Plays written by Kirsten Greenidge
BOSSA NOVA
GIBSON GIRL
LUCK OF THE IRISH
SPLENDOR
ZENITH
AND MOIRA SPINS
LITTLE ROW BOAT
FOR THE GREATER GOOD
Synopses:
Bossa Nova – (1M 6W) With spellbinding theatricality Kirsten takes us into the life of a young African-American woman. While Dee attempts to avoid the manicured lawns of her family’s upper middle class existence, she is continually confronted with characters eager to help shape her life. Powerful and poetic, Bossa Nova bursts with humor as it asks serious questions about the search for identity in a world filled with contradictions.
Gibson Girl – (3M 6W) From the recesses of the girls bathroom comes a voice: utterly unruly and viciously vivacious. Its owner is twelve-year-old Valerie, whose life would be a thousand times more endurable if her twin sister would quit her daughter-knows-best act and her mother would abandon her peculiar rituals that she hopes will lure the girls’ long absent father home with syrup tapped from trees in the family’s front yard. But the forces that stifle Valerie’s spirit are facing extinction and strange alliances threaten to unearth a deep secret that, if exposed, will reverse the girls’ fortunes forever.
Luck of the Irish – (3M 4W) When Hannah and her sister Nissa invite a long time friend of the family’s to a memorial picnic for their grandmother, they learn that the deed to the house their family has called home for decades is being mysteriously “reclaimed.” The news forces Hannah into a tailspin as she wrestles with her relationship with the town she’s called home. Interlaced with Hannah’s struggles are glimpses of the past when the deal that procured their home came to fruition.
Splendor – (4M 6W) On Thanksgiving eve in a town just north of Boston, Fran is determined to make a nice turkey dinner for her chain-smoking klepto mother, and her couch-surfing older brother. If only it were that simple. A vivid collage of local stories exposes a community where generations of families collide over far more than pumpkin pie and stuffing.
Zenith – (2M 4W) It seems that hardly a day goes by that the media doesn’t confront us with yet another unspeakable act. Kirsten Greenidge’s Zenith teases out the complex and interwoven threads of one life that ends shockingly. Daring in structure and rich in detail, this play makes us question whether we can ever truly fathom another human being. A Denver Center Commission.
And Moira Spins – (2M 5W) Determined to have a perfect vacation with her sisters, Lavinia has dropped off her kids at camp and rented a summer house. Her siblings, however, bring along their own baggage that threatens to ruin Lavinia’s meticulously planned week. And when their long-estranged stepmother shows up out of the blue, dormant tensions boil to the surface, forcing the women to face their cherished notions of family and how far they will go to preserve those beliefs.
Little Row Boat – (3M 3W 1 child) As the French Revolution brews outside, teenage slave Sally Hemings gets her first taste of freedom while serving in Thomas Jefferson’s Paris home. Inside, she becomes involved in one of the most speculated about and scandalous relationships in American history. With verve, humor, and music, playwright Kirsten Greenidge imagines how events unfolded in the Jefferson household for the family and “servants” alike. Little Row Boat is a visceral and intricate story of convictions, contradictions, and sacrifice in the pursuit of liberty.
For The Greater Good – (3M 6W 1 non binary) This play is meant to probe into the progressive impulse to effect change in the world through progressive education. In the mid to latter half of the last century, this often meant independent education, where, particularly in the Northeast—Harvard’s Backyard, so to speak—private schools were a means to practice pedagogical theory. But what happens when the impulse to do good remains but the world that surrounds it shifts irrevocably?
BIO:
Kirsten’s work shines a strong light on the intersection of race and class in America, and she enjoys the challenge of placing underrepresented voices on stage. In May 2012 Kirsten received an Obie for her play Milk Like Sugar which was first commissioned by La Jolla Playhouse and TheaterMasters, and then produced at La Jolla and then Playwright’s Horizons as a coproduction with Women’s Theater Project. Milk Like Sugar was also awarded a TCG Edgerton grant as well as a San Diego Critics Award. Boston audiences might be familiar with Kirsten’s latest plays Baltimore, which was a Big Ten commission and presented as at New Repertory Theatre as a collaboration with Boston University’s Boston Center for American Performance and The Luck of the Irish, which was presented at the Huntington Theater Company in the spring of 2012 and enjoyed a warm reception and extended run. A former NEA/TCG playwright in residence at Woolly Mammoth, previous work includes several Boston Theater Marathon pieces, Bossa Nova (Yale Rep, 2010 and also an Edgerton New Play Award recipient), Thanksgivingin Company One’s Grimm (2010), Rust (The Magic Theater, 2007), 103 Within the Veil (Company One, 2005) and Sans Culottes in the Promised Land (Humana, 2004). She has enjoyed development experiences at Sundance, Sundance at UCross, the O’Neil, Pacific Playwrights Festival (South Coast Rep), and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Kirsten was the inaugural fellowship for Page 73’s playwrighting fellowship program. Current projects include commissions from CompanyOne, La Jolla Playhouse, Playwrights Horizons, Cleveland Playhouse, and Emerson Stage, where she and director Melia Bensussen will adapt the Pulitzer Prize winning book Common Ground. Early in her career Kirsten was a recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Award and the Mark David Cohen Award by the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival. Kirsten is currently writer in residence at Company One Theatre in Boston as a Mellon Fellow, where she helps oversee C1’s Playlab, as well as participate as a full time artistic staff member. She attended Wesleyan University and The Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa. She is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Boston University’s Center for Fine Art as well as being a resident playwright at New Dramatists she is a member of Boston’s Rhombus writing group.
* Please note that some titles are handled by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing, Broadway Play Publishing, and Playscripts.com. Please ask if you don’t see a particular play.