About Me
Originally from Los Angeles, S. Dylan Zwickel is a New York City-based writer and director.
Her musical Broken City, written with composer Melissa Miles, and her play The Cardioluthier have both received multiple readings, and she had the distinct honor of writing a speech for Billy Porter to perform in the Broadway for Biden event In Our America: A Concert for the Soul of the Nation. She served through several workshops as Assistant Director on the new musical adaptation of the novel The Outsiders, helmed by Tony nominee Liesl Tommy, and served as the assistant to Ms. Tommy on Respect, the recent Aretha Franklin biopic starring Jennifer Hudson.
In 2022, Dylan's play The Making and Breaking of Glass was a Semifinalist for the SheNYC Festival, the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, and the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and it recently received a reading from The Uptown Collective. Her musical The City of Ember, written with composer Stephanie Meyers, was a Finalist for the Orchard Project Adaptation Lab and a selection for the Tofte Lake Center's Individual Artist Residency. Her play The Moss Maidens was a Finalist for the Jane Chambers Prize and the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival and a Semifinalist for the Princess Grace Award and the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, received an Honorable Mention for the Parity Development Award, and premiered at the SheNYC Festival this Summer (winner: Best Play, Best Ensemble). She was also recently represented in New York theater with The Great Gatsby: The Immersive Show, for which she served as Cultural Advisor and Script Consultant. She got to talk to The New York Times about her work on it, which was pretty cool.
Dylan has also completed manuscripts for two novels, as well as several scripts for pilots and features. In her spare time, she runs a murder mystery party company,
Ghost Ship Murder Mysteries, which has been featured in publications such as Real Simple, Oprah Daily, and Los Angeles Magazine. She sometimes works for PEN America, serving as the World Voices Festival Producer.
Dylan holds a BA in Theatre from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She was a member of the 2017 Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the 2022 TedxBroadway Young Professionals Cohort.
Pronouns: she/her/hers
I’m passionate about stories that explore intense interpersonal relationships (often familial or friend relationships rather than or in addition to romantic) between characters who, over the course of the story, either go on an adventure, solve a mystery, or fight for what they believe, or some combination thereof. I prefer to work on projects that make the audience both think and feel, and I particularly love working with genre and reinterpreting traditionally male-dominated genres through a feminist lens; almost all of my work depicts young women stepping into their power in some form or other. In everything I do, I value collaboration and strive to use clear, well-structured storytelling to achieve the desired emotional and intellectual impact.