Robert Caisley was born in Rotherham, England. His plays have been performed across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom and translated into Italian, French, Estonian and Spanish. He is Head of Dramatic Writing at the University of Idaho where he teaches courses in new play development, playwriting (at the undergraduate and graduate levels), play analysis and various topics in contemporary drama. He is a recipient of a 2015-’16 Fellowship in the Performing Arts from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the UI 2015 Excellence in Research and Creativity Award. He is a two-time alum playwright of the National New Play Network and former featured playwright at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. He was named the 2011 Blaine Quarnstrom Visiting Playwright at the University of Southern Mississippi. His play Lucky Me has been produced by New Jersey Repertory Theatre, Curious Theatre in Denver, Riverside Theatre in Iowa City, 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, CA, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, The Modern Theatre, Spokane, WA, Theatre Tallahassee in Florida and enjoyed an NNPN Rolling World Premiere in the 2014-15 season. His play Happy, first presented at the 2011 National New Play Network (NNPN) Annual Showcase of New Plays at InterACT Theatre in Philadelphia, was a 2012 Finalist for both the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s New Play Conference and the Woodward/Newman Award for Drama at Bloomington Playwrights Project, and was selected for a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere in the 2012/2013 season at New Theatre (Miami, FL), Montana Repertory Theatre (Missoula, MT), 6th Street Playhouse (Santa Rosa, CA) New Jersey Repertory and Redtwist Theatre (Chicago, IL) where it was named by Chicago Magazine as of the “Nine Best Comedies” of the season. Happy was also nominated for a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Original Script and won the 2014 SOTA Award for Best Play. It received its Spanish-language premiere this year at Teatro Milan in Mexico City. Other plays include Kissing (New Theatre, Coral Gables, FL; Phoenix Theatre New Play Festival, Phoenix, AZ), The Lake (Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia; Mill Mountain Theatre, Roanoke, VA; Lavender Footlights Festival, Miami, FL), Push, The 22-Day Adagio (Mill Mountain Theatre, Roanoke, VA; London’s Royal Court Theatre, Summer Playwrights Program), Front (Sundance Institute’s Playwright’s Lab), Kite’s Book (6th Street Playhouse, Santa Rosa, CA), Letters to an Alien (optioned by Flying Eagle Films, Mad Horse Theatre, Portland, ME), Santa Fe (StageWorks/Hudson, New York, which was a Finalist for the 2004 Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville) and Winter which received its World Premiere at New Theatre in Miami in 2012 and was presented in 2014 at Playwrights Revolution at Sacramento’s Capital Stage. This past year he had two new plays premiered at the Clarence Brown Theatre (The Open Hand) and B Street Theatre in Sacramento, CA (A Masterpiece of Comic … Timing!) which have both been recently published by Samuel French, Inc. & Juliet was developed in residency at the Missoula Writers Colony with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Idaho Arts Commission, and received a developmental reading last year New Jersey Repertory Company, where it received its World Premiere in May 2017.