Gloria Bond Clunie
is an award-winning playwright, educator, and director. She is a founding member of the Playwriting Ensemble at Chicago’s Regional Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theater where her plays North Star, Living Green and Shoes premiered and the founding Artistic Director of Evanston’s Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre. Other works by this Northwestern University graduate (B.A. Theater, MFA-Directing) include Sweet Water Taste, Smoke, Quark, Buck Naked, Bankruptcy, Tall Enough, A Shot#LoveStories inspired by Black Lives Matter, My Wonderful Birthday Suit and The Last Stop on Market Street. Her plays have been produced in a variety of theaters across the country including Victory Gardens Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre, ETA, Triad Stage, Her Story Theatre, MPAACT, Chicago Children’s Theatre, Horizon Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Nashville Children’s Theatre, American Blues Theatre, Penobscot Theatre and Orlando Shakespeare Theater. This Dramatist Guild Fellow has numerous awards including a Chicago Jeff, Theodore Ward African-American Playwriting Prizes, NEA and Illinois Arts Council Fellowships, the CTFA Medallion Award and the Evanston Mayor’s Award for the Arts. She is thrilled three new works – Giraffes Can’t Dance—The Musical (commissioned by Rose Theatre, Omaha & Bay Area Children’s Theatre), her adaptation of The Hula Hoopin’ Queen (commissioned by Childsplay & Imagination Stage), and Dream, Quickie! Dream! (commissioned by Milwaukee’s First Stage and based on the life of Super Bowl/Dancing With The Stars champion Donald Driver) – all premiered in 2023, that Giraffes toured the U.S. during 2023-24 via Brad Simon, Inc and in 2025 Elijah Rock premiered at Nashville Children’s Theater. Currently, fueled by her love of Chicago architecture, she is working on the musical SKY which was begun at California’s Djerassi Resident Artists Program and is excited to be in the midst of commissions for Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, and Chicago’s American Blues Theater.
