Aren Haun
playwright
Aren Haun is a playwright, director, and teacher living in Los Angeles. His first play was a 10-Minute play called The Quick Brown Fox, produced by the Actors Theater of Louisville’s Apprentice Company. Many other short plays followed, with productions by Tulip Theater in New York, CP Productions in London, Fusion Theatre in Albuquerque, Canberra Academy of Dramatic Art in Fyshwick, Australia, and other theaters around the world. He first began directing productions of his own work in San Francisco, with his play Done to Death at Venue 9. In New York City, he directed Expecting at the Player’s Loft and Froth at Beckman Stages. In San Francisco, he directed Conversation After a Film at the SF Fringe Festival and Kill the Editor at Exit Theatre. Other productions include The Mating Instinct at 5th Wall Productions, What Else is New at the Labute New Play Festival, and Kill the Editor at Desert Ensemble Theater. Other plays include Love-All, a semi-finalist at the O’Neill Play Conference; Parallax, featured at the Last Frontier Theater Conference; and Eulogy for an Insignificant Man, which received a Commendation from the BBC International Radio Play Competition. He has an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University and currently teaches Drama in a middle school.
Artistic Statement
Before I found theater, I was a film lover. I grew up watching as many films as possible, educating myself on the great filmmakers. I discovered, early on, that many - or most - of my favorite films tended to be "small" films, those with only a few characters, such as Steven Soderberg's sex lies and videotape. I was also drawn to great dialogue, and discovered I had an ear for it. I got into acting in my twenties, but realized that I was more interested in the plays and the playwrights than I was the performing aspect. So I began reading. To this day, there is nothing I enjoy more than reading plays by my favorite authors. Writing is a direct result of both reading and watching films, which might help explain why my plays are so different from one another. My first play was called Done to Death, a variation on Death of a Salesman in the style of Christopher Durang. Around the same time, I wrote Expecting, which was heavily influenced by Harold Pinter and the films of John Cassavetes. Other plays, while drawing from personal experience, have been influenced by many different writers. Most recently, I've been writing a series of plays inspired by the work of Anton Chekhov. I'm always learning as a playwright, and every new play still feels like it's the first.