Sydney MacGilvray

Sydney MacGilvray is a playwright, songwriter, and performer currently studying at Northwestern University. Her work explores monsters, humans, and how the otherworldly can crash headlong into the everyday. The Mysterious Case of Professor Bones, her detective play for young audiences, went up with the PlayGround Festival of Fresh Works this spring. Her short film Til The World Stops Spinning, produced by Studio 22, tackles queerness and masculinity through the eyes of two football bros. Enkidu, a play with music adapted from the Epic of Gilgamesh, was workshopped at Northwestern in 2025. In 2026 and 2024, her short plays Redshift and Care After School premiered with Vertigo Productions’ 10-Minute Play Festival. She was a member of the 2025-26 PlayGround Chicago Writers Pool. Sydney is...

Sydney MacGilvray is a playwright, songwriter, and performer currently studying at Northwestern University. Her work explores monsters, humans, and how the otherworldly can crash headlong into the everyday. The Mysterious Case of Professor Bones, her detective play for young audiences, went up with the PlayGround Festival of Fresh Works this spring. Her short film Til The World Stops Spinning, produced by Studio 22, tackles queerness and masculinity through the eyes of two football bros. Enkidu, a play with music adapted from the Epic of Gilgamesh, was workshopped at Northwestern in 2025. In 2026 and 2024, her short plays Redshift and Care After School premiered with Vertigo Productions’ 10-Minute Play Festival. She was a member of the 2025-26 PlayGround Chicago Writers Pool. Sydney is passionate about storytelling through song and has written music for rock operas, song cycles, and sensory-friendly children’s theatre. She has a soft spot for ancient mythology, trashy rom-coms, and pie.

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Scripts

Enkidu

by Sydney MacGilvray

Cast Size
4
Genre
adaptation,
adventure,
fable/folktale

Mesopotamia, 4500 years ago. A young king drinks and parties and tries to forget his god-like strength. A beast stalks the forest, filling it with song. The gods lay their plans for the end of the road. But right now, a monster is trying to tell you a story.

Enkidu has never been one thing – not quite beast, not quite human. His connection to the monstrous language of song, foreign to humans, is the only thing...

Mesopotamia, 4500 years ago. A young king drinks and parties and tries to forget his god-like strength. A beast stalks the forest, filling it with song. The gods lay their plans for the end of the road. But right now, a monster is trying to tell you a story.

Enkidu has never been one thing – not quite beast, not quite human. His connection to the monstrous language of song, foreign to humans, is the only thing that makes him feel at home. When he meets the brash Gilgamesh, destined for heroism, a magnetic connection draws them together. But the gods have other ideas for how this story should end – and as Enkidu continues to tell his story to the audience, he comes face to face with who exactly has power to shape the narrative. Adapted from the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, Sydney MacGilvray’s play with music unravels what makes a hero, a monster, or a human – and who gets to decide.

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Care After School

by Sydney MacGilvray

Cast Size
2
Genre
horror,
immersive,
mystery/thriller

Two kindergarten teachers gather their class for a morning singalong. It’s the best, funnest, most awesomest classroom ever – as long as nobody looks out the windows. Trapped in the school, the teachers wrestle with how best to keep the children – and themselves – safe from a mysterious danger, all while wondering: how many times can I sing the clean-up song before I lose it? Sydney MacGilvray’s 10-minute play...

Two kindergarten teachers gather their class for a morning singalong. It’s the best, funnest, most awesomest classroom ever – as long as nobody looks out the windows. Trapped in the school, the teachers wrestle with how best to keep the children – and themselves – safe from a mysterious danger, all while wondering: how many times can I sing the clean-up song before I lose it? Sydney MacGilvray’s 10-minute play "Care After School" explores horror through the lens of childhood, and how we can best protect those we care for most.

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