Randall David Cook (Feb. 2024)

Living in the Limelight

Randall David is a New York-based playwright who originally hails from South Carolina. Off-Broadway: Sake with the Haiku Geisha ("Witty, Observant", New York Times), Fate's Imagination ("Entertaining... Tasty plot twists and some very funny lines", New York Times). Additional NYC: Shadows, a dance musical co-created with Tony-nominated director/choreographer Joey McKneely (nominated for two 2019 New York Innovative Theatre Awards); and Toto Talks (2019 Frigid Festival). Regional productions include: Southern Discomfort; Third Finger, Left Hand; Pomp & Circumstance; Kappa Kappa Scream; Death at Downton!; Open Call; Star of Wonder, Star of Night; and The Glass Dog. The Monument, a play co-created with Cheryl L. Davis and Gwynn MacDonald about Senator Strom Thurmond’s secret biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, was selected for the 2021 Orchard Project.

His one-act play Sushi and Scones was broadcast by the BBC and won the award for Best Play at the Southeastern Playwrights Conference, and he is a two-time winner of the award for Best Play at Centre Stage’s New Play Festival: in 2019 with his play Sharks and Other Lovers, and in 2022 with Four Seasons. Both plays subsequently premiered at Centre Stage, in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

Additional performances include an adaptation of Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman (New York Theatre Workshop with Tony winner Len Cariou and Drama Desk winners Roberta Maxwell and Laura Esterman); In A Town Near Faith (Players Club with Academy Award nominee Barbara Barrie); and Hanky Panky (Davenport Theatre with Tony nominee Veanne Cox).

His work has also been developed and performed at Ars Nova, The Lark, the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Japanese Embassy in New York City, Neighborhood Playhouse, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Guild Hall in East Hampton, the Valdez Theatre Conference in Alaska, the Warner Theatre International Playwrights Festival, and in the U.K., the Dartmouth Drama Festival and Dawlish Arts Festival. He’s been a two-time finalist for both the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and the Sundance Filmmakers Lab, and he’s received grants and commissions from the Duke Endowment, Broadway Across America, the University of Nebraska and the British Film Institute.

He holds a BA from Furman University, an IMBA from the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, and an MFA in Playwriting and Screenwriting from the University of Nebraska Omaha, where he received the Regents Award. A proud member of the Dramatists Guild, Randall David was an honorary inductee in Omicron Delta Kappa honor society for his leadership and achievements in the arts in 2016 and was inducted into the South Carolina Theatre Hall of Fame in 2017