Ayun Halliday

Ayun Halliday

Ayun Halliday is the Chief Primatologist of The East Village Inky zine, and the author of seven books, including No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late, and the graphic novel, Peanut. As a member of the Neo-Futurists from 1989-2000, she wrote and performed in over 500 short plays and several full-length solo performances. She discovered a bottomless appetite for working with teens directing...
Ayun Halliday is the Chief Primatologist of The East Village Inky zine, and the author of seven books, including No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late, and the graphic novel, Peanut. As a member of the Neo-Futurists from 1989-2000, she wrote and performed in over 500 short plays and several full-length solo performances. She discovered a bottomless appetite for working with teens directing a cast of them in the Kotis-Hollman musical, Yeast Nation. Recent works include The Mermaid’s Legs (2014), Fawnbook (2015) and Lice (2016). Theater of the Apes is slated to present the premiere of her latest play, Zamboni Godot, at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn in March 2017. She lives in East Harlem with her husband, playwright Greg Kotis, and their children.

Plays

  • NeoNatalSweetPotato by Ayun Halliday
    Cast: 
    1–5
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 1 more
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    Keyword: first time motherhood, NICU + 4 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, movement/physical
    Keyword: first time motherhood, NICU, Newborn, solo performance, object puppets, Birth
    a root vegetable based autobiographical NICU performance featuring a new mother and two nurse's aides
  • NURSE by Ayun Halliday
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, dark comedy
    ·
    Keyword: Shakespeare
    Genre: adaptation, dark comedy
    Keyword: Shakespeare
    In which Juliet's Nurse embarks on a never ending lecture tour to share her version of events.
    Teenagers! Aging! Sex! Shakespeare!
  • Zamboni Godot by Ayun Halliday
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    6–20
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, comedy + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: existential, Beckett + 1 more
    Genre: adaptation, comedy, experimental
    Keyword: existential, Beckett, middle age
    Zamboni Godot is a midlife meditation on the comedy of existence, the hell of long term relationships and the play where nothing happens twice. Didi (neé Denise) and Gogo bide their time in 21 infernal landscapes ranging from the DMV to the ER, surrounded by equally isolated middle-aged women. Could a message from Godot give them a greater sense of purpose or is he merely a convenient excuse that keeps them...
    Zamboni Godot is a midlife meditation on the comedy of existence, the hell of long term relationships and the play where nothing happens twice. Didi (neé Denise) and Gogo bide their time in 21 infernal landscapes ranging from the DMV to the ER, surrounded by equally isolated middle-aged women. Could a message from Godot give them a greater sense of purpose or is he merely a convenient excuse that keeps them together, while holding them back?

    A tour de force for two midlife female actors with an expandable Greek chorus of the same. (minimum of 4)
  • The Mermaid's Legs by Ayun Halliday
    Cast: 
    10–16
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, drama + 4 more
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    Keyword: little mermaid, Disney + 5 more
    Genre: adaptation, drama, experimental, fable/folktale, parody/spoof, young audiences
    Keyword: little mermaid, Disney, teenagers, coming of age, fairy tale, ensemble, feminism
    Ten teenaged performers take an exploratory deep dive through The Little Mermaid, pushing past Disney’s happy ending to the explicit trauma of Hans Christian Andersen’s original. Not that there’s any correspondence between the pain of becoming an adult and the pain of having your tongue cut out and boiled…

    Music! Puppetry! Water safety! Stage blood! Everyone gets a chance to play the Little Mermaid...even the guys!
  • Fawnbook by Ayun Halliday
    Cast: 
    8–10
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental
    ·
    Keyword: Dystopia, teenagers + 3 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental
    Keyword: Dystopia, teenagers, social media, environment, Facebook
    A dark, pre-apocalyptic comedy unfolding in a post-digital settlement inhabited by three unrelated middle-aged women and three teenaged boys. As the characters busy themselves with farming, found LPs and chance encounters with wildlife, a series of catastrophes ravage nearby communities. The script is drawn entirely from social media comments, recasting the new millennium's trite language of consolation...
    A dark, pre-apocalyptic comedy unfolding in a post-digital settlement inhabited by three unrelated middle-aged women and three teenaged boys. As the characters busy themselves with farming, found LPs and chance encounters with wildlife, a series of catastrophes ravage nearby communities. The script is drawn entirely from social media comments, recasting the new millennium's trite language of consolation into something spoken and strange. Like. Like. Heart emoticon. Like.