Kate Fodor is an American playwright and a 2013 Guggenheim fellow in playwriting. Her debut play, Hannah and Martin, opened Off-Broadway on March 20, 2004 by the Epic Theatre Ensemble. The play, based on the relationship between political theorist Hannah Arendt and philosopher Martin Heidegger, received favorable reviews: Margo Jefferson in The New York Times called the play "thoughtful and ambitious"; in Variety, Marilyn Stasio said, "Strong on craft, Fodor handles the structural logistics like a clever mathematician patiently working her way through a tricky formula." The play won the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays and a Joseph Jefferson Citation for New Work. It was also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Fodor followed this with the play 100 Saints You Should Know, also Off-Broadway, at Playwrights Horizons, in September 2007, about a priest in the midst of his own spiritual crisis interacting with a small galaxy of people experiencing theirs as well. Ben Brantley of The New York Times took issue with what he described as the play's "Platonic" tone that resulted in a "a static collection of portraits," but acknowledged, "Ms. Fodor has a fine sense of the forms of emotional aggression, passive and otherwise, that can infuse even the most banal exchanges between parents and children" and "a good ear for the kinks and curls of speech of people of different generations and education."The play was called "one of the year's 10 best" by Entertainment Weekly and TimeOut New York in 2007 and went on to productions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and St. Louis, among others. The play won the Roger L. Stevens Award from the National Theatre Conference.
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