Aurin Squire - Playwriting

Playwriting

In 2001, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) commissioned Squire to write Crash, a play about AIDS in the Black community. During this time he also served as managing editor for In Focus Interactive and the Miami bureau chief for Globe Street.

While studying playwrighting at the Actors Studio Drama School from 2002–2005, Squire won the 2003 Change Inc. Grant for Emerging Artists. After graduating, he became a member of Vital Theatre's R&D group, the 2005 Lincoln Center Lab, and the Ars Nova Play Group.

In 2004, Squire wrote Nueva Cancion, concerning the rise and fall of former Chilean president Salvador Allende. The docudrama was produced in September 2004 by Slant Theatre Project at Cherry Lane and the Phil Bosakowski Theatre and will be produced off-Broadway in December 2008, co-sponsored by Amnesty International.

Many of Squire's plays revolve around multiracial societies in transition or America's changing cultural make-up. His work reflects the Latino, African, Caribbean, African American, and Jewish cultures he grew up around in South Florida.

Squire was a part of the Lincoln Center lab in 2005 and his comedy "The Great Black Sambo Machine" was presented there and at Ars Nova.

In 2007, Squire also spent a year in Albuquerque, New Mexico, working with artists Leigh Fondakowski and Krista DeNio on a docudrama about Converso and Crypto-Jewish families who fled the Spanish Inquisition and settled in Arizona and New Mexico. Squire was commissioned to interview surviving Crypto- and Converso-Jewish residents, research, and collaborate to create what became A Light In My Soul/Una Luz En Mi Alma. The epic docudrama was performed by Working Classroom Theatre the following year at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, and received additional performances around New Mexico.

Squire's off-broadway plays like "Matthew Takes Manahatta," "Defacing Michael Jackson" and "To Whom It May Concern" have been produced around New York and the United States. His plays have also been produced at venues like Brooklyn Arts Exchange and Barrington Stage Company.