Angeline Larimer

Angeline Larimer, MFA, MA, GCMH, is the Executive Director of Propel New Works, a nonprofit organization that provides a variety of support for story development. She is also the Lead Dramaturg for PlayPenn in Philadelphia, an MFA playwright and Dramatists Guild member, a public health bioethicist, and an applied theatre professional who works at the intersection of health humanities, community, and theatre.

She is an Affiliate Faculty member for the Medical Humanities & Health Studies program and the Applied Theatre, Film, & Television program at Indiana University Indianapolis. Larimer sits on several Indianapolis-area committees focused on overdose prevention and teaches playwriting workshops for people in SUD recovery. She is the founder of Theatre for Veterans, which offers free online scriptwriting classes to Veterans of the Armed Forces.

Larimer incorporates applied theatre and ethics into health and medical education and community outreach, helping individuals share their stories while ensuring they retain ownership of their narratives. She utilizes methods and principles borrowed from verbatim theatre, narrative medicine, critical fabulation, and ethnodrama. Themes she has explored in her own scripts include the effects of war on health—particularly on combat veterans—the effects of racism on health, stigmas surrounding substance use disorder, the impact of eugenics on 20th-century families, and the difficulties of end-of-life decisions.

As a theatre educator, Larimer teaches “Ethics and the Fundamentals of Playwriting” for PlayPenn, “Playwriting and Medicine” for IUI, and has taught many other classes over the years, fostering conversations about the unintended consequences of creative work and the responsibilities of the storyteller.

Larimer received her MFA in Playwriting from Indiana University’s Department of Theatre and Drama, where she studied with long-time mentor Dennis J. Reardon. She served as Assistant Instructor for Playwriting I, Playwriting II, Screenwriting, and Structure of Drama for three years under his tutelage. Her MFA thesis world premiere of FISH IN THE DESERT occurred during the IU Theatre 2000–2001 Season. She was also a co-Artistic Director, Board Member, featured playwright, and Scriptwriting Instructor for the Bloomington Playwrights Project.

Her most recent play, THE SPECTRUM OF LETTING GO, was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2023 and received the Myles and Peg Brand Fellowship in Bioethics from Indiana University.