“A richly talented playwright…” - London Pub Theatres

“The steadiness of writing short, funny, gripping stories is a credit to Payne’s skill with a pen (or keyboard)…” - Adventures in Theatreland

Raegan Payne is a published playwright whose plays have been produced all over the world. She studied Shakespeare at the British American Drama Academy and improv/sketch writing at The Groundlings in Los Angeles. She is a member of Ammunition Theatre Company’s Writers Group, the Dramatists Guild, Actors' Equity, and SAG-AFTRA.

Her play “Sweet Nothings,” a series of four award-winning comedy shorts, debuted to sell-out crowds in London at The Barons Court Theatre in April 2024, and was called, “hilarious,” “brilliant,” and a “theatrical masterpiece.”

Raegan’s play “The Dying Declaration of Madge Oberholtzer” won the McNerney Playwriting Award, Long Beach Playhouse’s New Works Festival, was a Bay Area Playwrights Festival finalist, and an O’Neill semi-finalist.  Her play “Timeless: A Scientific Comedy” was picked by Pulitzer Prize Winner Martyna Majok to win the Kentucky Women Writers Conference Playwriting Prize, and was a finalist for the Reva Shiner Comedy Award.  She has been lucky enough to stay at Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore in Paris, participate in The Royal Court Theatre’s Peckham Writers Group in London, the Scripps Ranch Theatre’s New Works Studio, The Lark’s Roundtable Reads, and Iceland’s Klaustrid Artists Residency. In 2019 she was awarded the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Grant. 

She has a masters from the University of Cambridge where she was supervised by TV writer Lucy Wadham and is now a post grad researcher at the University of Essex supervised by playwright Elizabeth Kuti.

Something like a Bio:

Born in Murray, KY, Raegan wrote plays for her brothers and cousins to perform. She started school pre-med, but switched subjects because teachers saw promise in her comedy writing. Also, she took parasitology….

This is a picture of Raegan attempting to write a romantic comedy as a toddler. No one appreciated the avant-garde structure.