Biography

Alan Olejniczak is a San Francisco playwright and opera librettist. Alan is on the board of Theatre Bay Area Board, a member of the Dramatist Guild and Opera America. Alan is co-founder of bicoastal At Last Theatre, which produced House/HOME last October for the O+ Festival in Kingston, New York. Last year, Alan produced and wrote Dominion at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, Five Honorable Mention Plays in 2016 and Present Tense at The A.C.T. Costume Shop in 2015. His one-act play Transgress was presented in April 2017 at the 36th Annual William Inge Festival in Independence, Kansas and The Bechdel Group in New York City. This June, Alan will begin a month-long expeditionary residency with The Arctic Circle, starting in International The Territory of Svalbard and sailing the high arctic. 


Alan currently has three full-length chamber operas in development. He is working with Daniel Brown on their opera on the French mathematician, Évariste Galois and with John Young on the adaption of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." Alan is also working with Chris Pratorius-Gómez on El Sueño Americano (The American Dream) which is loosely based on Cyrano de Bergerac. Alan has also written for Portico Studios in San Rafael, a next level interactive storytelling experiences in virtual reality. He is also collaborating with Christopher Turner on PROGRESS blending fine art narrative photography with social and environmental activism.


Alan has come late to dramatic writing. In a past life, he was a wine professional for twelve years, started his career at the City Grill in Atlanta and ending as the Sommelier of the Dining Room of the Ritz Carton - Buckhead, a Mobil Five-Star, AAA Five Diamond restaurant. He then went on to become a Special Educator for sixteen years, working with elementary and middle-school students with a focus on reading acquisition. Alan is married to David Bourne, who works for Google in product sustainability. They divide their time between San Francisco and The Sea Ranch, California.

"How in the heck do you pronounce that last name?" OH/la/KNEE/check