Baker Artist Portfolios

Produced on 4 continents, Rosemary FrisinoToohey has had more than 425 productions of her plays around the world. Making people laugh is a big deal ---12 of her comedies are now published--- although she enjoys writing serious work as well and has penned award-winning plays on death, the Holocaust, the Italian internment in WWII, school shootings, and the life of a garbageman. Writing in an anthropomorphic vein has become a real niche. She's given angst and human preoccupations to cockroaches, starlings, socks (left behind in a dryer), fruit (facing decay in a fruit bowl), and lobsters (about to be cooked in a restaurant.) She wrote the music, lyrics, and the book of her chamber musical, Judy And The General, which is based on the biblical tale of Judith decapitating Holofernes. (That's also a comedy.) She’s won the Baltimore Playwrights Festival three times, was Audience Favorite in the British Theatre Challenge in London, and her one-act on racism premiered in the Columbus Black Theatre Festival in Ohio. Three of her dramas have been honored with artist grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and she was Gold Medal Winner of the Italian American Theatre of Chicago's First Playwright Competition. She's also made Finalist for the Heideman Award, the Julie Harris Playwright Competition, and the Arts & Letters Prize. Her work is in university libraries from Harvard to the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and one of her screenplays is in the Artemis Arts Wisdom Anthology. A proud member of The Dramatists Guild of America, FrisinoToohey, a retired broadcaster, also holds long-standing membership in SAG/AFTRA.