Works by Suli Holum:
THE WOMAN QUESTION
LAYLI DOVE STANTON OUTRUNS THEM ALL
A FIERCE KIND OF LOVE
OEDIPUS AT FDR (A Free-Wheeling Adaptation)
Synopses:
The Woman Question – Why does the medical field still cling to the bias of female bodies as wrong, other, mysterious, or innately pathogenic? Why do female folx still struggle for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy? Crafted through a blend of archival research, interviews, community story circles, movement and song, The Woman Question will be an ambitious, sweeping, inclusive, disruptive and celebratory new work of theater. It will bring to stage a multigenerational ensemble of AFAB performers to tell the story of the first generation of doctors to graduate from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Commissioned by People’s Light through a grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the play is slated to premiere in spring 2026.
Layli Dove Stanton Outruns Them All – Layli Dove Stanton is a champion from the rez– a high school track star, went all the way to State. She’s gone missing, and there’s only one woman willing to do whatever it takes to bring her home… A settler dive bar sits at the epicenter of “The New Wild West,” a North Dakota boomtown on the brink of another bust. Enter Narissa, a take-no-shit Sahnish woman on a mission: to find the missing girl. She encounters the locals, too consumed by their own dramas to pay her much mind. They inadvertently expose a pernicious web of greed, exploitation, and betrayal, with Layli Dove Stanton at the center. It’s up to Narissa to untangle this web, find Layli, and bring her home. Inspired by interviews conducted on The Bakken Shale, the play presents two vastly different communities forced into conflict by settler colonialism and the extraction economy. The mystery of the play unsettles and engages, while its boldly theatrical style embraces the transgressive power of comedy to poke a pointed finger in the eye of white supremacy, misogyny, and environmental exploitation.
A Fierce Kind of Love – Commissioned by the Visionary Voices Project at the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University, A Fierce Kind of Love is a weaving together of the oral history of the Intellectual Disability Rights movement, and the lives of it’s mixed ability devising ensemble. Developed collaboratively, it is a work of physical theatre performed by a cast of eight who shift seamlessly from themselves to interview subjects and back again, all while maintaining a direct connection
to each other, and to their mixed-ability audience. The result is a multilayered work that is a tribute to the past, a celebration of the present, and a call to action for the future.
Oedipus at FDR – Oedipus at Colonus is the final play in Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy. It is the story of a holy place, Colonus, and the ill-fated King’s unwelcome desire to be laid to rest on this holy land. Oedipus at FDR reimagined the ancient tragedy, bringing its players to FDR Skate Park, a world-renowned and skater built mecca situated under an I-95 overpass in FDR Park in South Philadelphia. This text is both inspired by Sophocles and interviews with the skaters who inhabit the park and who participated in the performance as The Chorus. The entire play was underscored by a live-mixing DJ, who also appears as a character in the action. Audience members were seated inside the bowl of the park.
Bio:
Suli Holum is an award-winning director, performer, choreographer and playwright based in Philadelphia and Brooklyn.
She was a co-founder of Pig Iron Theatre Company, where she co-developed ten original works, including as playwright for Gentlemen Volunteers, awarded a ‘Spirit of the Fringe’ Award at Edinburgh Fringe and published in Pig Iron: 3 Plays (53rd Street Press).
She went on to be Co-Artistic Director of Stein | Holum Projects (SHP) with playwright Deborah Stein, and co-created/performed SHP’s Drama Desk nominated solo show Chimera, developed at HERE through a HARP residency, premiered at Under The Radar, toured to The Gate, London and published by Oberon Modern Plays, and The Wholehearted, commissioned by ArtsEmerson, developed at FringeArts, supported by the New England Foundation of the Arts National Touring Project and Z Space in San Francisco, premiered at Center Theatre Group (LA) and toured to La Jolla Playhouse and Abrons Arts Center. She also directed SHP’s Movers + Shakers, recipient of the Loewe Award from New Dramatists and developed at UCSD.
As a commissioned writer/creator of new performance her works include: Wandering Alice with Nichole Canuso Dance Company, which she also co-directed, and Oedipus at FDR: A Free Wheeling Adaptation with Emmanuelle Delpech, One Beach Road with RedCape Theatre, UK, and A Fierce Kind of Love with the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University. She has written two live theater projects for the National Constitution Center: Fighting for Democracy, and Fourteen, the latter of which she also directed, and has also has the pleasure of directing the original solo works of dancer Nichole Canuso of NCDC, and cabaret performer Jarbeaux of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. She is currently writing The Woman Question, a Pew supported project with People’s Light.
Holum’s projects have received support from The Orchard Project, New Dramatists, NACL, The Playwright’s Center, Ground Floor, and Actor’s Theater of Louisville, a TCG/Fox Resident Acting Fellowship, an Independence Fellowship, and multiple grants from the Pew. She is currently a member of Wilma Theater’s HotHouse Acting Company, and has received accolades
for her acting roles in New York and regionally, including a Drama Desk Award, Barrymore and Helen Hayes Award nominations.
She has been on faculty at the New School, Sarah Lawrence, Pace, University of the Arts, and is a frequent guest lecturer at The Pig Iron School. Holum holds a BA in Theatre Studies from Swarthmore College, and an MFA in Playwriting from Goddard College, where she was the recipient of the 2020 Engaged Artist Award. She is profiled in Devised Theater’s Collaborative Performance: Making Masterpieces From Collective Concepts by Telory D. Arendell (Routledge).
Website: www.suliholumthework.org