BIOGRAPHY
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Alan Olejniczak is a San Francisco playwright and opera librettist. He is the Playwright in Residence with The Proscenium, a London online theatre company. Their first season included 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 and Plunder. This September, Alan received a public workshop of his play Concerto with Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma.
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 in Chicago, then co-premiered the opera in September 2021. In August, 2021 his site-specific opera Unbound, with music by Nathan Hall premiered at Studio Friction in Denver, CO. Dreams Americanos with music by Chris Pratorius Gómez will premiere in Houston with I Colori dell'opera. Alan currently has a six other chamber operas in development and has set the text for a song cycle, Songs of Sohrab, with composer Amin Sarrafi and a Christmas oratorio Of the Father's Love Begotten, with Cole Thomason-Redus. 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 seen in ten countries. Alan was the 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 Resume Becoming a storyteller is another reinvention for Alan. 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. Alan and his husband, David live in San Francisco and The Sea Ranch, California. "How in the heck do you pronounce that last name?" OH/la/KNEE/check |