Lisa Loomer

Lisa Loomer is an American playwright and actress. She was born in New York and studied theatre at Brandeis University and New York University. Loomer was an actress and comedian before she started writing plays at the INTAR Playwrights Lab under avant-garde playwright Maria Irene Fornes. She is of Spanish and Romanian ancestry, and many of her plays examine the experience of immigrant characters. Her plays also use contemporary life to address social and political issues.

Loomer’s best-known play is The Waiting Room, about the dangerous effects of body modification in the search for beauty. The play won the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. She has also received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, and two American Theatre Critics Association Awards. Her other plays include Distracted, Living Out, and Roe, which also won the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. In 2023, she adapted the play Real Women Have Curves into a musical set to transfer to Broadway in 2025.