Elliot Schiff

Set in 2015, right as the Atlantic's cover story about "The Silicon Valley Suicides" sparked a moral panic about mental illness and suicide among high-achieving high schoolers, at an elite Southern California boarding school, Ava Yang is the latest Judicial Council case. Tried by a jury of her peers and two faculty, Ava's case starts familiarly, about a plagiarized essay. But it quickly spirals into a messy debate about Ava's race, class, and mental illness. But the play doesn't fall on any neat moral lines; no one is safe from the allure of upward mobility — or in the case of the super-rich majority, the need for class maintenance — that a school like this promises.

Set during the first year of Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestine, Memory Care follows Naomi, a wayward millennial trans death doula who assigns generational meaning to her first patient, Harold, a dementia-addled, bitter man who has no visitors at his nursing home. He's cared for by Chloe and Kareem, two Black nurses who live Upstate near Hineini, the nursing home, which used to be a Borscht Belt resort. Harold falls in love with Rachel. His son, Seth, Naomi's boss, is nowhere to be found. And as the play goes on, Naomi's political consciousness gets agitated; more and more, she sees that Harold's money will go literally nowhere. She begins to wonder where she'd spend it if it were hers... Throughout, Emma Goldman crashes the play and gives her thoughts on Ibsen. A vivisection of American Zionism, Memory Care wonders how a play might stay dramatically compelling and emotionally rich while it is clear in its sensibility from minute one that it is calling for a free Palestine.

Sample uploaded. Please inquire to read the full script! :)

On the last day of shooting a ridiculous reality TV show, the production team gets all the confessionals they need out of the cast in order to stitch the season together in post. The cast re-experiences some memories they'd rather not revisit, and their present-tense disagreements come to the fore. Act Two is the reunion special.

BOY is dead. MOM is alive. CAT talks. DAD is out of the picture. MOM's grieving. Her back hurts. What is to be done!