Hallie Palladino

Hallie Palladino

HALLIE PALLADINO is a Chicago based playwright. Recent plays include PROXIMITY PLAY (Prop Thtr commission), THE PERSUADABLES (Centenary Stage WPF; Prop Thtr Church of the New Play), OPERATION MARSHMALLOW FLUFF (Broken Nose Theatre’s Bechdel Fest), DERAILED (O’Neill Semi-Finalist; Broken Bells Reading Series), INFATUATION (Ojai Playwrights Conference, Chicago New Works Festival, Dandelion Theater Reservoir...
HALLIE PALLADINO is a Chicago based playwright. Recent plays include PROXIMITY PLAY (Prop Thtr commission), THE PERSUADABLES (Centenary Stage WPF; Prop Thtr Church of the New Play), OPERATION MARSHMALLOW FLUFF (Broken Nose Theatre’s Bechdel Fest), DERAILED (O’Neill Semi-Finalist; Broken Bells Reading Series), INFATUATION (Ojai Playwrights Conference, Chicago New Works Festival, Dandelion Theater Reservoir Series) MISSED CONNECTIONS (Wayward Sisters, Idle Muse Theater’s Athena Festival; Pride Films & Plays LezPlay Festival) THE HANUKKAH STORY (Three Cat Productions “Holiday Radio Show 1943”) and SUNRISE ARDMORE BEACH (Something Marvelous Festival). Hallie is a member of The Dramatists Guild.

Plays

  • The Cleanup
    Seeking community post-quarantine, Nicole volunteers for Sunday night toy cleaning crew at The Learning Co-Op where preschool parents covertly socialize under a COVID-acceptable halo of sanitation. There, she falls for the ruggedly reassuring Logan, a hot, practically-divorced super dad who can build a house, fix a stroller, and bake a pie. To get close to him, she becomes TLC’s star volunteer causing Ryan and...
    Seeking community post-quarantine, Nicole volunteers for Sunday night toy cleaning crew at The Learning Co-Op where preschool parents covertly socialize under a COVID-acceptable halo of sanitation. There, she falls for the ruggedly reassuring Logan, a hot, practically-divorced super dad who can build a house, fix a stroller, and bake a pie. To get close to him, she becomes TLC’s star volunteer causing Ryan and Julie, the school's burnt out founders, to tap her as their replacement. Behind the scenes, infighting, betrayal, and deception threaten. A dark comedy about friendship, loyalty, and parents behaving badly.
  • The Persuadables
    "Own the data, control the future." That is the chilling reality of our new information economy in which data is a more valuable commodity than oil. It is also a direct quote from Alexander Nix, former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, who used weapons grade psychological warfare tactics on the American and British electorates during the Trump campaign and Brexit respectively. He was funded by the Mercer...
    "Own the data, control the future." That is the chilling reality of our new information economy in which data is a more valuable commodity than oil. It is also a direct quote from Alexander Nix, former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, who used weapons grade psychological warfare tactics on the American and British electorates during the Trump campaign and Brexit respectively. He was funded by the Mercer family--the same billionaires who would later go on to fund Parler, the insidious channel through which the capitol rioters planned their insurrection. THE PERSUADABLES is a HEAVILY fictionalized insider look behind those closed doors where data integration, ad tech, and propaganda were fused to assault our democracy.

    The play follows Olivia, a 34 year-old, liberal, Black, former Obama strategist and Stanford educated daughter of a prominent IL State Senator, who finds herself in the eye of the storm when the London based psychological operations firm where she jet-sets as an international elections consultant to far flung countries is acquired by a super-PAC spawning conservative billionaire. Together with her honey-tongued aristocratic British boss, Xavier (think posh Don Draper) with whom she has an emotionally intense, sexually charged "work-marriage", and Bryce, a queer, Candian, Muslim data scientist who has cracked the code on psychographic profiling with former Cambridge chums, Olivia is charged with creating an influence campaign to weaponize the first ammendment, as dreamed up by Kent, a vulgar, Bannonesque conspiracy blogger. Combining their talents, the firm pulls off the data heist of the century--syphoning the Facebook data of over 130 million American voters--and with Bryce's tech, Olivia's messaging, and Xavier's psy-ops know-how--weaponizes our personal data against us--the consequences, are profoundly devastating.

    This play goes straight to the heart of the paradox of our social media era--the conflict between our sacred and necessary right to free speech and the epidemic of hate speech as an engine of political violence and white nationalism. THE PERSUADABLES is a political thriller about equivocation, moral hazard, betrayal, and whistleblowing, in a lightning fast 100 minute sprint. It also foreshadows the events of Jan. 6th which brings the play right up to this current political moment with urgent implications for our collective future.
  • Derailed
    Digital therapeutics: the promise of an app to replace drugs and alcohol, an app to get you sober and then get you high, a panacea for the pain of modern life, flowing straight out of your smartphone. All of this and the girl selling it are enthralling to AJ.
  • Infatuation
    Why do the good girls always want the bad boys? Maybe because the bad boys have been controlling the narrative since, well, forever. INFATUATION explodes that obsolete good girl trope: a sex comedy about romantic obsession, female ambition, male allyship, friendship, science and the substance of love.
  • Missed Connections
    Avery, an introverted grammar nerd, has a crush on Lou, a striking and self-possessed newspaper editor. When a missed connection ad details their chance encounter Avery is uncharacteristically emboldened to take a chance on love. The problem? The ad was printed before they met. When more ads start predicting the future everyone's lives are thrown into upheaval.
  • Operation Marshmallow Fluff
    A group of skeptical activists take on a celebrity psychic in a self-styled sting operation.
  • Attachment Disorder
    A ten minute satire about motherhood and mommy micro aggressions.