Alice Eve Cohen

In 1887, two Latvian teenagers flee the Russian Army and become the only Jews in the Oklahoma Land Run. A hundred years later, twenty-year-old Emily tries to decipher her late mother’s mysterious request to have her ashes spread on a stranger’s farm, in a place she has never heard of. Based on the playwright’s ancestors, the only Jews in the Oklahoma Land Run, the play wrestles with themes of immigration, assimilation, generational trauma, and the transcendent power of mother-daughter love. In Oklahoma Samovar, five generations put down roots and dig graves, embodying their own Jewish variations on the turbulent and mythologized American Dream.

It is a play about storytelling: stories that change with every teller and each new telling; stories that are joyfully told and embellished; and hidden family stories filled with shame and despair. Secret stories have a life of their own; they survive, carried from one generation to the next, through ineffable ancestral memories, sometimes with the help of ghosts.

Driven by the very different perspectives of a young woman and an old woman, Alice Eve Cohen’s personal and thought-provoking play examines the identity, traditions, and culture clashes that shape one Jewish family’s immigrant experience. Merging real events with magic realism, the play is performed by a cast of six, along with puppets and animated objects. Based on the playwright's family history, OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR is an utterly human and absolutely unique American story.

HOTEL LIMBO is a tale of family love and looming loss, a neighborhood in turmoil over housing the unhoused, a talking building, and a deep dive into affordable housing and homelessness – all told through the lens of the Hotel Belleclaire. Combining drama, humor, and magic realism, and based on actual events, it is set in New York City at the height of the pandemic. When Abigail’s home, the Belleclaire Hotel, is turned into a homeless shelter, she’s terrified – torn between her fierce drive to protect her immunocompromised husband, and her commitment to social justice. Should she join the neighborhood fight to shut down the hotel shelters? Or can she welcome her new neighbors and reject the community’s rage? Her soul-searching leads her to Kelvin, a Belleclaire shelter client. Abigail and Kelvin become friends through their collaboration as housing activists. But Abigail makes a mistake that jeopardizes their friendship, and she realizes she’s not as enlightened as she would like to believe. Characters include Kelvin, Abigail, her husband Daniel and their 20-year-old daughter Zoe; the talking Building (the Belleclaire is Abigail’s alter-ego and confidante); Maxim Gorky, who stayed at the Belleclaire in 1906; and the Architect who designed the Belleclaire in 1903. The magic realist characters serve as a comic trio throughout the play. The Facebook Greek Chorus animates verbatim social media posts from this time and place.
HOTEL LIMBO interrogates privilege – racial, financial, and housing privilege – and brings us into the heart of the homeless crisis, inspiring audiences to question their own biases and privilege. It is an important story that needs to be told.

A note from the Playwright
HOTEL LIMBO is set in the Belleclaire Hotel, my home of many years. In 2020, the Belleclaire was transformed into a homeless shelter as part of New York City's plan to reduce the spread of COVID19. When two more hotel shelters opened nearby, an epic fight ensued, manifesting in a battle for the "soul" of the neighborhood. When the predominantly white and wealthy community group tried to kick out our predominantly black, unhoused neighbors, I found myself in the middle of an escalating war. My building was a homeless shelter for 14 months. In HOTEL LIMBO, I investigate this time of crisis – in my family, in the building, and in the neighborhood.

90 minutes, cast of 5 (3F, 2M)

Jessica is at her gynecological exam in 2018, during the Kavanaugh/Ford hearing, and simultaneously in 1991, during the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearing. Woven into this time-traveling dark comedy is a mother-daughter tale of recrimination and forgiveness, an older woman reconciling with her younger self, a true story of pharmaceutical corruption, and the journey of a woman urgently trying to find her voice. Jessica’s cervix is being filmed for a training video. While Dr. Cooperman narrates her cervix’s perilous prenatal history, Jessica floats off the examining table and performs a stand-up routine on the ceiling. Her out-of-body storytelling launches her on an odyssey, during which she befriends the mythological Philomela from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, whose ancient story has powerful contemporary resonance. Against the backdrop of the Kavanaugh and Thomas hearings, which play out on screens throughout the action of the play, Jessica finds a window into her past and reunites with her late mother. Their relationship is a stormy mix of ambivalence and love, filled with recriminations for events of the past over which they had no control. With emotional force and hilarious wit, the play explores the many ways women are silenced, the misogyny that taints women’s healthcare, and the transcendent power of mother-daughter love. IN THE CERVIX OF OTHERS is a riveting journey, funny, painful and absurd.
To inquire about reading or producing the play, contact the playwright or literary agent, Elaine Devlin at [email protected]

Hannah and the Hollow Challah is a comic play for 2-10 actors playing dozens of roles (and rolls.) Hannah goes berserk over challah, her favorite bread. One day she eats the inside of an entire loaf. The next instant, she finds herself inside the hollow challah, which flies out Hannah’s kitchen window and all the way to Bread Land, where the inhabitants are all… bread! Hilarious, hi-carb complications ensue. Hannah’s journey of personal discovery gives depth to the wild escapades of the show’s human and doughy characters. She learns to use her courage and creativity to overcome monumental challenges. By journey’s end, she accepts her artistic instincts and realizes that she needs to reshape tradition in order to be her authentic self.
SELECTED QUOTES:
"Alice travels down a rabbit hole, Dorothy journeys in a tornado-propelled house, and Hannah—well, Hannah goes to another world in a hollowed-out loaf of challah. In this new comedy for ages 4 to 12 by Alice Eve Cohen, Hannah's trip takes her to Bread Land."
--The New York Times

“It was probably the funniest show I have ever seen!”
—Daniel, age 7

“About a girl discovering her hidden gifts. 'Hannah' [has] relevance to the world of contemporary Jewish artists, who rework Jewish themes to create new artistic styles...Even Hannah’s mother...needs to bend and reshape Jewish tradition in order to be her authentic self."
- The Jewish Week

"A delicious adventure through Bread Land. Our heroine, Hannah, uses courage, creativity and a bright, spunky spirit to overcome monumental challenges. A smart and adorable show. I highly recommend it."
—Marianna Houston, Education Director, TDF (Theatre Development Fund)

“Hannah and the Hollow Challah is a great play for the whole family. I brought my family, and they loved it. It is filled with witty humor the adults will enjoy, and eye-catching props and wonderful acting which keeps children engaged. As a 3rd teacher, I would highly recommend this play for school groups and families.”
—Chris Miller, 3rd grade teacher, PS 199, New York City

"Hannah and the Hollow Challah celebrates the imagination, something Lesley Greene, the associate producing director of the Kitchen Theatre Company, appreciates. "We picked this play because we were familiar with and love Alice Eve Cohen’s work, and because the script was so much fun to read!" Greene said in an e-mail interview. "It is a sweet story told in a very clever way. It has lessons about consequences of being naughty, about bravery and helping friends, and about following your heart, but all these lessons are shared in such a way that kids won’t feel they are being lectured. It’s fun through and through." She noted, that while the play is aimed at children ages four and older, their parents should love it too."
- The Reporter Group.org

In a strange, nearly empty grocery store, Eve stands behind Gabriel in the checkout line. As the sun sets and the Days of Awe begin, they gradually remember their relationship, peeling away layer after layer, until the truth of their past and present is revealed. A Jewish woman and Christian man, enemies in childhood, lovers as adults – or maybe they’ve never met – create a new rite of passage in this magic-realist comic and tragic love story.

Everything 44-year-old Alice thought she knew is turned upside-down when an emergency CAT scan reveals that she’s six months pregnant. A dark comedy performed by one actress playing forty roles, Alice faces the most wrenching decision a woman can make, in her odyssey through doubt, a broken health-care system, the complexities of reproductive rights, and the infinite unpredictability of parenthood. An O’Neill finalist and Jane Chambers Award Honorable Mention, What I Thought I Knew is adapted from Cohen's acclaimed memoir—winner of Oprah magazine’s 25 Best Books of Summer and Elle Literary Grand Prize for Nonfiction.
Selected quotes, What I Thought I Knew:
“Hilarious, heartbreaking, hopeful and devastating all at once.”
—Minnesota Post, THE PICKS
“So vivid, so immediate, so complex, so full of compassion… This is what theater can be.”—Tompkins Weekly, Ithaca

“This play takes us on a gripping ride."—Minnesota Star Tribune, BEST OF THE WEEK
"While filled with Cohen’s characteristic warmth and humor, What I Thought I Knew indicts the health care system."—Jewish Week

“Joyful, heart-breaking, moving”—Cherry and Spoon, Minneapolis

“Throws the insanity of the American health care system into sharp relief…sobering and thought-provoking.”—City Pages, Minneapolis/​St. Paul

"Profound… [a] darkly comedic reframing of iconic feminist questions around choice, parenting, and women's health… Challenging, beautiful, and defiantly funny "—Jane Chambers Award, Honorable Mention for new feminist plays

Thirty years after her death, Alice’s mother appears to her, and continues to do so, during the hardest year Alice has had to face. A love story. A ghost story. This play will speak to anybody who has ever loved their mother, struggled with their mother, lost their mother, or dreamt of reconciling with their mother.

Adapted from Cohen's acclaimed memoir, The Year My Mother Came Back (published by Algonquin Books)

Selected quotes:
"I was deeply moved by Alice-Eve’s play. She captures not only the fear of illness nor the pain of loss, not just of a death, but more poignantly, the pain of all the never-had conversations between parent and child so precisely that my breath caught. With humor and deep sensitivity Alice-Eve navigates the tricky path of forgiveness and understanding."
Johanna Gruenhut, Associate Artistic Director, Theater J

“I watched the play last night and wanted to let you know how much I loved it. Your play does such an excellent job of underscoring what's specific to the relationships between Jewish mothers and daughters, as well as how that's unique within a Jewish family and a part of the larger family dynamic.”
Will Steinberger, Artistic Producer, Jewish Plays Project

“Alice Eve Cohen has an almost magical touch in the way she introduces her audience to a character... unexplored emotional territory full of fresh questions, surprising revelations and sometimes uncomfortable insights... she does it again in The Year My Mother Came Back.”
Buffalo News, Buffalo, NY

Selected quotes, memoir:
“A wry, magical memoir about the transcendent power of mother-daughter love.”
—Elle magazine.
“Fiercely brave and unflinchingly honest, Alice Eve Cohen takes the reader on an astonishing journey.”
—The Brooklyn Rail

Victoria Woodhull, the very first woman to run for president, is arrested and jailed right before the election of 1872. On the eve of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton is having a hard time sleeping. Her mind is racing. Insomnia rules. Every time she thinks she has awakened, she finds herself in the Ludlow Street Jail in NYC, sharing a cell with Victoria Woodhull. Almost erased from the history books, Victoria was a clairvoyant, free-thinker, radical activist, stockbroker, and suffrage fighter. Will Hillary be radicalized by Victoria’s foresight and revolutionary politics? Will she finally have a night’s rest? Playwright Alice Eve Cohen examines two women's roles in the long path to a woman President in MRS. SATAN AND THE NASTY WOMAN.

Commissioned by the Kitchen Theatre Company, Ithaca, NY