Joy Tomasko is a writer, director and artist based in Queens, NY. Her plays have been performed in the US, Cuba, and Germany. She’s created several site-specific interactive installations and performances for New York City festivals and galleries and recently started Tiny Box Theater, a company that produces both installations and stories that unfold inside of repurposed boxes.
Recent collaborations include dialogue for visual artist Karen Ostrom’s animated Civil War era tintype, Card Players that won "Best in Show" in BRIC’s Open (C)all: Up for Debate. They collaborated on two additional tintypes for a show at Ball & Socket Arts in Cheshire, CT. She frequently works with Theatre 167 as a writer and creative consultant. With director, choreographer, Jeffry Denman, she is currently co-writing a new dance theater piece about The Donner Party.
Joy has scripted media interactives, environments and videos for Batwin + Robin Productions on projects including: The New York Historical Society in New York City; The Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia; King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia; the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences; the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Ada, Oklahoma and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
As an educator, Joy taught Theater Studies at Fordham University; Playwriting, Screenwriting and Puppetry at The Gateway Middle School for students with
learning disabilities and has taught private workshops in both New York City and Minneapolis. Joy's participated in workshops on genocide studies and how art can contribute to the process of reconciliation in theaters in Serbia, Rwanda and Uganda.
Joy is an affiliated writer with the Playwrights Center. She's also a former Jerome Fellow, MacDowell Colony Fellow, AROHO Creative Artist Retreat Scholar, Women’s Project Lab Member and NYSCA Playwright-in-Residence, plumage writer's group member, Gateway Middle School Playwright-in-Residence and LaGuardia Performing Arts Center Lab Resident Playwright.
BA: Drew University. MFA: California Institute of the Arts.