Tori Keenan-Zelt

Tori Keenan-Zelt

Tori writes curiosity-chasing plays that sniff out in-between spaces in big theatre to change the world. Many of them decide to be comedies.

Originally from Pittsburgh, she has written her way out of an evangelical childhood and two young marriages. Her work uses the interplay of humor and horror to illuminate the dark corners of women's lives that often go unseen.

Her plays...
Tori writes curiosity-chasing plays that sniff out in-between spaces in big theatre to change the world. Many of them decide to be comedies.

Originally from Pittsburgh, she has written her way out of an evangelical childhood and two young marriages. Her work uses the interplay of humor and horror to illuminate the dark corners of women's lives that often go unseen.

Her plays include How the Baby Died (Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Ingram New Works Lab); Seph (The Araca Project, Princess Grace Award Finalist, Fresh Ground Pepper PlayGround PlayGroup); Air Space (The Kilroys’ The List, The Ingram New Works Lab); Truth/Dare (Project Y, New York Innovative Theatre Award Nominee for Best Original Script, Best Ensemble Pittsburgh Fringe, Best Live Performance—The Nashville Scene); The Egypt Play (The Playwrights Center); and Episode #121: Catfight! (Yale Cabaret), and others.

Tori holds a BA from Harvard and an MFA from NYU Tisch. She has written for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Electronic Field Trip series (PBS), for which she received an Emmy nomination, and her award-winning one-act play How to Be a Widow recently aired on NPR’s Playing on Air program. Currently, she is commissioned by San Francisco Playhouse (The JonBenét Game) and is developing a new play in residence with New Georges (Invasive Species). She splits her time between NYC and Nashville and grows work around the country.

Plays

  • Invasive Species by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3–4
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: anti-colonial, environmental activism + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, fantasy, period, political, satire
    Keyword: anti-colonial, environmental activism, Museum of Natural History, Decolonization, anti-racist
    Once upon a time, 8-year-old Teddy Roosevelt starts a museum of dead animals (natural history) in his childhood bedroom. Years later, he sets out to kill one of everything and put it into (collect specimens for) a diorama. Now, Tori, Ellie, and Portia try to reckon with their role in racist systems (make a play) about it.
  • The JonBenét Game by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: drama, horror
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    Keyword: true crime culture, abuse + 2 more
    Genre: drama, horror
    Keyword: true crime culture, abuse, coping with suicide, kink
    When best friends Molly and Rae were 12, they secretly played JonBenét Ramsey at sleepovers; 20 years later, in the wake of Molly's sudden death, her 12-year-old daughter, Hazel, knocks on the door of Rae's guidance office with their old playbook in hand. As Hazel and Rae slide back into the game, each navigates her own unresolved grief. The JonBenét Game explores the delicate, dangerous, and often...
    When best friends Molly and Rae were 12, they secretly played JonBenét Ramsey at sleepovers; 20 years later, in the wake of Molly's sudden death, her 12-year-old daughter, Hazel, knocks on the door of Rae's guidance office with their old playbook in hand. As Hazel and Rae slide back into the game, each navigates her own unresolved grief. The JonBenét Game explores the delicate, dangerous, and often grey space that true crime gives women to face their worst fears.
  • How the Baby Died by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 4
    ·
    Cast: 
    4–5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 4 more
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    Keyword: feminist, Silicon Valley + 6 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, farce, horror, political, satire
    Keyword: feminist, Silicon Valley, technology, class, Grand Guignol, environment, Reproductive Rights, abortion
    When the hapless, unemployed actress Stace opts out of her marriage, she becomes (rather suddenly) a live-in nanny for her best friend, his husband, and their newborn baby. But then she gets the chance of a lifetime: an audition for a French Horror Theater. Hilarity, mayhem and Grand Guignol hijinks ensue with the only prop available. Baby, it gets bloody. A darkly visceral, absurdly comic play about parenting...
    When the hapless, unemployed actress Stace opts out of her marriage, she becomes (rather suddenly) a live-in nanny for her best friend, his husband, and their newborn baby. But then she gets the chance of a lifetime: an audition for a French Horror Theater. Hilarity, mayhem and Grand Guignol hijinks ensue with the only prop available. Baby, it gets bloody. A darkly visceral, absurdly comic play about parenting, pregnancy, abortion, and women's physical self-agency.
  • Seph by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 3
    ·
    Cast: 
    5–8
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, adventure + 4 more
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    Keyword: Greek mythology, coming of age + 8 more
    Genre: adaptation, adventure, dark comedy, drama, fable/folktale, movement/physical
    Keyword: Greek mythology, coming of age, divorce, Adolescence, climate change, feminism, Reproductive Rights, LGBTQ, teenage girls, gender nonbinary
    In this contemporary reimagining of the Persephone myth, a nonbinary teenage goddess straddles her divorced parents’ realities until she meets a human girl and must define her own power to remake a ruined world.

    What do we do when we acknowledge the generational cycles our parents have imprinted upon us? Seph and Heather, Demeter and Hades, and the Fates who came before them all must face the...
    In this contemporary reimagining of the Persephone myth, a nonbinary teenage goddess straddles her divorced parents’ realities until she meets a human girl and must define her own power to remake a ruined world.

    What do we do when we acknowledge the generational cycles our parents have imprinted upon us? Seph and Heather, Demeter and Hades, and the Fates who came before them all must face the now ruined world with the same question we face with today’s extreme temperatures and legislative attacks on reproductive rights: what do we do now?

    SEPH is a new play by Tori Keenan-Zelt, featuring original music written by Nashville musician Anna Haas.

    Originally developed in Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB Retreat and PlayGround PlayGroup
  • Truth/Dare by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 8
    ·
    Cast: 
    4–7
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
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    Keyword: Adolescence, LGBTQ + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama
    Keyword: Adolescence, LGBTQ, teenage girls, evangelical, suicide, grief, trauma
    At 13, Ursa, Hannah, Linney, and Maeve live in their own world of basements, secrets, and backyard ghosts — until the last sleepover of the summer. High school looms, with the promise and threat of reinvention, and the group fractures when shifting beliefs and identities collide in a traumatic accident that none of them can explain. Four years later, questions and accusations fly as the survivors revisit the...
    At 13, Ursa, Hannah, Linney, and Maeve live in their own world of basements, secrets, and backyard ghosts — until the last sleepover of the summer. High school looms, with the promise and threat of reinvention, and the group fractures when shifting beliefs and identities collide in a traumatic accident that none of them can explain. Four years later, questions and accusations fly as the survivors revisit the scene of the “crime” and try to understand what happened, what has been lost, and who they are now.
  • How to Be a Widow by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
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    Keyword: gender, marriage + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, experimental, period, satire
    Keyword: gender, marriage, death, Civil War, Mourning, Victorian
    As the Civil War draws to a close, cholera and Gettysburg have claimed the lives of two husbands. In this wickedly funny play, two young women grapple with the freedom and power of their new widowhood. If they had the chance to have their husbands back, would they take it?
  • Air Space by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 3
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 3 more
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    Keyword: ensemble, Surreal
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, experimental, farce, horror
    Keyword: ensemble, Surreal
    As Glory and Kyle try to flip a falling-down house in an abandoned neighborhood, they discover that the evicted owners have been living secretly in a hollowed-out wall. A surreal comedy about what happens when a new generation tries to build something from the broken pieces another generation hasn't given up yet.
  • How to Fly by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: adventure, comedy + 3 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, experimental, fable/folktale, fantasy
    Kenley is a goldfish who was adopted by birds. When his mother decides she'd rather be an ice dancer than teach him how to fly, he must learn to navigate the world on his own. He meets a cat. 
  • Cat Fight: A Live Taping of Batman, Episode #121, 1968 by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, adventure + 7 more
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    Keyword: Batman, comic books + 5 more
    Genre: adaptation, adventure, comedy, dark comedy, farce, parody/spoof, period, political, satire
    Keyword: Batman, comic books, History, 1960s, gender, LGBTQ, feminist
    A satirical re-imagining of the 1960s Batman television series.

    ATTENTION BAT FANS! You’re invited to a live taping of the derring dos of the Dynamic Duo! On this week's episode: As the graceful gals of our fair city prepare to compete in the hallowed Lady Gotham scholarship competition, felonious feline fugitive Catwoman sinks her claws into a plan that could unravel the whole ball of...
    A satirical re-imagining of the 1960s Batman television series.

    ATTENTION BAT FANS! You’re invited to a live taping of the derring dos of the Dynamic Duo! On this week's episode: As the graceful gals of our fair city prepare to compete in the hallowed Lady Gotham scholarship competition, felonious feline fugitive Catwoman sinks her claws into a plan that could unravel the whole ball of string. Can Batman and Robin make this cat stray, or will mischief and mayhem purr-vail? Tune in to find out. Same Bat-time. Same Bat-channel.
  • Egypt Play, or The Misses Blake on a Holiday Jihad by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, period + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: colonialism, History + 1 more
    Genre: dark comedy, period, political
    Keyword: colonialism, History, Race and Gender Politics
    Set in a fantastical version of 1880s Egypt, EGYPT PLAY is a dark comedy (with puppets) that probes a British widow's quest to throw off her oppressive life through tourism and asks how an individual can get her hands on freedom without swallowing others’.
  • Times Square Tango by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Cast: 
    2–10000
    ·
    Genre: comedy, pantomime
    ·
    Keyword: clowning, New York City
    Genre: comedy, pantomime
    Keyword: clowning, New York City
    An almost silent play for actors who have movement, clowning, and/or mime. When Sara, a jaded and broken young woman, is forced to compete with a clown for her piece of sidewalk, she finds herself becoming unexpectedly drawn into an impromptu street performance that will begin to transform her.
  • Everything You Were Looking For by Tori Keenan-Zelt
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 5 more
    ·
    Keyword: New York
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, experimental, fantasy, horror, pantomime, satire
    Keyword: New York
    A musical without music. Work becomes play becomes rage when three store clerks hear “Welcome to Walgreens” one time too many.