OyamO is currently a writer-in-residence at the University of Michigan.
15 Facts About OyamO
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OyamO was born in Elyria, Ohio on September 7,1943; one of seven children to Earnest Gordon, a steel worker, and Bennie Gordon, a housewife.
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OyamO attended a predominately European high school, and was an honors student, editor of the school paper and student body president.
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OyamO wrote fictional stories, poems, and letters to the local newspaper about various issues, which were published.
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OyamO went on to receive his MFA in 1981 through Yale University's Playwriting program.
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OyamO became interested in playwriting as a career, when, after working at the New Lafayette Theater as a lighting technician, he took a playwriting class by Ed Bullins, who became his mentor.
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OyamO has taught at Princeton University, College of New Rochelle, Emory University, and The University of Iowa's Playwrights Workshop.
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OyamO has written an episode of HBO's Famous Black American Anthology and optioned a version of his play I Am a Man, for HBO.
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OyamO's plays have been performed in theatres across the country, including the Yale Repertory Theatre; the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Working Theatre, the Public Theater, the Negro Ensemble Company, Frank Silvera Writers Workshop, New Federal Theatre, Frederick Douglas Creative Arts Center, and many more.
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OyamO is a member of PEN, Dramatists Guild, New Dramatists, the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Writers Guild East, the O'Neill Playwrights Center, and the Black Theatre Network.
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OyamO is a site monitor for the NEA and vice president of the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group.
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OyamO is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Rockefeller, McKnight, and Berrilla Kerr foundations.
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OyamO is a recipient of three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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OyamO has noted in interviews that he changed his name from his birth name of Charles Gordon to OyamO to separate himself from existing playwright Charles Gordone.
15.
The name OyamO came from children in his neighborhood in New York, who meant it as a play on his University of Miami Ohio sweatshirt.