Lucas Hnath

Lucas Hnath is an American playwright. His play Red Speedo won the 2016 Obie Award, Playwriting. He won a Whiting Award.

Hnath grew up in Orlando, Florida. He moved to New York City in 1997 to study pre-med, and then changed to dramatic writing at the Tisch School of the Arts, at New York University, earning a BFA in 2001, and an MFA in 2002. He teaches at New York University.

He is a resident playwright at New Dramatists.

Red Speedo was presented Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop from February 17, 2016 to March 27, 2016. The play won the Obie Award, Playwriting and Performance for Lucas Caleb Rooney. The play involves Ray, a competitive swimmer at the start of the trials for the Olympic team. Jesse Green, in his review for Vulture, wrote: "Hnath is never interested solely in the material repercussions of character... In Red Speedo, the underlying subject seems to be the cost of morality, which is generally too high for people like Ray... Hnath lightly suggests — he’s too subtle to use the big hammer — that the immoral imbalance of our current economy is stripping us down to our animal skins. All we’re good for is competition." The play premiered at the Studio Theatre, Washington, DC, in 2013. The director of the production, Lila Neugebauer, explained: "...doping is just the arena for a conversation about what constitutes fairness, and the myth of equal opportunity."

He has written A Doll's House, Part 2, which premiered on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre on April 1, 2017 in previews. Directed by Sam Gold, the cast features Laurie Metcalf, Chris Cooper, Jayne Houdyshell, and Condola Rashād. The play was commissioned by South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California, where it is running at the same time, directed by Shelley Butler, beginning April 9, 2017. This marks Hnath's Broadway debut. Hnath's play "picks up after Henrik Ibsen’s "A Doll’s House" concludes."

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