BIOGRAPHY
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Alan Olejniczak is a San Francisco based playwright and opera librettist. He is the Playwright in Residence with The Proscenium, an online theatre company based in Hong Kong. Their first season includes his plays: Next of Kin, Helt Texas and his adaption of A Christmas Carol with David Ricardo-Pearce. Their second season will premiere his plays: WorkForce, Transgress, and Plunder. His first opera, Death of Ivan Ilych with music by John Young premiered in February 2021 with Opera Orlando - the first live American opera premiere since the pandemic. Thompson Street Opera Company will then premiere the opera in September 2021. Alan currently has a Christmas oratorio and six other chamber operas in development.
Alan is an alum of Micro Galleries, a free global arts initiative that uses art as a vehicle to create positive change. It's done through creative interventions in public spaces, workshops, art tours, symposiums, think tanks, and residencies. In December 2020, Alan collaborated with artist Dakari Akil for Project / Forward 2047: Global projection art festival and was seen in ten countries. Alan was chosen as an Artist in Residence for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and the first playwright ever selected by the National Parks Arts Foundation. Alan’s other artist residencies include: Micro Galleries in Pātan, Nepal; Nes Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland; along with the prestigious The Arctic Circle Residency, sailing the icy waters around The International Territory of Svalbard. Full Playwrighting Resume Alan came late to dramatic writing. In past lives, he was a wine professional for twelve years, started his career at the City Grill in Atlanta and ending as the Sommelier of the Dining Room of the Ritz Carton - Buckhead, a Mobil Five-Star, AAA Five Diamond restaurant. He then went on to become a Special Educator working for sixteen years with elementary and middle-school students with a focus on reading acquisition. He and his husband live in San Francisco and The Sea Ranch, California. "How in the heck do you pronounce that last name?" OH/la/KNEE/check |