Plays Written by Gab Reisman:
JEUNE TERRE
SPINDLE, SHUTTLE, NEEDLE
THE SEAGULL OR HOW TO EAT IT
FLOOD CITY
STORM, STILL.
CATCH THE WALL
THE PANAMA LIMITED
Underbelly’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND
CHURCH OF THE PASSIONATE CAT
Synopses:
JEUNE TERRE (10 M/W) The waters are rising around Jeune Terre, Louisiana, and the land is slipping away. As scientists and state administrators bargain over the town’s future, a theatre troupe arrives to tell an old story in a new way, just in time for a quickly approaching storm. This funny and arresting new musical explores what it means to live on the edge of invisibility in a time of atmospheric change.
SPINDLE SHUTTLE NEEDLE (5W/ 1M) In a cottage surrounded by endless siege, at the dawn of Modern Capitalism, a motley group of women tell tales, pick nits, and stretch out the last bits of sustenance til the Market reopens. A dark and funny fable about what it means to be trapped indoors and how we figure out what to do after.
THE SEAGULL OR HOW TO EAT IT (10 M/W) Simon is in love with Mandi. Mandi is in love with Connie. Connie is in love with Nina. Nina is involved with Barry who is married to Irene who is also adored by Ike who is married to Polly who is having an affair with Dr. Yvette Dorn. Also there’s Pete, Irene’s older brother, who’s partner is dead, I think? Or maybe they split up but are still friends? Anyway, everyone wants something they aren’t getting. Or everyone’s gotten something they didn’t want. Sometimes it’s fame and sometimes it’s pizza. But the longer we live the harder it is to separate one from the next.
FLOOD CITY (3W, 4M) In Johnstown, PA in 1889, The Great Flood has destroyed a bustling steel town, and left a motley crew of survivors and surveyors to clean up and rebuild. Meanwhile, at a bar in Johnstown a century later, newly unemployed steel workers wax metaphoric about past lives and future ambitions. A dark-hopeful comedy about American disasters, entrepreneurship, and how we wait for what’s next.
STORM, STILL. (3W) While cleaning out their father’s house, three estranged sisters perform a fast and loose reenactment of KING LEAR: part eulogy, part drinking game, part child’s game of pretend.
CATCH THE WALL (6W, 2M) When champion bounce MC, Benefit, dies unexpectedly, 6th graders Cleo and Justice set out to make a dance video so that their mentor’s memory can live on. But when Benefit’s ghost begins haunting the halls of their charter school, the girls must push back against their teacher’s expectations and the dangers of their neighborhood, and find a story they can claim as their own.
THE PANAMA LIMITED (2W, 2M) Two would-be lovers try to figure out a better way to carry out their affair. Two wanna-be gutter punks travel to a far southern city in search of a fabled community. A train-shaped story of desire, transportation, and escape routes.
CHURCH OF THE PASSIONATE CAT is a detective story turned on its ear, blending film noir whoduniting with a jazz age church revival nightclub. Six months ago, Detective Molly Maguire lost her partner in a suspected suicide. Now she’s drunk, broke, and on the verge of losing her trusted secretary, Ivy. When a mysterious man offers her a chance to work again, everything Molly knows about detective work, her missing partner, and the nature of faith itself is up for grabs.
Bio:
Gab Reisman’s plays explore the ways place writes itself on our bodies- examining the connections between geography, history, and identity. Inherently queer and keenly irreverent her work looks at what it means to live on the precipice of chaos. Besides her own work, Gab builds immersive and devised performances in non-traditional spaces, most recently with utopia-based trio Bender/Mars/Reisman, and her own incubator Brooklyn Yard.
Gab has developed work with Fusebox, Clubbed Thumb, Page 73, Sundance Theatre Lab, and the Playwrights’ Center among others. She’s received commissions from the Humana Festival of New Plays, EST/Sloan Project, the NOLA Project, New Plays at Barnard, Clubbed Thumb, and ZACH Theatre.Gab is a MacDowell Fellow, an Orchard Project, Ingram New Works, I-73, and New Victory Lab alum and a former NNPN Playwright in Residence. Her plays Spindle Shuttle Needle and Catch the Wall have appeared on multiple Kilroys Lists and won the Holland New Voices Award. Gab has taught playwriting and theatre making at the University of New Orleans, NYU, and SUNY Purchase. MFA: UT Austin
Website: www.gabreisman.com