Audrey Cefaly

LEAR, INTERRUPTED follows Artistic Director Daniel Levine on the night The Foundry was supposed to reopen with a bold new Lear—but instead, he’s there to shutter the place for good. Alone onstage, he delivers a farewell that quickly unravels into a raw, storm-tossed reckoning with legacy, collapse, and the art form he gave everything to. Speaking to an audience that may or may not exist, Daniel confronts the wreckage of his life and career in a final attempt to make meaning before the lights go out.

This play is a love letter to the American theater. The full spectrum of production possibilities is on the table: it may be fully staged and performed by a seasoned actor, or briefly rehearsed and read aloud by a current Artistic Director at a regional theater. In either case, real-world anecdotes specific to the producing theater may be substituted or woven in to deepen its local resonance.

Just a Few Bleaching Alternatives is a darkly comedic monologue that spirals through political despair, grotesque fantasy, and raw vulnerability. A man sits alone at midnight, bourbon in hand, confessing the toll that unchecked rage and national disillusionment have taken on his soul. What begins as a rant against the absurdities of American politics—fueled by memories of bleach injections and democracy on the brink—morphs into a surreal litany of self-sacrificial fantasies. Each is more outrageous than the last, absurd acts he claims he'd endure just to see change. But beneath the satire lies a quiet grief: for his country, for his own capacity to hate, and for the version of himself he’s afraid he’s lost.

In Evie and Star, a new memoir play by Audrey Cefaly (Maytag Virgin, The Gulf, Alabaster), twin sisters crash headlong into the American healthcare system—and each other. Starleen is a writer with a house, a child, and a manageable life. Evie is newly dead. Through a fractured memoryscape of flashbacks, phone calls, chorus-driven absurdity, and one unforgettable road trip, Starleen tries to piece together what happened—and what was lost.From Connecticut rehabs to Southern Walmarts to a Kafkaesque bureaucratic hellscape, the play tracks a relationship shaped by childhood trauma and a playground accident that altered the course of both lives. Along the way, Evie’s voice emerges not just as memory but as testimony—a furious, funny, unflinching indictment of a system that failed her.Darkly hilarious and fiercely tender, Evie and Star is a reckoning with grief, sisterhood, survival, and the stories we tell to stay tethered. Told through the lens of a stylized chorus, boxing corner men, and one woman’s final plea to a system that kept her on hold, the play pulses with love and rage in equal measure.

The Garment is a brutal tragicomedy about legacy, authorship, and the slow violence of collaboration. In a fading London studio, artist Blue Godfrey and her longtime accomplice Vell Mawsher are racing to finish a black mourning dress for the Tate, a garment meant to cement their myth. But when a young apprentice spots a fatal flaw in the design, it triggers a collapse decades in the making.

What begins as artistic disagreement descends into something more primal: a generational war laced with jealousy, betrayal, and the predatory cost of being someone's muse. Lines blur between love and exploitation, mentorship and control, creation and consumption. And as the power shifts, so does the story about who was really holding the scissors all along.

The Garment is a reckoning dressed in couture, a tragic unraveling of women bound by ambition, rivalry, and the hunger to outlive the work.

Shit City explores the radical possibility of hope in the unlikeliest of places: a rooftop ledge where two strangers meet at the edge of giving up. Through dark humor, mutual confession, and the quiet act of simply staying with each other, the play becomes a love letter to the idea that connection—however fleeting—can interrupt despair.

TROUBLE unfolds on the carport of a trailer in Litman, Alabama, where Euba, a former mill worker, finds herself cornered into a birthday she didn’t want. Her mother, Bernie, is determined to celebrate—whether Euba likes it or not. As the night wears on and neighbors drift by—including her best friend Fin, a very pregnant Lila, and a night watchman named YoYo—a raven’s arrival cracks open the silence surrounding her father’s untimely death.

Set in the aching stillness of a town that’s lost its industry and maybe its way, TROUBLE is a fierce and funny portrait of working-class Southern women grappling with mental illness, addiction, legacy, and love. It is a play about holding on—sometimes too tightly—and learning how to let go.

The fourth installment in Audrey Cefaly’s Alabama Cycle (The Gulf, Alabaster, Maytag Virgin), TROUBLE continues her commitment to the unsung voices of the deep South.

This all-female, darkly comic Southern drama offers a profound exploration of art’s elusive nature. ​In the aftermath of a catastrophic tornado that reduces a town to ruin, only a reclusive artist, June, and her devoted companion, Weezy, remain to bear witness. When a renowned photographer arrives to capture the indelible marks of June’s ordeal, together, they navigate the delicate interplay of grief and healing, finding in each other not only a mirror for their own pain but also a muse for artistic rebirth.

Cast of 2 women | (Lammy Award, Edgerton Award, Samuel French OOB Festival Winner, Charles MacArthur Award Nominee) The divide between Kendra and Betty mimics the very world that devours them: a vast and polarizing abyss. On a quiet summer evening, somewhere down in the Alabama Delta, Kendra and Betty troll the flats looking for red fish. After Betty begins diagnosing Kendra’s dead-end life with career picks from What Color is Your Parachute, their routine fishing excursion takes a violent turn.

Cast: 1W, 1M | Set: Two adjoining porches (suggestible, flexible staging)

“A love story with bite and ballast.”
Tender, funny, and quietly transformative, Maytag Virgin is a Southern two-hander about what happens when two wounded souls end up side by side. Lizzy Nash, a sharp-tongued high school teacher barely holding it together, finds herself thrown off balance by her new neighbor Jack Key—a quiet man with a haunted past and a Maytag dryer parked on his porch.

Set in small-town Alabama over the course of a year, the play charts a slow-burning connection between two people who weren’t looking for company, but might just be ready for grace. As cautious small talk deepens into something richer and riskier, Maytag Virgin explores grief, second chances, and the quiet danger of being truly seen.

Why it works for your season:

- Audience-tested and artist-approved: Produced at over 30 theaters nationwide
- Low-tech, high-heart: Two actors, two porches, infinite emotional payoff
- Accessible but layered: Humor, heartache, and Southern charm with Shakespearean rhythm
- Talkback gold: Themes of loss, intimacy, and healing resonate across demographics
- Valentine’s slot dream or a smart season opener/closer

“For those who fear this is too heavy a play, be assured it contains plenty of laughs. For those who fear it’s a silly, romantic trifle, know that it plumbs the depths of human emotion.”
—Florida Weekly

Cincinnati Playhouse Commission (world premiere musical - Feb 2019) Lina and Roberto's lives intersect and parallel as three alternate realities unfold. The play renders the near hits and near misses that are the realities of this worn out waitress and immigrant dishwasher as well as the mystical ways the universe conspires to bring us all together. Adapted from the award-winning one-act CLEAN. A love song in three movements.

"Walter is Everyman in a way never before told. He’s not the usually drawn man who seeks to control others. He simply wants to survive the day. He also attempts to hide his life in public (like we all do) but can’t keep from crying when alone. If we are honest, he is all of us. When the World is faced with male leaders who can only think of their own advancement at the expense of others, Walter is that individual who suffers a cruel world selflessly all the while seeing the good in others. Walter is the synthesis of the world’s pain, neglect and suffering and still finds a way towards hope, healing and renewal. We never feature the sensitive, broken, quiet men of the world when they are actually the majority and the strongest of us all." - Jack Cannon, Professor of Theatre, UAB Birmingham

Adaptation of Audrey Cefaly's podcast by the same name.

A lonely father navigates the world of single parenthood, dating and learning how to live again. Learn more: https://audrey-cefaly.wixsite.com/the-story-of-walter

*** Now available through Samuel French***
-
“Four short plays that confirm Audrey Cefaly’s knack for honest, quiet
talk and American South reality." - Washington Post
-
My short play collection, which has a working title of LOVE IS A BLUE TICK HOUND, is comprised of 4 shorts which have all won multiple awards. The first two (THE GULF, FIN AND EUBA) are Southern pieces for young women. The second two (CLEAN, STUCK) are modern-day love stories. All four pieces are two-handers and have a run-time of approximately 24-26 minutes.

Fin and Euba inhabit a suffocating world. Big dreams, small town prospects. As is their ritual, they sit out on the porch this late Autumn night, watching the cars go by... drinking, bitching, and planning their escape.

-----------

Published: 2003-2004 Best American Short Plays
Winner: Liverpool International Theatre Festival: Best Script
Winner: Strawberry One-Act Festival
Winner: Virginia Theatre Association Community Theatre Festival
Winner: UMBC In 10 Play Festival
Winner: Eastern States Theatre Festival
Winner: Northern Virginia One-Act Festival
Winner: Silver Spring Stage One-Act Festival
Winner: Maryland One-Act Festival
Finalist: Pittsburgh New Works Festival
Finalist: Impact Theater One-Act Festival
2nd Place: Nantucket Short Play Festival
Reading: Ensemble Studio Theatre: DirectorFest
Note: The feature-length film adaptation won the Maryland Individual Artist Award

Marisol, a worn out waitress, is having the 'worst day of her life.' She and Roberto, a quiet, ununassuming dishwasher, and one who has admired her from afar, sit alone in the diner at midnight and share stories about their lonely lives.

---------

Top-10 Finalist: Emerging Artists: EATFest
Winner: Eastern States Theatre Festival
Winner: Maryland One-Act Festival
Winner: Silver Spring Stage One-Act Festival Top

On the day of the 2013 SCOTUS decision, Garrison, an environmental lobbyist, and his partner Nate, an editor, are working through a crucial turning point of their own.

BOB: What's the worst part of internet dating?
BETTY: The people?

Bob and Betty try to beat the odds in the world of internet dating.

-------------

Winner: Eastern States Theatre Festival
Winner: Maryland One-Act Festival
Winner: Silver Spring Stage One-Act Festival
Finalist: New Jersey Rep's Theatre Brut Festival
Finalist: Dramaworks of Dublin 10-Minute Play Contest
Finalist: Run of the Mill Theater Variations on Fear Festival
Finalist: Theater Limina Summer Shorts Festival
3rd Place: Pregnant Chad New Plays Festival

Large cast (6-18) ensemble piece. A collection of ache stories by Audrey Cefaly. Perfect for colleges and high schools.

Max Jones, a popular writer in the midst of a midlife crisis is late for a reading at the Fillmore, creating havoc all around. "a bestselling author’s midlife crisis is writ small – and very, very well" - Miami Herald
"the script looks deep into the malaise that can follow success" - floridatheateronstage.com