playWRITING.

plays.

 

American Realism
From Archival Recordings, "Voices of the Dustbowl," Conceived and Directed by
Katherine Brook
A sound-documentary piece with young people breaking things and other people fixing them.  The American Dream.  Immigration.  An office comedy.

Productions:
Carnegie Mellon New Words Series
Developed and Produced in Residency at the Invisible Dog Art Gallery, Brooklyn
Remounted as an endurance performance at the Invisible Art Gallery, Brooklyn
To be produced as part of the Salon Series at the San Diego Museum of Art 

Archaic Television Sex and Noise 

4 or More M or W

Mythical Mariner Punk Rock Junk Yard Queer-ish Crash-Bang Drag Queen Show.
Timon comes to the junkyard the night of his masochistic daughter's wedding, ready to kill her groom.  Will the Ancient Drag Queen Mariner's search for the Jiam Bird alter his plan?  A mythical verse movement play of television, trash, punk, and glitter. 

Productions:
Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama New Works Series

And:
Semi-Finalist for the O'Neill Conference
Nominated for the National Partners of American Theatre New Play Award 
Invited to the Kennedy Center Region II Fringe

this is a song called true love: a benefit concert for the children of Bruscoveniaplakjivo

1 w or m

Yosovjelena Mosososjovitch is hosting a fundraiser for the children of his/her home country and has invited the pop star MadagaSKar to perform.  When MadagaSKar cancels, Yoso performs rituals and musical numbers from his/her past.  The alien radio in his/her brain tells the story of Sid and Nancy.  A genderless, ageless, placeless, raceless account of the lunacy or magic of love.

Productions:

Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama Independent Project

A Journal of Nearly Supernatural Ornithology
2 M
A frozen cat.  A starling.  
Mid America Theatre Conference, Chicago, IL


Plight of the Apothecary

3 m, 2w:

Alchemical, sexually ambivalent siblings wait at the edge of a toxic ocean.  A rockabilly punk-ass story of guns, drugs and True Love.

Productions:
Co-Produced by Wide Eyed and Horse Trade Productions at the Red Room Theatre (Manhattan, February 2011)

Readings:
Brooklyn Arts Exchange with Inverted Hermit, Directed by Dara Malina.  (Brooklyn, December 2010)

 

 

The Insect Fear

1 m, 1w:

Cassandra, a Cuban Motel maid, cleans a bloody tub. (Or, the seven-minute, Middle America, flea-infested adaptation of Agamemnon). 

Readings:
Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (Baltimore, January 2011)

 

Jib and the Big Still

3m:

“Fruity crusty fruity poop.”

Productions:
Point of Contention Theatre's CHAOS Festival of New Works at the Lincoln Square Theatre (Chicago, April 2011)

Barnaby
2m, 1w:
The Chicken Police, a robot-god, speaks to Barnaby.  "Sir, you have too many chickens."  Aiken Ellis is high and forfeiting her iPhone for paper maps.

Productions:
BoCoCa Arts Festival with Inverted Hermit, Directed by Dara Malina.  Winner:  Best of the Festival (Brooklyn, June 2011)

 

One Extraordinary Darkness

2w, 2m:

It’s 1934.  Lilian is sleeping on the stairs, pretending to be narcoleptic in her Native American headdress.  Faye is wearing a mustache, and Emet might be dead.  Meanwhile, Dr. Clarence attempts to give the first presentation on the discovery of Dark Matter in the universe and its effects on the re-alignment of particles after death.   

Productions:

Commissioned and Produced by OnSite Theatre, directed by Bill Whitaker.  (St. Louis, October 2009)

 

The Toaster Song

1w, 1m:

“Microwaves give you cancer.

Lamps are fancy candles.

No one needs a television;

So cover all your outlets, or die.”

Finalist for the 2009 Heideman Prize at the Humana Festival

Productions:
NoShame Theatre, directed by Cat Crowder (St. Louis, September 2007)

 

 

Candlestick Park

1w, 2m:

Prudence hears Sam’s life as she lies in the apartment below, listening to Revolver and the radiator.  Knowing his crisis and patterns, she walks up the fire escape to intervene.  

Winner of the 2008 Hotchner Playwriting Competition 

Productions:

Washington University in St. Louis in The A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre, directed by Andrea Urice (St. Louis, March 2009)

 

 

Dearth, Trip, and Finn 
2w, 1m:

Cousins meet at an airport hangar.  Blood, acid trips, and craigslist sex.  A family drama with lesbians.

Selected for Workshop at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference (Valdez, June 2010)

 

The Reading Birds of Tinos

2w:
Backpackers meet the sudden, violent end of a Mediterranean adventure.  A stormy short play.

Productions:

Cast N Crew (St. Louis, November 2007)

American Theatre for Actors, directed by Sari Abraham (Manhattan, February 2009)

 

 

Everyone Else’s Oz

Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum intersect the emo dream of Simon-Rhea Plain.  A baseball field nightmare play. 

Productions:

Thyrsus (St. Louis, April 2008)

 

 

stuff.

 

MFA candidate in Dramatic Writing at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama under Rob Handel

BA in Drama from Washington University in St. Louis

winner of the A.E. Hotchner Prize in Playwriting

finalist for the Heideman Prize

winner of the Leota Diesel Ashton Prize in Playwriting

 

YOU GOTTA CHECK THIS OUT.

 

The Long Way To Eat a Mango 
2w, 1m, 1 m or w:

Mason, a pilot who flies cadavers for organ harvesting, steals a pair of eyes for her maybe-girlfriend Jane.  Hilton, a trans woman leader of Happiness Seminars needs skin grafts after setting her bed on fire.  A play of surgery, airplanes, and missing Jenga pieces. 

Semi-Finalist for Readings at PlayPenn and New Harmony

 

Violet in the Eyewall (read some)

3w, 1m:

Violet is on the edge of the stormiest storm of 1974.  Iris, in Liverpool, wants to be Andy Warhol.  A coming of age-sex-America play of telephones, trains, Lou Reed and television.

 

Scratch Acid Bone Departure (read some)

2w, 1 skeleton:

A skeleton answers a 911 call.  Lona Gray roller skates to her love.  A noise rock trip of dead trees and bb guns. 

 

Locust and Blow

3w, 2m:

A dislocated couple from the county move to an odd city intersection during rough financial times.  Joan, an agoraphobic housewife, must deal with the needs of her autistic son and her Walt Whitman-wannabe husband.  Kitchen Sink Deal. 

 

 

Really New.

animalbox
1w, 4m:
Grady sold his kidney for Francis, a recently released mental patient with burns on her neck.  Darlington and T.K. struggle through custody issues with their six-year-old daughter, a YouTube sensation.  Marvey has a metal detector and believes he will die if he closes his eyes.  A housing sector murder drama.    
(read some)

Television.  Film.

Pope Song (Pilot)
A Craigslist-assembled rag-tag team from Los Angeles travels to rural Missouri to shoot a religious documentary series.  A thrilling behind-the-scenes look at a surefire hit.
Carnegie Mellon Nomination for the Humanitas Prize


Birds Are Free We Are A Family Native American School

“Once your children have chosen a name, sex, age, and ethnicity, they can choose between several career paths, such as printmaking, Vespa repair, greenhouse maintenance, telepathy, tattoo design, barista training, and San Fransisco.” 

Recorded at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in the Wells Studio.

 

Gangstashabbat

Kei$ha done right.  By the only local Orthodox Jewish hip hop dance-off secret society.  

Recorded at WQED Pittsburgh.

 

The Eightieth Name (Full Length Screenplay)

Fired from her city greening job, Anne heads back to her graduate school town to research the biodiversity of trees. She is pulled into a family life where the boundaries of blood ties, sexuality, and monogamy are in altered states, and the foundation of her knowledge of human and plant genetics is violently confronted. 

 Raptors! (Full Length Screenplay)

Dodo's dying wish is for Gordon to find the sea turtles, buried for thousands of years in the Utah Badlands.  An archeological comedy.

We Can Call Anything Luck (Full Length Screenplay)

A family adventure into Transforming Growth Factor Beta.  With a lesbian twist.

P.S.  Read anything.  ebirkenmeier@gmail.com