I try to explore in terms of the life that I know best the things which are common to all culture.
— Romare Bearden
Rae Binstock (Columbia University ’15) is a Jewish lesbian playwright and screenwriter from Massachusetts, which means she’s very comfortable with anger.
Her play Relentless had its world premiere at Syracuse Stage (February 2026). She co-created and wrote the book for Midnight at the Palace, a new musical following the 1960s avant-garde performance troupe known as the Cockettes, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (August 2025).
Her other plays include That Heaven’s Vault Should Crack (The New Group, Lark Development Center, T. Schreiber’s Studios), POSER (The New Group, Thom Thomas Award finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival semifinalist), land of no mercy (Salt Lake Acting Company, Landing Theatre Company, Princess Grace finalist), Consequences (Stella Adler’s Playwrights Division, Jane Chambers Award finalist), WALKERS (The Shelter, O’Neill Conference semifinalist, Jerome Fellowship finalist), Blue Skies (Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival), and Watch Me Burn (Fresh Fruit Festival, Lighthouse Writers Workshop Emerging Writer Fellowship). Rae also wrote and produced a short film based on one of her pilots, DIVR (2021), which went on to screen at over 20 international film festivals.
Rae served as the Writers’ Assistant on FX Networks’ FOSSE/VERDON and Apple TV+’s shows Schmigadoon, IF/THEN, and LIBERTY. She is one of the authors of the Climate Storytelling Playbook, a writing guide for intersectional climate change stories. In 2025, Rae was a member of the Black List x WIF Episodic Lab; she has won other fellowships with, among others, Almanack Screenwriters, the Lark Play Development Center, the Dramatists Guild, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Davey Foundation. Rae is the Grand Prize Winner of national TV pilot competitions from Creative Screenwriting, Screencraft, and WeScreenplay, and is a two-time semifinalist for the Sundance Episodic Lab. She has attended numerous residencies, including the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, PLAYA Summer Lake, and the Ragdale Foundation.
When she is not telling stories, Rae is a boxer, triathlete, and avid knitter. She lives in Los Angeles with her cats, Lila and Garlic.