PLAYS
VILE ISLE
Mariyea Jackson in Vile Isle, dir. Spencer Whale at Columbia SOA. Photo by Jonathan Barbee.
A group of friends who call themselves 'queer family' is on the verge of spiritual breakdown or breakthrough, depending on who you ask. A dead-of-winter trip to Fire Island is threatened by an Old Testament-style flood. And Gnocchi the Cat is being Bat Mitzvah’d, God willing. Vile Isle is a passionate and provocative dark comedy about the ways we fail and forgive one another, and what faith is worth when our limits are existentially tested. 90 min.
Read Vile Isle on New Play Exchange.
COWGIRL
Magda Cychowski and McLean Peterson in Cowgirl, dir. Spencer Whale, at Columbia SOA. Photo by Amanda Whiteley.
Three city friends convene on a fracking ranch in Wyoming for a wild western wedding—but when Lila unearths Cowgirls, a relic of a feminist board-game-without-a-board, all bets on a seamless wedding are off. The game’s provocative questions threaten to unravel the secrets and dark desires that lurk just beneath the surface of these friendships. Cowgirl is a queer, passionate, and transformative dark comedy that gallops its way through questions of identity, the temptations of fracking, and the permanence of mustard stains. Oh, and one more thing: beware The Aunts. 90 min. Read Cowgirl on New Play Exchange. Finalist for Columbia @ Roundabout Reading Series, Semi-Finalist for the Princess Grace Award.
MACHT FREI
Veering between Dachau concentration camp in 1943 and New York City’s Upper East Side in 2020, Macht Frei is a short play that explores the blood memory of inherited Jewish trauma, intergenerational disconnect, and all the things history has failed to teach us—despite its violent insistence on repeating itself. 10 minutes. Read Macht Frei on New Play Exchange.
Finalist for Samuel French / Concord Theatricals’ OOB Festival.
DELAWARE, COME HOME
Orli lives with her dog (named Delaware) in Montana; that is, until Delaware runs away, and Orli finds herself surrounded by vast nothing. She constructs a makeshift antenna, which she hopes will help Delaware find his way back home. 10 minutes. Read Delaware, Come Home on New Play Exchange.
Published in Best of Red Bull Theater’s Short New Play Festival, Stage Rights Publishing, 2019.