Inside the Mind of Lucas Hnath
Lucas Hnath was born in Miami, Florida in 1979 to two parents who worked in the music industry. When his parents separated, Lucas and his mother Dana moved to Orlando. While there, they lived just minutes away from Walt Disney World. Growing up, Hnath drew inspiration from Disney’s ability to craft experiences that alter reality for his park guests, in similar ways that playwrights and designers create controlled environments for their patrons.
Lucas and Dana became active members of their church and Dana eventually began studying ministry. Lucas observed the theatricality of his mega church, and used this to make a name for himself, as he was known in the neighborhood for performing sermons filled with slight-of-hand tricks for friends.
​
.
​
“I used to do Gospel lessons with magic tricks — I did a candle-through-the-arm routine illustrating something about the armor of God. Theologically they were not sound sermons”
-Lucas Hnath in a 2015 New York Times Article
These early experiences with the magic of Disney World and the theatricality of Christianity play an important part in Hnath’s work, including their influences on his plays, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney and The Christians.
​
In 1997, Lucas left Florida to attend New York University. He originally intended to study medicine, but changed his major to dramatic writing. He earned a BFA in 2001 and an MFA in 2002. It was at NYU that he took classes like Women’s Studies, The Psychology of Marriage, and Gender and Literature. These classes, along with his strong relationship with his mother, have influenced the way that Hnath writes about women and relationships in his plays. After school, he took a job at the nonprofit University Action Center, where he taught law students how to represent people who were in the process of applying for unemployment benefits. Hnath has said that his work at this center was crucial to his work as a playwright, as he creates his writing the same way he would build a legal case. This methodical process is on display in A Doll’s House Part 2, where each character presents a very intelligent, sound argument, making it especially hard for the audience to choose a hero.
​
Since the publication of A Doll’s House, Part 2, Hnath’s play Hillary and Clinton premiered on Broadway (April 2019), his piece, The Thin Place was produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville (April 2019), and Dana H., Hnath’s personal drama about his mother, was performed at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles (May 2019). According to American Theatre Magazine, Hnath is the #1 Most Produced Playwright of the 2018-2019 season and the #3 Most Produced Playwright of the 2019-2020 season.
He has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011. He is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. He has received the Kesselring Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award, two Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citations, an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, and an Obie. His work is published by Dramatists Play Service and Overlook Press.