Ella Talerico

Freti and Mawn, two early-twenties, college juniors, are stumbling over each other on their journey towards self-discovery, self-acceptance, and peace within a system which dictates at every turn the opposite: self-repression, self-flagellation, and an irrepressible urge to gaslight oneself into complete self-destruction. What happened is never a simple question. The truth of our trauma and our memory is rarely black and white, clean, or simple. Victimization is perverted and tempting. A disturbing and charged exploration of shame and its manifestations, the lies in truth, the truth in lies, and the ways oppressive norms and stigmas shape our collective psychological imagination. Plus: worms.

Fiona, a once prolific and prodigal young artist, finds herself depressed, lost, and struggling to find the will to live. She falls asleep, and wakes into a theatrical dream world where, instead of a struggling young artist, she is a struggling young actor on stage faced with a very real audience and the immediate burden of creation. Supported by friends, inspired by her muse, and challenged by fantastical characters both hilarious and terrifying, Fiona's dream forces her to wrestle with her demons and rediscover her light - the essential will to keep living and trying.

Four people, JOY, DEV, FRY, and VEG, are stuck in a metaphorical desert where they experience all the symptoms of dehydration but are unable to die. A one hour play written originally to be performed 24 times over the course of one day, but can also be performed once. A tragicomedy about where and how we find Joy in the deserts of depression and hollowness which occasionally consume us.

A play set in a near-future but nevertheless apocalyptic world; a world without poetry, without snow, and without chirping birds. All the action happens at the root of a giant, knobby tree that endlessly produces inedible fruit, which of course, drives all the characters mad. Every act of the play feels like Act Five, like the end of the world, and with every act, more characters show up and plant themselves under the tree. The play explores institutional poverty, gentrification, climate change, and the essential maintenance of community, hope, and faith in the face of impossible, doomed circumstances.

30 minute section of what will be a full-length musical following the lives of four women, Polly, Margo, Zo, and Jayla, as they navigate their romantic lives. These 30 minutes follows specifically Polly's journey, as she grapples with the longstanding effects a past trauma has on her current romantic relationships.

A horror-mystery-high-stakes radio play that asks this central question: what does it mean to be useful?

From psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), Biophilia is “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.” Biophilia is a series of experimental vignette-style scenes exploring the sensation of living. Rather than painting life as it objectively exists, the play paints life as it feels, capturing the sensation or impression of living through a wave of rhythm, image, color, and small narratives. Biophilia is a love letter to living, an exploration of beauty, trauma, emotion, sense, thought, perception, growth, decay, of all things which form our singular experience of this weird thing we call life.

a ten minute solo performance piece following a woman as she struggles to cope with and suppress a past trauma.

A toaster! In the cosmos! A silly little play about people eating toast, and the wacky, simple beauty in weird conversations between people who love each other.

Sally struggles with severe anxiety and depression. One day she is so overwhelmed with the world that she finds herself unable to open her front door - it is too scary, too painful, too hard to face the daily demons of regular life. We watched as Sally’s friends and family attempt to empathize, to understand her mind, to comfort and coax her out of the house…. and we watch them move on without her. As time progresses, and more loved ones leave, the line between Sally’s delusions and reality becomes more and more blurred. What is sanity? Is it sane to tolerate the horror and violence in our world? Why do we face it? What are we fighting for when we do?

Elaine is at the beach, determined to stay with the sea turtle eggs until they hatch and are safe in the sea. She is visited by Darling, a chatty and wacky neighborhood girl who is lonely and needs a friend. We soon come to realize that this beach-reality is a dream, a delusion, to shield Elaine from her real pain - the miscarriage she had three years ago, and the recent arrival of her newborn son.

A one act play following Carl, a brother grieving his late sister, Beth.