Biography

Randy Gener is a writer, drama critic, editor, playwright and visual artist in New York City.

He is the author of the plays Love Seats for Virginia Woolf, Wait for Me at the Bottom of the Pool, A Parliament of the Streets, and other theatre works.

His installation piece, in the garden of One World (designed by Nic Ularu), debuted at La MaMa La Galleria in New York in 2008. He created and curated two versions of a photography/oral-history exhibition, entitled “Positively No Filipinos Allowed”: The Lives and Loves of Filipino Migrant Workers in the U.S., (designed by Eric Ting) for the Culture Project in New York City and Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut.

Gener has written numerous scholarly essays (in the encyclopedia Cambridge Guide to the American Theater; the anthologies Theater and Humanism in a World of Violence; roMANIA After 2000; and The American Theatre Reader: Essays and Conversations from American Theatre Magazine, edited by the staff of American Theatre magazine), as well as contributed articles, criticism, reviews and essays for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Star Ledger, Time Out New York, The International Herald Tribune, Disney’s FamilyFun Magazine, The New York Daily NewsGay City News, the Swedish national newspaper Expressen, The Korean Theater Journal; and other publications in the  U.S., Europe and Asia.

Gener was a staff contributor and theatre critic at The Village Voice from 1991 – 2001; was the senior journalist of BroadwayOnline.com and Theatre.com, both online news services; was an art critic for HX Magazine; was a pop-culture and entertainment writer for The New York Daily News; and a freelance features writer for The Star Ledger from 1996 to 2008.  The Nathan Award–winning senior editor of American Theatre magazine, published monthly by Theatre Communications Group, he is the magazine’s contributing writer.

He is a founding critic of The New York Theatre Wire (www.nytheatre-wire.com); is a founding editorial board member and section editor of Critical Stages  (www.criticalstages.org), the web journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics; and has twice been an editor-in-chief of Prague Quadrennial Daily, the broadsheet newspaper of the Arts Institute/Theatre Institute of the Czech Republic.

As a freelance dramaturg, Gener has worked for the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, Roundabout Theatre Company, Pan Asian Repertory Company and Denver Center Theatre Company.

A renowned lecturer and speaker in the arts, culture and technology, Gener has given talks and multimedia lectures at such schools as the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center-Graduate Center, City University of New York, Montclair State University, University of South Carolina, Brooklyn College; U.S. and European festivals as Sibiu International Theatre Festival, Prague Quadrennial for World Scenography, William Inge Theatre Festival, Humana Festival of New American Plays; as well as such institutions as Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Hallmark Inc., Dramatists Guild of America, Odeon Theatre of Bucharest, Romanian Cultural Institute-New York, Long Wharf Theater Company, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre and La MaMa E.T.C.

Awards and Fellowships:
2000 Distinguished Service and Contribution from the National Federation of Filipino American Association; 2003 New York Times critic fellow at Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s Critics Institute; 2007 Filipinas Magazine Arts and Culture Prize; Instinct magazine Leading Man of 2007; 2008 induction to the Filipino American Hall of Fame by Via Times of Chicago and Chicago Philippine Reports; and four prizes for travel-writing excellence from the 2006, 2008 and 2009 North American Travel Journalists Association Awards competitions.

Gener is the 2009 recipient of the George Jean Nathan Award (for the theater year 2007-08), the highest accolade for dramatic criticism in the U.S. and one of the most distinguished awards in the American theater.  He won for his critical essays in American Theatre magazine and other U.S. publications.

He is the 2010 recipient of a Deadline Club Award for Best Arts Reporting from the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for “shedding light on government censorship and repression of the arts.”

He has been named Journalist of the Year 2010 by National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.