Photo credit Katie O’Shea.
Robert Eric Shoemaker is a poet-playwright, theatre artist, and arts journalist. Eric is an MFA Candidate in Creative Writing & Poetics at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. His poetry and plays have been featured in Mosaic, Rollick Magazine, Literature Emitting Diodes, The Chicago After Dark Anthology, Thought Notebook, Baseball Bard, and his book “30 Days Dry” from Thought Collection Publishing, which has been hailed as the work of “an undercover prophet” and is now available on Amazon. Eric’s journalism has been published in Boulder Weekly, Newcity, Evanston Now, Fra Noi Magazine, Artisan Magazine, Printeresting, VAM, and through the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Campus Consortium Fellowship.
Eric is the author of the duet musical PLATH/HUGHES, which was awarded the 2014 Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize for Best Play. His project “LORCA IN AMERICA” was awarded a 2015 DCASE Individual Artist Program grant from the City of Chicago, and featured the production of his original translation, BERNARDA ALBA AND HER HOUSE. Other productions of Eric’s plays have included or will include WILDE’S SALOMÉ; PHAEDRA, RELEASED.; WAR OF THE WORLDS; and TRANSFORMATIONS: AFTER OVID.
Eric has worked at Chicago’s Redtwist Theatre, Steep Theatre, New American Folk Theatre, Tympanic Theatre, Gorilla Tango Theatre, City Lit Theatre, American Theater Company, 3 Brothers Theatre, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company, Skokie Theatre, the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival, and San Diego’s The Old Globe with Play by Play.
Eric is a graduate with honors and a student marshal from the University of Chicago, where he was Artistic Director of the Classical Entertainment Society.
Contact Eric at <eric@reshoemaker.com>
INFLUENCES and FAVORITES: Edward Albee and “A Delicate Balance”, E. E. Cummings and “The Enormous Room”, Ted Hughes and “Birthday Letters”, Federico Garcia Lorca and “The Theory and Play of Duende”, Jeffrey Eugenides and “Middlesex”, Darren Aronofsky and “Requiem for a Dream”, Anne Carson and “An Oresteia”, Christian Bök and “Crystallography”, Anne Waldman and “Gossamurmur”…
