Lisa Kron

Kron received the 27th Annual Kleban Prize in 2017 for the most promising musical theatre librettist; the award includes a $100,000 prize.

Fun Home (2013) was Kron's first musical and first work based on an existing work by another artist. Alison Bechdel's acclaimed graphic novel/memoir Fun Home serves as the basis for the musical. Kron wrote the book and lyrics, and Tony-nominated composer Jeanine Tesori wrote the score. It looks at the experience of cartoonist Bechdel growing up in small-town Pennsylvania as the not-yet-out lesbian daughter of a closeted gay man. All of Kron's previous works have been based on her own experiences. She discussed the process of adapting another person's work in an interview for GLAAD.

The world premiere of Kron's play In the Wake opened at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles on March 28, 2010. Leigh Silverman (who also directed Well) directed. The play is about a family gathering set just after the presidential election of 2000. The main protagonist Ellen deals with the political turmoil as well as upheaval in her personal life. Charlotte Stoudt describes In the Wake: "Kron's comedy of deprecation and provocative social critique is part Sedaris, part Kushner, yet utterly her own."

The first college performance of Well occurred in the winter of 2008 at Kalamazoo College, Kron's alma mater. It starred a group of students as well as local professional actress Sharon Williams. Kron traveled to Kalamazoo for the week of the run, participating in "Lisa Kron Week in Kalamazoo" which, besides Well, included a performance of the Five Lesbian Brothers' "The Secretaries" as well as a public reading in which she read excerpts from all three of her works in addition to one of the pieces she is currently working on.

Kron developed stories about her family into autobiographical plays and performed them in New York and London. Her work was critically well received. New York Times critic Ben Brantley said in his review: "…Fans of that beleaguered literary form, the memoir, can breathe a little more easily this morning. Kron's sparkling autobiographical play Well has arrived on Broadway…to restore the honor of a genre that was slipping into disgrace... Well opened on Broadway March 10, 2006, to critical acclaim and received two Tony nominations. Kron was nominated for Actress in a Play and Jayne Houdyshell was nominated for Featured Actress in a Play. In spite of good reviews, Well had low attendance and closed on May 14, 2006. It has since been performed in Boston in 2007.

All three works have been very well received, 2.5 Minute Ride, directed by Mark Brokaw, won an Obie award among others. Well was anthologized in Best Plays of 2003-2004, listed among the year's best plays by the New York Times and received two Tony Award nominations. Ben Brantley says of 2.5 Minute Ride: "(it)… puts Ms. Kron on a level with sterling monologists like Spalding Gray, autobiographers who combine novelistic complexity with stage-smart impudence." Michael Sommers says of Well: "Truly a beautiful play in many ways, Well paints a mother-and-daughter picture of rich, unusual artistry." Of Kron's recent work, Fun Home, The New York Times' Ben Brantley said it is "a beautiful heartbreaker of a musical," and that "Ms. Kron has already established herself as a vibrant family memoirist with her plays 2.5 Minute Ride and Well, and her book and resonantly precise lyrics give this show its essential spine."

"Lithe I'm Not. And Trained I'm Not. But I Danced." [1]New York Times, December 12, 1999.

In 1989 Kron, Maureen Angelos, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey and Babs Davy founded the theater company The Five Lesbian Brothers. The group writes and performs witty satiric works from a feminist and lesbian perspective. "Five Lesbian Brothers was chosen, in part, to refute the perception of lesbian theatre as combative and didactic." Their plays have been produced by the New York Theatre Workshop, the Joseph Papp Public Theater, the WOW Cafe Theatre and others. The Brothers have also toured all over the United States. The Brothers have won the Obie Award as well as other awards and have published The Five Lesbian Brothers' Guide to Life and Five Lesbian Brothers Four Plays.

She arrived in New York City in 1984. She worked as an office temp and various other jobs while pursuing an acting career. Some of her adventures during her early days in New York are chronicled in her play 101 Humiliating Stories. She was soon performing at the WOW Cafe, a creative venue for women in the performing arts in the East Village, Manhattan.

Kron has lived in New York City since 1984 and is a full-time actress. She also teaches playwriting part-time at Yale University and New York University. She is married to fellow Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Madeleine George. She self-identifies as a lesbian.

She graduated from Everett High School as a valedictorian in 1979. In her senior year she attended special theater classes at Lansing School District's Academic Interest Center. An early mentor was her theater teacher at the Center, the late Robert L. Burpee.

Kron's family moved to Lansing, Michigan in 1965. One of the main story lines in her play Well recounts her experiences attending a predominantly African American elementary school in that city. Kron's parents sent her to the school in an effort to help integrate it. Lansing began mandatory racial integration in its schools three years later.

Her brother is David Kron, born in 1963. He is a sound engineer and is married with a son. He says of his sister: "She is very funny, with a very sharp wit...And she always had her own way of looking at things."

Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron (born May 20, 1961) is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book to the musical Fun Home for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Fun Home was also awarded the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015 and the 2014 Obie Award for writing for musical theater.

Her mother is Ann Kron, born in 1932. Ann is a former antiques dealer and community activist. In the 1960s she founded the Westside Neighborhood Organization in Lansing, Michigan. In a time when neighborhood segregation was the norm, the WNO helped to bring people from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds together. Ann converted to Judaism when she married Lisa's father.

Her father is Walter Kron, a retired lawyer born in Germany in 1922. He was born to a Jewish family, and is a Holocaust survivor. In 1937 as the Nazi persecution of the Jews escalated, his parents sent him out of Germany via the Kindertransport program. He went back to Germany after World War II, serving as a US army interrogator of Nazi war criminals. In the 1990s Kron and her father visited Auschwitz, where he believed his parents were murdered by the Nazis in the 1940s. She later found out that her father's parents were actually killed in Chelmno.