About the Playwright and Book Author

We’re excited for our final show of the Theatre for Young Audiences Series for 2018-19, the beloved classic The Velveteen Rabbit (May 24-June 9, Julianne Argyros Stage). The show that you'll see originated as a book by Margery Williams in 1922 and was later adapted for the stage by Janet Allard.

Book author Margery Williams Bianco was born in London in 1881. At the age of nine, she moved to the United States, and alternated between living in England and America for the rest of her life. She became a professional writer at the age of 19 and had her first novel published when she was 21. In 1922, she began writing for children. The Velveteen Rabbit was the first, and best known, of her 30 children’s books. In 1937, she won a Newbery Award for Winterbound, a novel about Depression-era children who survive by using their own wits and abilities. She spent her final years in Greenwich Village in New York and died there in 1944.

Playwright Janet Allard was born and raised in Hawaii. Her work has been seen at The Guthrie Lab, The Kennedy Center, Mixed Blood, Playwrights Horizons, Yale Rep, The Yale Cabaret, The Women's Project, Perseverance Theatre, Joe’s Pub, Barrington Stage, with P73 Productions and internationally in Ireland, England, Greece, Australia and New Zealand. She is the recipient of two Jerome Fellowships at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis and has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow in New Zealand and the South Pacific. She holds an M.F.A in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama, has studied at the NYU Musical Theatre Writing program and teaches at University of North Carolina at Greensboro.