Lucy Alibar | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lucy Harrison 1983 (age 41–42) Florida, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Screenwriter, playwright |
Lucy Alibar (bornLucy Harrison, 1983) is an Americanscreenwriter andplaywright best known for co-writing the 2012 filmBeasts of the Southern Wild withBenh Zeitlin.
Lucy Alibar was raised nearMonticello, Florida; her parents are Baya M. Harrison III, a criminal defense attorney, and Barbara Harrison, an artist who taught painting classes in prisons.[1][2] She went to high school inTallahassee, Florida, where her mother worked, and began spending time reading in public libraries "until the library closed every day". It was there that she discoveredexperimental theatre and aspired to become a playwright.[2] She won a writing competition at the age of fourteen run by Young Playwrights Inc. When she turned eighteen, she legally changed her surname from Harrison to Alibar, aportmanteau of her mother and grandmother's first names (Barbara and Alice), since "they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness [and] I wanted to have that like an amulet."[3]
Alibar attendedNew York University in Manhattan, where she studied under theTisch School of the Arts' experimental theatre program.[2] After graduating from NYU, she continued to live on New York'sLower East Side, working multiple jobs as a sandwich maker, bartender and waitress while writing plays in her free time.[2][3] Around 2010 she wroteJuicy and Delicious, a play based on her own experiences in dealing with her father's declining health.[2] In the play, a young boy named Hushpuppy faces the illness and death of his father, which paralleled her reaction to her father'scerebrovascular disease andcoronary artery bypass surgery.[3] She showed the completed script to her longtime friend, filmmakerBenh Zeitlin, who suggested that they adapt the play into a film.[2] For the film, Hushpuppy is a girl. Alibar and Zeitlin began to develop a screenplay, which was chosen by theSundance Institute to be developed with support from other filmmakers at the institute's Screenwriting Lab. After the script was completed, Alibar moved toLouisiana to assist in the production of the film, titledBeasts of the Southern Wild, which was being directed by Zeitlin. It was selected for screening at the2012 Cannes Film Festival; in order to afford the travel fares to attend the festival in France, she raised money through thecrowdfunding websiteIndiegogo.[3] The film was released in June 2012 and Alibar and Zeitlin's script received numerous awards and nominations, including aHumanitas Prize and anAcademy Award nomination forBest Adapted Screenplay,[4] while Alibar won the award for Woman of the Year at NYU's Fusion Film Festival.[2]
After the release ofBeasts of the Southern Wild, Alibar wrote a film adaptation ofThe Secret Garden to be directed byGuillermo del Toro and adapted one of her plays,Christmas and Jubilee Behold the Meteor Shower, into a screenplay for the production companyEscape Artists. The resulting film titledTroop Zero debuted at theSundance Film Festival in 2019. In late 2013 she also sold a novel,The Prophet of Grady County, toScribner.[4]
In 2019, Alibar joined other WGA writers in firing their agents as part of theWGA's stand against theATA and the practice ofpackaging.[5]Lucy wrote the screenplay forWhere the Crawdads Sing.
Lucy married producer Pavun Shetty on August 29, 2022 in Florence.
