Plays written by Haleh Roshan:
OUR MOTHERS, THE GHOST STORY
FREE FREE FREE FREE
A PLAY TITLED AFTER THE COLLECTIVE NOUN FOR FEMALE-IDENTIFYING 20-SOMETHINGS LIVING IN NYC IN THE 2010S
REVERENCE
Synopses:
Our Mothers, THE Ghost Story – Ali and Farzaneh are half Iranian, and as American as it gets. Mari, their mother, who immigrated after the revolution, hates the Islamic Republic and has raised her children to succeed in white, capitalist America—which doesn’t include speaking Farsi, or very many other traditional “Iranian” elements. Instead, Ali and Farz grew up in Miami, much more familiar with Cuban culture than their own, and each has indeed “succeeded” in life thus far. So why does it always feel like some critical part of themselves is missing? When their aloof, mysterious grandmother, Layla, passes away in late 2016, they return to Miami for her funeral… But Layla has some final, ulterior agendas for her estranged daughter and very American grandchildren. Our Mothers, The Ghost Story is a haunting of places and times, a mourning for how global revolutions unmake and remake generations.
Free Free Free Free – FREE FREE FREE FREE is based on the true story of the Diggers, an anarchist theater collective formed out of the San Francisco Mime Troupe; the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and Students for a Democratic Society; and the rise of Asian American solidarity. Each group fights against capital and exploitation, fights for liberation, and envisions an America and a world beyond constant war, immeasurable poverty, and global hunger. But how the #$%! do we, they, we get from here to there? A Brechtian exploration of 1960s Bay Area anti-capitalists and their efforts at igniting a new American revolution, this is a play in perpetual struggle session with itself–but like, in a nice way!
A Play Titled After the Collective Noun for Female-Identifying 20-Somethings Living in NYC in the 2010s – Shirin is working on a book about post-Occupy Wall Street grassroots movements, while trying not to succumb to anxiety attacks over the state of the world. CJ is a public defender navigating our utterly fucked up judicial system, while trying to find time for a meaningful personal life. Elizabeth needs to finish college and figure out what to do next. Oh, also, there’s a mysterious bug infestation in the kitchen and Shirin might be considering… organized religion? Putting an urgent spin on “girls” in any medium COLLECTIVE NOUN is a play for anyone who may be new to civil disobedience, protesting, or activism; a battle cry for those who find themselves awakening to a world order that will remain profoundly unjust unless each person commits to radically re-envisioning what it means to be a citizen.
Reverence – In the early 1960s, Robert Joffrey and his partner Gerald Arpino have started a radical new kind of ballet company: the first fully American company that incorporated modern-dance elements into a classical repertoire. But funding is impossible to get for a young company that won’t perform the stolid old white ballets. A chance meeting between Joffrey and eccentric oil heiress Rebekah Harkness seems the answer to the company’s financial woes… but how much will Ms. Harkness want in return? A true story of the evergreen conflict between artists and patrons, the partnership between Robert Joffrey and Rebekah Harkness, and their very public parting of ways only a few years later, rocked the concert dance world and threw ballet into the national spotlight.
BIO:
Haleh Roshan is an Iranian American playwright and fiction writer with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Her work fuses leftist politics with intercultural narratives to challenge global capitalist power structures and trouble conceptions of individual identity and ability. Full-length plays include FREE FREE FREE FREE (Exponential Festival; 2018 O’Neill NPC finalist); A PLAY TITLED AFTER THE COLLECTIVE NOUN FOR FEMALE-IDENTIFYING 20-SOMETHINGS LIVING IN NYC IN THE 2010S (Play Date at Pete’s; upcoming THML Theater); and REVERENCE, about the founding years of the Joffrey Ballet (Tom Kirdahy Productions). Pilots include BELLWETHER (2016 Austin Film Festival Second-Round Finalist) and THE LEGITIMATE (in development with BSmithey Productions), about women in the theater in the 1930s and ’40s. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in online literary journals and been read aloud (kind of like a play!) at Mellow Pages, KGB Bar, Pacific Standard, and others. MA: NYU Gallatin.