Emily Zemba is a Brooklyn-based playwright, screenwriter, and occasional puppeteer, hailing from Old Lyme on the Southeastern CT shoreline. She grew up watching Agatha Christie murder mystery plays, consuming reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and communicating with ghosts in her basement.
The recent production of Emily’s play Superstitions – as part of The Pool 2021 – was praised by New York Magazine as “Elegant and weird” and “a return to what Off-Off was originally for.” Some of Emily’s other plays include Deer and the Lovers (First Floor Theater), Clockwork (Local Lab), On Loss and Mice and Monsters and Love (LPAC), and Have You Been There (Rattlestick F*ck!ng Good Plays Festival). Her work has been developed with places like Boston Court Pasadena, ANT Fest, Exquisite Corpse, Great Plains Theater Conference, Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland), Two River Theater ... and also at places not like them at all. She is an affiliated artist with New Georges and The Playwrights Center, and a member of Society Theatre Company. Emily’s short film Out of Office was an official selection of the 2021 Chattanooga Film Festival (co-directed with Emma Wiseman).
Emily has taught playwriting with The Strasberg Institute, MCC Youth Company, Theater Masters, Wesleyan University, and more.
She is currently serving as Associate Artistic Director for Theater Masters, an organization dedicated to nurturing the careers of playwrights. BA: Sarah Lawrence; MFA: Yale School of Drama | emilyzemba.com