Plays Written by Amy Gijsbers van Wijk
DIRTY DIRTY
HITOUCH (a play for physical distance)
FEMININE OCTAGON OR ARISTOTLE CAN EAT ME
THE ALTERNATE POSSIBILITIES OF OUR PAST AND FUTURE HISTORY WITH PARTICULAR REGARD TO THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE EASTERN PUMA AND THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY
Synopses:
Dirty Dirty (2W, 2M) – In this provocative, sexy drama, renowned journalist Violet Miller sets out to write about HardBall, a porn studio with a safe, sex-positive reputation and sky-rocketing female viewership. But when Violet meets CJ, the breakout male star at the center of HardBall’s success, she’s caught between her professional persona and her newly awakened desires, and begins to question who’s really in control. DIRTY DIRTY begs us to consider our most public selves, our most private desires, and the boundaries in between. The first in a cycle of plays exploring the dynamics of sex, bodies, and the femme gaze.
Industry Reading in May 2019 featuring: Tina Benko (Violet), Kyle Beltran (Markus), Andrew Durand (CJ), Mirirai Sithole (Layla), and Fig Chilcott (SD).
Semi-finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2020
Semi-finalist, Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship 2019
Semi-finalist, O’Neill New Play Conference 2019
Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation 2018-2019 Playwrights Program award winner
HITOUCH (5NB, 2W) – It’s 2025. Everyone works remotely from a home office. Everyone has a home gym. Everyone is connected. Physical touch and intimacy are deeply restricted. Beryl, a touch specialist who works at The Agency, helps people supplant the desire for in-person touch with simulated touch. Jay, Beryl’s client, sends anonymous gifts to their mom, Miray, half-way across the country. And Elliot, Beryl’s partner, has disappeared. HITOUCH investigates what we gain, and what we lose, when society is left with the absence of physical intimacy, and given online connection. Who are we without touch, and who do we become?
Commission, The Farm Theater 2020-21
MILDRED’S UMBRELLA Festival Reading, dir. Lyam B. Gabel 2021
Reading, dir. Kat Yen 2020
Feminine Octagon or Aristotle Can Eat Me (5W, 1M, 1 N/GNC, a chorus of 3 – 200 male voices) – Allure and Candy become goddesses. A man falls from the sky. Flowers + Mary Shelley fall in love. & cam girl Eurydice_19969 wants to make that ca$$$h. feminine octagon [or, aristotle can eat me] is one hour/one night/one hundred nights in the search for an unforgettable, life-changing party.
Sold-out workshop production, LPAC Rough Draft Festival 2019
One-night sold-out reading, Pipeline’s Week of Extraordinary Risk 2018
Reading & PlayLab Residency, Pipeline Theatre Company
The Alternate PossibilIties of Our Past and Future History with Particular Regard to the Identification of the Eastern Puma and the Corps of Discovery (4W, 1M) – In a desert world that has collapsed in the wreckage of climate change, Lewis is a topographer. Lewis secretly wants a museum more than anything in the world. Secretly hoards objects she find buried in the dirt, and hides them from her eco-engineering girlfriend, Clark — and their friend Dev, but he’s probably too busy embroidering pillows to notice. At the site of pre-apocalypse ruins, two men find Lewis digging away in the desert, and they just won’t stop asking her for directions and calling her “Sacajawea.” Whatever that means.
Semi-finalist, O’Neill Conference
Semi-finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Finalist, PlayPenn
Finalist, The Ground and Field Theatre Festival at UC Davis
Bio:
Amy Gijsbers van Wijk (they/them) is a playwright from Pasadena, Texas, now based in Brooklyn, NY. Currently, they are commissioned by EST for the EST/Sloan Project for their play BECKON, or, the g-spot play (working title). They have been a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nominee, a 2021 & 2019 Princess Grace semi-finalist, and won the national 2018/19 DVRF Playwrights Program. Amy has recently been an Ensemble Studio Theatre Youngblood finalist, a three-time Bay Area Playwrights Festival semi-finalist, and a two-time O’Neill NPC semi-finalist. Their work has been developed with New Georges, Pipeline Theatre Company, Fresh Ground Pepper, New Light Theatre Project, Dixon Place, Project Y, and elsewhere. New Georges affiliated artist. Farm Theater commission 2020 for HITOUCH. BA, Brooklyn College under Erin Courtney. Recent MFA graduate, Carnegie Mellon University under Rob Handel.
Amy has also written about robots in theatre for American Theatre magazine, and for the online performance journal Culturebot. They have been a guest lecturer at NYU/Playwrights Horizons and Seton Hall University, taught playwriting with EPIC Players, Writopia Labs, the New South Young Playwrights Festival at Horizon Theatre in Atlanta, and at Carnegie Mellon University (during MFA candidacy).
Website: www.amygvw.com/theatre