My plays aim to highlight the absurdities of the modern world through comedy and elements of the surreal and often focus on themes surrounding issues of climate, class, labor, and gender and sexuality. You can read about my work here, and read many of my plays on New Play Exchange.
It Will Rise Soon Enough
Columbia University (2022), dir. Victoria Gruenberg
2030. A mother and her child tread water with a delivery person in a flooding Greenwich Village apartment during a category four hurricane. 2060. A group of rogue individuals struggle to find new identities and homes in the wreckage of once familiar landscapes. 2090. The firstborn of a self-governed settlement questions whether to follow his own will or the will of his people. It Will Rise Soon Enough is a cross-generational work of speculative theatre that examines how we might be forced to rethink our relationships to labor and capital as it pertains to our identities as we face increasingly dramatic changes to our climate.
You Can’t Touch My Sister I Ate in the Womb!
Columbia University (2021), dir. Liz Peterson.
In the unbearable state of frustration and loneliness that comes with “becoming a woman” Viola calls to the twin sister that she absorbed in the womb and thus Olimpia is born. Leaving Olimpia to take over her life in high school, Viola embarks on a journey to Europe where she hopes she can be mysterious and maybe even a little bit sexy somehow. As the play splits open, both twins encounter the painful untruths of the myth of virginity and learn to consider consent, attention, and what it means to try and consider the wants and needs of others when you’re still trying to figure out who the hell you are.
Bug In Mouth Disease
Six siblings convene for the first time in years to plan an intervention for their struggling parents: their mother has fallen prey to a pyramid scheme while their father has relapsed into a dangerous gambling addiction. It’s practically a miracle that they all got to the same place at the same time. The conversation pivots quickly from the intended topic when three of the siblings admit that they’ve been plagued by bugs inexplicably coming out of their mouths for several weeks and two more of the siblings begin experiencing symptoms. The discussion of the root of the mysterious illness leads to the regurgitation of shared and unique traumas, long held resentments and theories, and even the occasional fond memory. The only thing that’s clear is that the siblings will need to rely on each other to get through this and that it is probably, somehow, sort of their parents’ fault.
Of The Sea
Dixon Place (2018) , Access Theatre (2019) dir. Kirsten Sweeney
Finalist for The Thomas Wolfe International Play Prize
Aoife searches for magic everywhere--in her books, in herself, and especially in the waters that surround her home on the Arranmore Islands of Ireland. The lore of the Selkies tells of half-human, half-seal creatures kidnapped off the shores and forced into marriage and child rearing and haunts Aoife as she reads one story over and over. A single discovery about her distant and single mother's mysterious past is all it takes to send Aoife spiraling on a journey to find the truth about her mother, the Selkies, and the existence of magic.
Love Her, Love Her, Love Her!
An adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Miss H lives in a loft above her father's old brewery in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The former reality TV star of The Heiress has two obsessions: keeping up with the show on which she was humiliated, and finding love for her daughter, Estella. When Estella decides to marry for practical reasons instead of love, a devastated Miss H is left to consider an offer from The Heiress franchise: a second chance at love for herself.
The Children of Tomorrow Prepare to Catch on Fire
Heidi and Jason, a millennial couple living in Ohio, are the directors of Lights Up! Youth Ensemble. They also sell a little bit of cocaine. Well, kind of a lot of cocaine actually, but recently, business hasn’t been so good. They owe their dealer a lot of money, but as soon as they pay it off Heidi wants to be done—for good this time. Meanwhile, their students are in the midst of devising a climate crisis musical that is nowhere near ready for the competition they have coming up. When a rehearsal is interrupted by their drug lord, Heidi and Jason kidnap the ensemble in a moment of panic. The kids, eager to perform their potentially world-changing piece, strike a deal with their directors/kidnappers: if they keep them on the road so they can rehearse and get them to the competition, they’ll testify in court that they went with Heidi and Jason voluntarily. With not much to lose at this point, Heidi and Jason agree. Over the course of the play, Heidi and Jason must decide whether to continue running or turn themselves into prison while the teenage theater artists devise a piece about a future where people must decide whether to stay on a dying planet or abandon it.
Our House
Gallatin Theatre Troupe (2018) dir. Kirsten Sweeney
Kiki's nightmares have her waking up screaming every night. Her cries don't keep her brother Evan up, who is used to her refusal to reveal what is haunting her and goes right back to sleep. They don't wake her brother Caleb, who is up all night anyway and operating on a schedule that doesn't include attending eleventh grade algebra. And they certainly don't disturb her father, who hasn't left the basement for a year and a half since he succumbed to a heroin addiction. But when Evan's girlfriend, Nina, gets Kiki to open doors that previously remained closed, the sustainability of the siblings' life of Hamburger Helper dinners and midnight crises is challenged. Ultimately, the siblings are torn between everything that ties them to their house and every force that is driving them away, as it becomes more apparent than ever that
ghosts work in mysterious ways.
Helena’s Bird (Short)
24 Hour Plays: Nationals (2018), Emerging Artists Theatre (2019) dir. Victoria Gruenberg
Sometimes you just really, really want something. When Helena brings home a pet cockatiel, her roommates have trouble believing the bird isn't about something more.