Germaine Shames

Germaine Shames, a Dramatists Guild Foundation Nat’l Fellow, Kilroys List playwright, and recipient of her state’s Literary Fellowship in Fiction, is author of the award-winning novels, Between Two Deserts and You, Fascinating You. Writing under the pen name Casper Silk (Hotel Noir, Echo Year), she has been compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, and P.D. James “on steroids”.

As a playwright, Shames has celebrated premieres across the U.S. as well as abroad and been recognized in a number of festivals, including LTA Playwriting Contest 2025 (First Place), Scotopia Festival 2025, Women’s Voices 2024, Fulton Theatre’s Stories of Diversity 2023, Pegasus Theatre’s Fresh Reads 2023 (First Place), Page to Stage 2023, ThinkTank TYA’s inaugural Playwrights Festival, Cimientos 2019, and Festival of New American Theatre 2018.

As a librettist-lyricist, Shames collaborates with world-class composers in musical theatre, opera, choral and popular music. She is proud to be a 2024 Puffin Foundation grantee. Her eco-opera The Bird Lady (with Timothy Miller) previewed in 2021 at the National Opera Center. Her immigration musical, Capri (w’ Paul Scherer), won Skyline Theatre’s new musical search and was their singular offering at the 2022 NJ Theatre Alliance Stages Festival. In 2019 and 2020 respectively, Theatre Elision produced her musicals If the Spirit Moves (w’ Erin Murray Quinlan) and The Manifesto (w’ Nadav Amir-Himmel). Her protest opera, "An Open Letter to Samuel Alito" (w' Marissa Simmons), was commissioned by Paradox Opera; her suicide prevention appeal, "Bomb Squad Rhapsody," has been staged multiple times to benefit returning combatants. Her operatic Edith Wharton adaptation, In Venice (w’ Paul Scherer), had its concert premiere in NYC in 2024 and will head to Athens, Greece later this year.

In addition to her original works, Shames has made a mission of adapting and re- imagining classic 19th and early 20th-century novels for the stage with an emphasis on works either by women or with strong women’s roles and relationships. Her D.H. Lawrence adaptation, The Virgin and the Gypsy, formed part of the 2018 Festival of New American Theatre. A second Lawrence adaptation. The Lost Girl, won Starlight Theater’s 2019 Playwriting Contest and was subsequently produced by the S. Devon Players. Her Emile Zola reimagining of The Masterpiece was a finalist for the Trustus Playwright Award; her William Faulkner feminization of Mosquitoes for Trinity New Works; and her radical Nathaniel Hawthorne adaptation, The Scarlet Letter (Bible Belt, 1965), for LOCAL Lab.

Claire Beckman, Artistic Director of Brave New World Rep, has written of Shames, "Germaine advocates for social justice with refreshing maturity, structural elegance, and gut punching dichotomies."

Shames holds a Master’s degree in Intercultural Studies. After covering world conflicts as a correspondent and witnessing firsthand the gamut of senseless tragedies behind the headlines, she turned to fiction writing, learning that she can find light in the most horrific situations and leave readers (and now an audience) with hope. She writes from a global perspective with the conscious aim of fostering interethnic, intergenerational and cross- gender understanding. It’s all about love.

If you are a fellow creative looking for screen and stage-worthy stories to adapt and/or produce, please let me hear from you!

https://newplayexchange.org/users/2551/germaine-shames

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Praise for You, Fascinating You:

“A love story reminiscent of that of my grandparents. I could not put it down.” Kinga Nijinsky

“The epic drama expected on the ballet stage is dwarfed by the tragic real life events of her ballerina heroine, Margit Wolf. Penetrating descriptions of political brutality and the prepossession of romantic love, an ever present theme in classical ballet, make for a page-turning, impelling read." Janet Panetta, Ballet Master

“Faultless." Historical Novel Society

"Gripping and of tremendous heart." Dance Europe

Praise for Between Two Deserts:

“Shames skillfully intertwines the lives of this diverse cast of characters to produce a tightly executed, emotion-filled work.” Publisher’s Weekly

“(The novelist) creates the intense atmosphere of an unstable world with grace and a sort of lyric power.” National Public Radio

"Shames lucidly captures those immutable qualities that speak to our souls.” Rain Taxi

“Shames shows us humanity and insight.” Bloomsbury Review