Emilie Pascale Beck

Emilie Pascale Beck’s plays include Sovereign Body (Productions: Road Theatre, Winding Road Theatre; Workshops: Playwrights Theatre, Elephant Theatre, Road Theatre; 2011 Smith Prize Finalist), Number of People (Production: Piven Theatre Workshop; Development: Hartford Stage, Pasadena Playhouse, Playwrights Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop), And Let the Skies Fall (Production: El Portal Theatre), and Trace (Development: Boston Court Pasadena). For over a decade she served as the Literary Manager/Director of New Play Development at Boston Court Pasadena, where she ran the Playwrights' Group and curated the New Play Reading Festival. Directing credits: How the Light Gets In (winner of 2020 Steinberg/ATCA Award for a new play), Shiv, and Cassiopeia (Ovation Award) at Boston Court Pasadena...

Emilie Pascale Beck’s plays include Sovereign Body (Productions: Road Theatre, Winding Road Theatre; Workshops: Playwrights Theatre, Elephant Theatre, Road Theatre; 2011 Smith Prize Finalist), Number of People (Production: Piven Theatre Workshop; Development: Hartford Stage, Pasadena Playhouse, Playwrights Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop), And Let the Skies Fall (Production: El Portal Theatre), and Trace (Development: Boston Court Pasadena). For over a decade she served as the Literary Manager/Director of New Play Development at Boston Court Pasadena, where she ran the Playwrights' Group and curated the New Play Reading Festival. Directing credits: How the Light Gets In (winner of 2020 Steinberg/ATCA Award for a new play), Shiv, and Cassiopeia (Ovation Award) at Boston Court Pasadena, Miss Keller Has No Second Book (Gulfshore Playhouse), Block Nine (LA Weekly Awards) (Elephant Theatre), Because They Have No Words (Jeff Award) (Lounge Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop), among others. Dramaturg: The Children, Heavier Than, Alcestis, RII, Everything You Touch, The House in Scarsdale, Everything That Never Happened, and Both And: A Play About Laughing While Black (Boston Court Pasadena). Publications: Colorado Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Waxwing, Howlround, LA Stage. She has taught creative writing at UT Dallas, acting at Cal Poly Pomona, has been a guest lecturer at the UC Riverside MFA in Writing Program, and a guest speaker in the UCLA Theatre Major and USC’s Professional Writing Program. Her degrees are from Northwestern University (B.S. in Performance Studies) and Warren Wilson Program for Writers (M.F.A. in Fiction).

Scripts

Trace

by Emilie Pascale Beck

Cast Size

6—7

Genre

drama,

political

A mother who couldn't protect her sons; a teacher who couldn't save her students; a young woman who is afraid to love; a prisoner on Death Row who has no reason to live; a warden who finds friendship in the cells of his prison: these stories intersect, exploring the ways in which we are emotionally and/or physically and/or psychically imprisoned.

Sovereign Body

by Emilie Pascale Beck

1

Cast Size

8

Genre

drama,

political

As Anna and her family prepare for Thanksgiving dinner, an unwelcome stranger enters the house. He brutally attacks Anna, invading her body, the way he does her home, her life. Although no one else can see him, the entire family is affected. Anna succumbs to the man’s power. Is he in her mind? Or is he taking over her body? Over the course of the next year, his presence fractures the family. But in a moment of...

As Anna and her family prepare for Thanksgiving dinner, an unwelcome stranger enters the house. He brutally attacks Anna, invading her body, the way he does her home, her life. Although no one else can see him, the entire family is affected. Anna succumbs to the man’s power. Is he in her mind? Or is he taking over her body? Over the course of the next year, his presence fractures the family. But in a moment of stillness, Anna may be able to find solace, if not freedom.

Number of People

by Emilie Pascale Beck

1

Cast Size

1

Genre

drama,

political

Leo Gold is in the early stages of dementia, and has trouble keeping straight the important facts of his life. He knows that upon surviving the Holocaust, he came to the States, married, had a child, and became a statistician. In his job he traveled to the various ends of the world where continuing genocide was taking place, and documented the disappearance of people. He has tried to make sense of the senseless...

Leo Gold is in the early stages of dementia, and has trouble keeping straight the important facts of his life. He knows that upon surviving the Holocaust, he came to the States, married, had a child, and became a statistician. In his job he traveled to the various ends of the world where continuing genocide was taking place, and documented the disappearance of people. He has tried to make sense of the senseless by quantifying it, and justifies his own survival through a mathematical formula. He sees the world in terms of numbers, explaining events through statistics, and people through the numeric symbols that represent them in his mind. Numbers, to him, can reveal a whole life. As Leo forgets, he also remembers. As he is confronted by forgotten moments, he relies on his numbers and statistics to keep an emotional distance from the traumas of his life and work. In the end, though, he has only himself, his own story to tell.