Molly Rice

Molly Rice

Molly is a playwright, songwriter and experience designer whose work has been developed/ produced in NYC (the Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, Women’s Project, NYTW, New Georges) and nationally (American Repertory Theater, Montana Rep, Salvage Vanguard, Trinity Rep, Kitchen Dog, Perishable Theater, etc.). Her work has been featured and published in American Theater Magazine, The Dramatist,...
Molly is a playwright, songwriter and experience designer whose work has been developed/ produced in NYC (the Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, Women’s Project, NYTW, New Georges) and nationally (American Repertory Theater, Montana Rep, Salvage Vanguard, Trinity Rep, Kitchen Dog, Perishable Theater, etc.). Her work has been featured and published in American Theater Magazine, The Dramatist, Dramatics Magazine, Kenyon Review, Play: A Journal (online), Loose Change and Indie Theater Now, and by Clarkson Potter Press, Heinemann Press, and Perishable Press. Commissions include NYU/ Tisch MFA Acting Program, New Georges, Montclair University and The Drilling Company. Honors and awards include Brown University’s Weston Prize and Lucille Lortel Fellowship, the Women’s International Theater Festival, the New York Innovative Theater Awards, and the Montclair and Pace New Works Initiatives with director Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812; Hadestown) and composer/ activist Stephanie Johnstone (Sometimes in Prague). In 2017, she received a 2-year NEA-funded grant from Pittsburgh's Office of Public Art to create a new work with members of the refugee and immigrant populations of Pittsburgh.

Recent productions: Futurity at ART and Walker Center (2012, book co-writer) and Soho Rep (2015, story development and add'l text) with the band The Lisps, directed by Sarah Benson (winner, Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Musical); A Doll House (in a Doll House) exclusively on Facebook, Dec. 2015 and 2016; and THE SAINTS TOUR, a site-specific traveling play that has occurred in neighborhoods across the country (2009-2015). Most recently THE SAINTS TOUR appeared in Braddock PA, co-produced by Bricolage and Rice’s production company Real/Time Interventions. Over the years the show has incorporated the talents of many diverse artists and community organizations such as Taylor Mac, Dave Molloy, Rachel Chavkin, Lady Rizo, Tyrone Cotton, Vanessa German, Lenka Clayton, David Pohl, the Salvation Army, Grow Pittsburgh, Unsmoke Systems, Judson Church, and Cherry Lane Theater, among others. Future projects include SPORT, the community-fueled invention of a brand-new sport in a theatrical context, with Real/Time; ANGELMAKERS: SONGS FOR FEMALE SERIAL KILLERS, an original cabaret musical with international performer Milia Ayache; and CANARY, a new musical co-conceived with Rachel Chavkin and Ray Rizzo.

Molly currently teaches Playwriting in the Point Park Writing for Screen and Stage MFA program and the BA Theater program, and in the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a longtime musician/ songwriter. When she was 18 one of her songs made the Top 100 Charts in Alaska. She still doesn’t know what number it was.

Plays

  • Khūrākī by Molly Rice
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: biography, immersive
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    Keyword: community engagement, food + 6 more
    Genre: biography, immersive
    Keyword: community engagement, food, cross-cultural, docudrama, anti-refugee prejudice, refugee, Afghanistan, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
    A theatrical/ cultural/ culinary experience based upon a three-year collaboration with a group of Afghan female refugees in Pittsburgh. First commissioned by the Office of Public Art in Pittsburgh, and nominated for the Mayor’s Award for Public Art in 2019, this script (one of two in a series) was created through many iterations of interviews and conversations with the Afghan women, guided by the question, “...
    A theatrical/ cultural/ culinary experience based upon a three-year collaboration with a group of Afghan female refugees in Pittsburgh. First commissioned by the Office of Public Art in Pittsburgh, and nominated for the Mayor’s Award for Public Art in 2019, this script (one of two in a series) was created through many iterations of interviews and conversations with the Afghan women, guided by the question, “What do you want Americans to know about you and your country?”

    The project itself was developed in response to this group of women’s desire to start the first and only Afghan food business in Pittsburgh. The project came to function as a platform through which Pittsburgh audiences could taste Afghan food for the first time and my company RealTime Interventions could help connect the women to the partners and training they needed to form their business. As a result of this three-year collaboration and help from many community partners, the women’s catering business was incorporated in March 2020: Zafaron Afghan Cuisine.

    More information, press, and a short documentary about the project can be found at www.realtimeinterventions.org
  • The Saints Tour, Greater Braddock by Molly Rice
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    1–20
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 5 more
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    Keyword: site-specific, saint + 7 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, fable/folktale, immersive, musical, pageant
    Keyword: site-specific, saint, traveling shows, community engagement, Art and Artists, local musicians, lore, History, local history
    The Saints Tour is a traveling play that's re-written for and with the community in which it occurs, based on the local history, stated needs and particular talents of the participants of the play itself. Based in structure on Medieval mystery plays, its audience travels by bus or on foot through a neighborhood, guided by a "Tour Guide" character who tells the stories of the past and present...
    The Saints Tour is a traveling play that's re-written for and with the community in which it occurs, based on the local history, stated needs and particular talents of the participants of the play itself. Based in structure on Medieval mystery plays, its audience travels by bus or on foot through a neighborhood, guided by a "Tour Guide" character who tells the stories of the past and present "saints" of the region. During the journey, musicians, artists, and other local partners appear or are represented as part of the stories, which are a balance of real and imagined history. During the course of the play, audiences are asked to perform a specific act of good that will impact the community in some way, in order to complete the play's narrative.

    Originally produced in Louisville, KY, The Saints Tour has been re-created in Lower Manhattan, NYC's West Village, and Braddock PA. Included here is the script (with photos) of the Braddock production in 2015.
  • Medea Unharnessed by Molly Rice
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    3–4
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    Genre: adaptation, experimental + 2 more
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    Keyword: bunraku, adaptation + 2 more
    Genre: adaptation, experimental, fable/folktale, tragedy
    Keyword: bunraku, adaptation, ancient greek, puppets
    A retelling of Medea in the form of a Bunraku puppet-play, in which the human beings are puppets controlled by love.
  • WATCH: A Haunting by Molly Rice
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    4–5
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 4 more
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    Keyword: horror, ghosts + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, fantasy, horror, mystery/thriller
    Keyword: horror, ghosts, Adolescence, multi-generational, mental illness, psychological, neuropsychology
    Vi, a lonely girl in a creaky old house, is burdened by a predatory shrink, a crumbling mother, bad dreams and a haunting loss-- until her new ghostlike friend Renata (who somehow seems more real than all the rest) promises to either guide or force her to face down the Thing in the Basement-- a force that, whether it's strictly "real" or not, is threatening to destroy her.

    WATCH is...
    Vi, a lonely girl in a creaky old house, is burdened by a predatory shrink, a crumbling mother, bad dreams and a haunting loss-- until her new ghostlike friend Renata (who somehow seems more real than all the rest) promises to either guide or force her to face down the Thing in the Basement-- a force that, whether it's strictly "real" or not, is threatening to destroy her.

    WATCH is a theatrical ghost story about the range of human perception (from the generally-agreed-upon “real” to the supernatural to pathology-fueled hallucination), and who gets to decide what’s legitimate within that continuum. It’s about the wisdom inherent in the visions of atypical psyches and in supernatural experience that is perhaps lost when science is our only authority. It’s also about a young girl who, having lost her father, employs her unique perception to attempt to heal herself.
  • The Chair, a short play by Molly Rice
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: dark comedy
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    Keyword: dark, funny
    Genre: dark comedy
    Keyword: dark, funny
    Two young girls broach the topics of theology, parenthood and growing tails as they try to fall asleep.
  • Texas Diner Triptych by Molly Rice
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    6–7
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 1 more
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    Keyword: diner culture, restaurant + 5 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, tragedy
    Keyword: diner culture, restaurant, food service, waiting tables, Gen X, punk rock, site-specific
    Set in the kitchen and cigarette-break spaces of a restaurant, and based on the playwright’s experience as a line cook in Austin TX in the ‘90’s, this play gives a poignant glimpse into the unsung but ubiquitous world of foodservice. The play lives well in a theater with a simple set, but it also calls out for site-specific treatment in an actual restaurant, where it can recreate for an audience the scents,...
    Set in the kitchen and cigarette-break spaces of a restaurant, and based on the playwright’s experience as a line cook in Austin TX in the ‘90’s, this play gives a poignant glimpse into the unsung but ubiquitous world of foodservice. The play lives well in a theater with a simple set, but it also calls out for site-specific treatment in an actual restaurant, where it can recreate for an audience the scents, steam, heat, sweat, claustrophobia and intimacy of working on the line.

    Depression, black holes, a sacred talisman, prescription drugs, a pot mountain, punk rock to wake the Visigoths, and under-ripe tomatoes are the key ingredients you’ll find in LINE. Based on the German myth of Tannhäuser, the plot centers around three cooks on the graveyard shift in the kitchen of a college town diner, each trying to make food out of bad handwriting while keeping the plates hot and their heads cool. The result is a volatile kitchen, where emotions simmer and sometimes boil over.

    LINE captures the secret culture of life in the kitchen, rarely seen or dramatized. ‘Playwright Molly Rice’s characters are simply drawn, deeply flawed, and intensely human,’ said Mark Peckham [director of the 2006 production]. ‘There’s almost a mythic quality about to them. What initially drew me to this play was the complexity of the characters paired with the simplicity if language. It is so exciting to be involved with the first-ever production of a play of this caliber.’”
  • Don't Stop, a play with dance breaks by Molly Rice
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    7
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    Genre: adaptation, comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: teen angst, dance break + 4 more
    Genre: adaptation, comedy, dark comedy, drama, experimental, movement/physical, period
    Keyword: teen angst, dance break, explicit language, gender identity, 1990s, Don Juan
    “and she’s like
    up against me
    and like
    Man

    something I didnt even know down in there
    and it’s not
    not to like
    be with her
    but like

    Be her
    Be her

    I didn’t know I want that”

    Welcome to the world of hurt and heaven that is human adolescence. DON’T STOP is a full-contact, sharp-edged play about...
    “and she’s like
    up against me
    and like
    Man

    something I didnt even know down in there
    and it’s not
    not to like
    be with her
    but like

    Be her
    Be her

    I didn’t know I want that”

    Welcome to the world of hurt and heaven that is human adolescence. DON’T STOP is a full-contact, sharp-edged play about how we go slamming around changing each other, with or without permission.

    Mara is a pack leader, a force of nature. Yeah, she's a teenage girl, but she's more of a guy, kind of, too. Like, "Get the fuck out of my way. Get to the back of the line." Her best friend Bea is a handmaid to Mara's queen bee; she wants the honey but can't quite do the dance. Who comes out on top in the end-- the girl-boy or the pretty nobody? A very loose adaptation of Tirso de Molina's Don Juan, if Don Juan was 17-year-old girl in the late 90's and everybody occasionally broke into dance.

    DON'T STOP won the Brown University Weston Award for Graduate Playwriting. It was nominated for the Cherry Lane Mentor Fellowship, was a finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and the Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, and has been developed by Voice and Vision (Bard College), The Women’s Project in NYC and the Missoula Colony, but has never been fully produced.
  • The Birth of Paper: a ritual transference. by Molly Rice
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    1–3
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    Genre: biography, drama + 2 more
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    Keyword: snail mail, USPS + 5 more
    Genre: biography, drama, experimental, immersive
    Keyword: snail mail, USPS, direct mail, paper, letters, metatheatrical, remote performance
    Experiment 002. Intent: To soften the cruelty of absence. To rupture the caul of separation. To witness in real-time the rebirth of a medium.