# Lindsey Ferrentino

Lindsey Ferrentino is an American contemporary playwright and screenwriter.

## Early life

Lindsey Ferrentino is the daughter of comedian and magician John Ferrentino.

## Career

Ugly Lies the Bone was a New York Times Critic's Pick and played a sold-out, extended run at Roundabout Theatre in 2015. In The New York Times review of the play Charles Isherwood wrote that Ferrentino was "a brave playwright of dauntless conviction whose unflinching portraits are hard to come by outside of journalism." Deadline Hollywood described Ugly Lies the Bone as, "clearly the work of a young talent with plenty ahead of her." The Observer described it as, "raw and inescapably moving. A play of small moments that hide big emotions." Ferrentino received the 2016 Kesselring Prize for Ugly Lies the Bone. It was later produced at The National Theatre in London in the 900-seat Lyttleton Theatre in 2017.
In 2018, Amy and the Orphans premiered at Roundabout Theatre Company and was called “barrier breaking” in the New York Times. Featuring American Horror Story's Jamie Brewer, Amy and the Orphans is the first Off-Broadway (or Broadway) show to have an actor with Down syndrome in a leading role. In the New York Times review of Amy and the Orphans, Brantley wrote that Ferrentino "possesses a muscular empathy which seeks to enter the minds of people for whom life is often a struggle of heroic proportions." Ferrentino, Jamie Brewer, and Eddie Barbanell received the Catalyst Awards Entertainment Industry Excellence Award for Amy and the Orphans.,
Also in 2018, This Flat Earth ran at Playwrights Horizons. The New York Times wrote that This Flat Earth is "Ferrentino's most daring play to date, with profound and essential subjects. She is bravely attempting to contextualize 21st-century horrors within the sort of existential framework in which Thornton Wilder and Edward Albee specialized."
In December 2018, The Year to Come opened at La Jolla Playhouse and was a Critic's Pick by the San Diego Tribune. It was well reviewed by the San Diego Tribune.
Ferrentino's first film, Not Fade Away, was in development at Annapurna Pictures, as of March 2019, produced by David O. Russell and John Krasinski, starring Emily Blunt.
In 2021, it was announced that Ferrentino would write and direct Amy, a film adaptation of her stage play Amy and the Orphans, for Netflix, with Aggregate Films attached to produce.
In a 2024 Hollywood Reporter Article, Lindsey was named Netflix's 'Go-To' Writer. The article also announced a "Playboy" film in the works and an adaptation of Rebecca Yaros' best-selling novel "In the Likely Event," both penned by Ferrentino for Netflix.
The Artist, which Lindsey co-adapted for the stage with Drew McOnie from the 2011 Oscar-winning film, opened at the Royal Plymouth in the UK in 2024. The show (which features almost no spoken words) reimagines the silent movie, blending vibrant choreography and period music to celebrate Hollywood's transition from silent films to talkies. The Guardian reviewed the piece as an "effervescent and delightfully inventive stage show,.”
Ferrentino's first stage musical, The Queen of Versailles, is set to open on Broadway in 2025. The show, which stars Kristin Chenoweth and F. Murray Abraham, is a stylish and piercing adaptation of the 2008 documentary following David and Jackie Segal as they attempt to build the biggest home in America (modeled of the palace of Versailles) before the financial crisis brings construction to a halt. The music and lyrics were written by Stephen Schwartz.
Most recently, Lindsey debuted her play The Fear of 13 (also a documentary adaptation) to London audiences at the Donmar Theater. The production featured Adrien Brody as Nick Yarris, a death-row prisoner convicted of a murder that he did not commit.

## Style

Ferrentino is known for writing character led stories that live within larger national narratives. The New York Times wrote that Ferrentino "possesses a muscular empathy which seeks to enter the minds of people for whom life is often a struggle of heroic proportions" and called her "a dramatist willing to wrestle with overpowering contemporary subjects." Ferrentino’s 2015 off-Broadway hit Ugly Lies The Bone cemented her as a singular voice amongst contemporary playwrights, the New York Times lauding her as “A brave playwright of dauntless conviction whose unflinching portraits are hard to come by outside of journalism.” Following the August 2024 world premiere of her new musical The Queen of Versailles, Variety praised her as having "a moral conscience second to none among her generation of playwrights."

## Awards and honors

Ferrentino's awards and honors include the 2016 Kesselring Prize, Laurents/Hatcher Citation of Excellence, ASCAP Cole Porter Playwriting Prize, Paul Newman Drama Award, 2015 Kilroys List, finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Catalyst Awards Entertainment Industry Excellence Award, NYU Distinguished Young Alumna Award, nominated for the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, and is the only two-time finalist for the Kendeda Playwriting Prize.

## Personal life

Ferrentino has been engaged to British actor Ralf Little since 2018.