Floor, a collaborative of writers and actors in New York City, now in its twelfth season. Plays and screenplays workshopped at The 9th Floor have gone on to receive hundreds of productions, publications, residencies and awards, among them Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for Comic Writing and the Bauer-Boucher award from Kean University.
Vicki has taught playwriting (specializing in drama bootcamps) in New York City, Tennessee, and Connecticut for such organizations as Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwrights, Inc., the Fly Arts Center, Litchfield Performing Arts, and her own The Write Stuff! programs. A former physical actor, she also taught and performed commedia dell'arte, clown and mask work in Paris, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and in New York City.
Her plays include Doppelgänger, Sam, Demeter and Polly, Shell Collection, Invisible, Far North, On the Cross Bronx, Circling the Globe, Raw, Final Rest, High Water Line and Rockaway Park. They have been developed /produced at the Actors Studio, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, the ATHE Conference, Short+Sweet Festivals in Hollywood, Dubai, and upcoming in Sydney, the Alliance for Jewish Theatre, the Berrie Center, Spokane’s KPBX-FM (NPR,) Supersound Scotland Radio, the Gi60 Festival (U.S. and UK,) and the Edinburgh Festival, among other venues.
Recent awards for Vicki’s work include The Neem Award for Improper Dramaturgy, Russia, for High Water Line (2020;) Winner, Impossible Fest, Chicago for High Water Line (2020); Best Play and Judges’ Choice, Short+Sweet Dubai, for On the Cross Bronx (2020); Winner, the New Short Play Festival, New York City, for Final Rest (2019); and Winner, the Warner International Playwrights Festival, Connecticut, for Raw (2018.)
Vicki also earned an A.B. and M.B.A. from Harvard. Member: Dramatists Guild of America; Actors Studio Playwrights and Directors Workshop; Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolis; International Centre for Women Playwrights.