ABOUT
Anya Martin is a playwright, director, producer and arts leader.
Welcome, and thanks for visiting my website.
In Mennonite youth camp’s second grade cabin talent show, I chased a mustache-twisting devil off the stage, and realized that theater was how I was brave. Since leaving my rural farming community for Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama, and from there to NYC and Sarah Lawrence College, my artistic journey has often bridged seemingly diametrical realities of rural and urban perspectives. My work often weaves seemingly unrelated worlds together with a heart for social justice and America’s rural communities, alongside a passion for the aggressively theatrical.
I am also drawn to juxtapositions of historical perspectives that duel and sing with our contemporary and personal narratives, and in some styles of my work I incorporate primary source material with original writings, alongside physical and imagistic staging.
Currently, I live in Pittsburgh also known as the “Paris of Appalachia.” (Which feels about right, doesn’t it?) And while I feel deeply connected to the farmland from which I grew, and to this city which has nurtured me, my theatrical perspectives and artistic curiosity are ever expanding. I hope my work and the stories, people and themes explored within them surprise, challenge and move you.
Thanks for stopping by. The internet is a very busy place. I’m honored.
Anya
Anya Martin is a playwright, director and theatre leader whose works have been praised as “smart, sharp and witty” (City Paper) with “scenes of imagination and poetic insight.” (Pittsburgh Post Gazette) that will “alternately rouse you and break your heart.” (City Paper)
Recently, Martin’s play, “The President’s Pants (and Buchanan’s Peace)” an absurdist dramedy about Mennonites, the ghost of President James Buchanan, and the costs of “peace,” was a Semi-Finalist for the 2024 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. “The President’s Pants” was also a winner in the Madison New Works Lab at James Madison University, which included a staged reading and a two-week artist residency in Harrisonburg, VA. Also in 2024, Martin’s play “In Our Time: Pandemic Stories from the Front Lines” inspired by Hemingway’s novel and her interviews with ICU physicians was presented in several staged readings in partnership with City of Asylum, Carnegie Stage, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and Hiawatha Project.
Martin’s “Buoyant Sea,” an immersive tactile play premiered in a sold out run with The Pittsburgh International Children’s Theatre Festival in 2023, and was awarded the prestigious Artistic Innovation Award at the TYA/USA national conference in March of 2024. Her play “Early Girl” (formally entitled “Bloom”) about a young Mennonite girl’s experience with puberty and adolescence inside the realm of her mother’s garden was a prestigious “Second Rounder” in the 2023 Austin Film Festival. In 2026 “Early Girl” was selected for the Appalachian Playwriting Festival and was presented in a staged reading at Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville, NC.
Her 10 minute play, “Demeter’s Fracked Heart and the Emerald Ash Borer” was a winner with Sienna College’s 2024 Climate Justice Plays and will be published in Umbrellas for Fish, an international literary journal devoted to absurd and existential drama in Feb 2027. Her short play “Helen at the Gym (Again,)” about a tragic real-life femicide mass shooting in Pittsburgh, was selected for the New Play Development Workshop, was presented in a staged reading at the national ATHE conference in 2023. An earlier version of this play “Helen at the Gym” was also a 2018 RedBull Annual Short Play winner presented at the Lucille Lortel and is published with Steel Spring Stage Rights alongside works by Tina Howe, Arthur Kopit, Dael Orlandersmith, and Doug Wright.
Her monologue “Like a Dog” was published with Fresh Words: An International Literary Magazine in 2024, and was a winner in the Grief Dialogues play competition in 2026. “Like a Dog” will be presented as a part of the production “Our Loving Companions” at The Marsh San Francisco and The Marsh Berkeley in Oct 2026. Her monologue “The Coochie” was selected for the 2023 Some1Speaking Series. She is a 2021 Silver Ear winner in the Hear Me Out Monologue Competition for her monologue “Mother(land) Will Teach You That.”
Martin was the Founding Artistic Director and Producer, as well as lead playwright and director, for Hiawatha Project a multi-award winning, original theater-making company based in Pittsburgh, PA for 15 years. Under Anya’s leadership Hiawatha Project proudly received foundational support from the AER Capacity Building, The August Wilson Center Legacy Fund, August Wilson Center Programming Fund, Brooks Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, Heinz Small Arts Initiative, The McKinney Foundation, Off The Wall Foundation, Opportunity Fund, The Sprout Fund, PA Council on the Arts, and The Pittsburgh Foundation.
Hiawatha Project’s first play, “Camino,” written and directed by Martin, had its world premiere in 2011. “Camino,” a poetic exploration of migration, borders, and the rise of for-profit private detention centers in the US, was the subject of many news articles, one of which won the PA Western Press Prize. “Camino” is now published by Gelassenheit Publications in Volume 5 of Acting Up: Anthology of North American Mennonite Plays, the first play collection by North American Mennonite authors in English. You can see video highlights and production images of Martin’s professional writing, directing and producing work Hiawatha Project here.
Martin currently teaches Playwriting at Duquesne University as an Adjunct Professor. She taught Directing At Carnegie Mellon School of Drama for 7 years as an Adjunct Professor from 2010-2017. She was also the Head of Theatre for Lancaster Country Day school where she taught and directed for grades 6-12 in 2006-2007. You can learn more about her teaching work here.
Martin is proudly a former Pittsburgh Magazine and PUMP 40 Under 40 award winner, a Creative Capital and Pittsburgh Filmmakers Arts Collaboration Alumna, a Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University Finalist, and member of the Pittsburgh Public Playwrights Collective.
Martin earned her BFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, and she has directed a wide range or productions from musicals to devised work from NYC to Lancaster, PA. She specializes in developing new works, and is passionate about the collaborative process as a director. You can see more of her directing work here. Martin earned her MFA in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College with a specialization in devised and experimental work.
Martin is currently a proud member of The New Play Exchange, The Playwrights Center, and The Dramatists Guild. She also currently serves on the Board of City Theatre Company.
Before running away to theater school, Martin grew up in a rural Mennonite family in the Pennsyltucky part of PA. She now resides in Pittsburgh, PA with her two children, husband, small dog, and garden.
