Max Posner (b. 1988, Denver) is an award-winning playwright whose upsetting comedies of family life have pushed buttons off-Broadway and across the United States. His plays are published and licensed by Dramatists Play Service.
His play The Treasurer (NYT and TimeOut Critic’s Pick) was printed in American Theater Magazine and nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Play after a celebrated, sold-out run off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons directed by David Cromer. Included on year-end “best-of” lists in New York Magazine, The New York Times and TimeOut New York. Categorized as “highbrow brilliant” in vulture.
Earlier plays include Judy (Page 73 directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, TimeOut Critic’s Pick) and Gun Logistics (Drama League directed by Knud Adams) as well as Sisters on the Ground (Playwrights Downtown directed by Ken Rus Schmoll) and Snore (Juilliard directed by Knud Adams) — both ensemble pieces regularly performed in acting programs.
Max suffers from multiple sclerosis, a diagnosis that informs his newest plays The Pool (TBA, directed by Sarah Benson) and Hannukah Spectacular (tba, directed by David Cromer) which was recently developed in residency at the Berkeley Rep Ground Floor starring Kate Berlant.
For Film/TV, Max is adapting Percival Everett’s novel So Much Blue into a screenplay to be directed by artist Rashid Johnson. He contributed to John Early’s episode of The Characters (Netflix). With Early, he’s developing a television drama about a jealous millennial hurtling towards a spiritual reckoning in the Hudson Valley.
He conceived and wrote the libretto to Singing in a Chorus, Age 14 + Lying in a Field, Age 67 for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (Premiere at BAM, National Sawdust). Max also completed a translation of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (with Russian scholar Ilya Khodosh).
Max is a Sundance Institute fellow, recipient of a Heideman Award, a Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award, the Page 73 Fellowship, three MacDowell fellowships, an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and two Le Compte du Nuoy Awards from Lincoln Center. He graduated from Brown University (Weston Award for Playwriting) and completed a two-year Lila Acheson Wallace Fellowship at Juilliard. Alum of I73, the Soho Rep Writer-Director Lab, The Working Farm at Space & Ars Nova’s Playgroup. He has commissions for Lincoln Center Theater, Williamstown, The Denver Center, Manhattan Theater Club, Clubbed Thumb and Audible.
Max lives in Brooklyn, New York with Sarah DeLappe, their cat Zander and dog Joan. Proud member of the Writer’s Guild of America East (WGAE) and the Dramatists Guild of America (DGA).