Retta Blaney

Retta Blaney is the theatre critic for National Catholic Reporter and the author of Working on the Inside: The Spiritual Life through the Eyes of Actors.  Her freelance work has appeared in The Washington Post, New York Newsday, The Jewish Week, The Living Church, American Theatre, Back Stage and other publications. She is editor of the anthology Journalism Stories from the Real World, a collection of essays for which Walter Cronkite wrote the introduction, and has taught at Brooklyn College, New York University and Marymount Manhattan College.

     As a full-time reporter, she worked for newspapers in Maryland and New York, winning a half dozen reporting awards including an award for her business reporting.

     She holds a Master of Arts in modern drama from New York University, a Master of Fine Arts in playwriting from Brooklyn College and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.

She is founder and producer of Broadway Blessing, a service of song and scripture reading that brings the theatre community together every September to ask God’s blessing on the new season.  This past December she produced the revival of Elizabeth Swados’ choral drama Missionaries, about the lives, work and murders of four American churchwomen in El Salvador in 1980.  It was done in honor of the 25th anniversary of their deaths.

Photo by: Merwin Goldsmith