About

PROFESSIONAL BIO

ANDY BAYIATES is a Chicago-based playwright and Neo-Futurist alumnus (1999-2004). He’s the creator and co-writer of 45 Plays for 45 Presidents and 45 Plays for America’s First Ladies. Presidents has received more than 155 productions in theatres and schools across the country since 2002. (First Ladies will premiere digitally with the Neo-Futurists in the fall of 2020.) Bayiates founded and directed the Plays for Presidents Festival in 2012, which inspired 44+ separate productions of 44 Plays for 44 Presidents across the country in the months leading up to the 2012 Presidential Election and inspired 1,600 theatre artists to reach more than 20,000 audience members and distribute 13,000 voter registration cards.

His plays have been produced throughout the country, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Cleveland; internationally in Edinburg, Scotland and Brussels, Belguim. His work has appeared in Geva Theater; Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Forward Theater Company; The O’Neill National Theater Institute; and the 25th Annual Humana Festival at The Actor’s Theater of Louisville.

In 2018, Bayiates premiered a play he co-wrote with Aaron Muñoz, entitled Lost Laughs: The Slapstick Tragedy of Fatty Arbuckle, which was produced by Merrimack Rep and was directed by Nathan Keepers. In 2019, the play was nominated for five IRNE awards, including Best Play and Best New Play.

In 2017, his play The Peculiar Distraction received a Kennedy Center award-winning workshop production from his alma mater, Fitchburg State University. The script was also selected for Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Montgomery Davis Play Development Series in 2018.

His play (co-written with Genevra Gallo-Bayiates), The Lowell Offering, was scheduled to premiere in March 2020 with Merrimack Repertory Theatre and is currently on hold.

He wrote and performed in the ever-changing Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes) through 2004, also appearing in seven other Neo-Futurist productions: The Unfinished Works of Sir Linear Scribble; Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious; Missing Parts; his own solo show SubliMania; 43 Plays for 43 Presidents, for which he was founding father and co-writer; Chicago: A Special Report from the News Show as co-writer and performer; A 60-Minute History of Humankind, as writer and director; and in 2005, he co-wrote and performed in the gratifying hit, Daredevils! A 60-Minute History of Humankind, mounted in 2003, appeared briefly on the NBC reality TV show Starting Over.

His play, A History of Human Stupidity, received its world-premier production by Rough & Tumble of Berkeley, CA, in 2010 and was featured in American Theatre Magazine.

Andy is the voice of Trip on the award-winning, interactive, artificial intelligence-based drama,Facade, which has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Newsweek, Wired.com, and more.

In addition to Playscripts, Inc., Bayiates’ work has been published in Humana Festival 2001: The Complete Plays (Smith & Kraus, 2002) and 200 More Neo-Futurist Plays (Hope and Nonthings Publishing, 2004). A post from his blog, The Outside Eye, was published in The Absolutely Worst Places to Live in America (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006). He’s also written non-astrological copy for Time Out Chicago Magazine and the Southern Illinoisan newspaper.

Bayiates lives in the Chicago area with his  unbelievably talented wife, Genevra Gallo-Bayiates, and their silly, brilliant and joyful daughter, Ari.