REDWOOD
(4W, 4M) When Meg’s Uncle Stevie goes down the rabbit hole of online genealogy, he makes a discovery about the family who owned “the Durbin clan” — casting an unwelcome light on Meg's relationship with her white boyfriend, Drew. This incisive new comedy wrestles with our collective American legacy as Meg and her family try to muddle through life in a haunted country.
World Premiere: Portland Center Stage at the Armory, October 2019. Upcoming productions at the Jungle Theater & Ensemble Studio Theatre (2022). Development: Manhattan Theatre Club (Ted Snowdon Reading Series), Kansas City Repertory Theatre (New Works Reading Series), Studio Retreat at The Lark. Kilroys List 2019 & 2020, featured on The Mix.
BALL-CHANGE
(5W) Set at the switchboard of New York's oldest and most elite celebrity answering service, this play follows the "Chimes" employees for fifty years of workplace shenanigans, from their swinging 60s heyday to a future that's not too far away. Via the ringing cord-boards and the women who answer them, we witness styles, slang, and social norms reel with the years, but other things--like our culture's obsession with celebrity, and the tedious particularities of one's first "real" job--don't, quite. This is a play about how technologies and people become obsolete.
A Manhattan Theatre Club/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Commission. Development: Manhattan Theatre Club (Ted Snowdon Reading Series), Winter Writers Retreat at The Lark.
THE DINNER PARTY, BY JUDY CHICAGO
(7W, 1E) Set in the wings and dressing rooms of a world premiere “timely feminist play,” eponymously named for Judy Chicago’s famous art installation, this backstage ensemble dramedy examines how intersectional coalitions are made and sustained. Can Hatshepsut, Elizabeth I, Susan B. Anthony, and Sacajawea (or, um, the actors playing them) really get along and work together, when the chips are down? Or will the seduction of the spotlight undermine this coterie’s efforts to build power?
A Studio Theatre Commission.
