Grace McLeod

Grace McLeod

Grace McLeod (she/her/hers) is a queer playwright and screenwriter from New York City living in Los Angeles. She currently has a horror-comedy film in development with Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Productions and Billy Magnussen’s HappyBad Bungalow, and alongside Jessica Fisch, she is a co-creator of the upcoming scripted podcast series TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE, which was developed with Temple Hill Entertainment and...
Grace McLeod (she/her/hers) is a queer playwright and screenwriter from New York City living in Los Angeles. She currently has a horror-comedy film in development with Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Productions and Billy Magnussen’s HappyBad Bungalow, and alongside Jessica Fisch, she is a co-creator of the upcoming scripted podcast series TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE, which was developed with Temple Hill Entertainment and PictureStart. As a playwright, Grace recently completed a commission from The Playwrights Realm, where she was a 2021 Virtual Realm Writer. Her queer coming-of-age play HERLAND received a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere at MOXIE Theatre in San Diego, Redtwist Theatre in Chicago, and Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles in 2019. Her plays have been presented, developed, and/or commissioned by Goodman Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Chalk Repertory Theatre (2023 Writers Group), Ashland New Plays Festival (2020 winner), The New Coordinates (2019 Uncharted Festival), Greenhouse Theater Center (2018 Trellis Residency), First Floor Theater, Commission Theatre, The 24 Hour Plays, and Millikin University's BFA program, among others. In high school, she wrote and directed the short film UNDER THE TABLE with the support of the Tribeca Film Fellows program, which went on to premiere during the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, and co-conceived and produced LOCAL/EXPRESS, an experimental short film that screened across Times Square as part of the Midnight Moment Series, the world's largest, longest-running digital art exhibition. Grace is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize for Playwriting.

Plays

  • TABOO!
    It’s Game Night on the Upper West Side! A close-knit group of wealthy, white, liberal parents gathers for their monthly night of friendly competition on the same day that the NYC Department of Education assigns their 5th grade children their lottery numbers for middle school admissions. What was intended to be a relaxing kid-free night turns tense as these "nice white parents" play mind games and...
    It’s Game Night on the Upper West Side! A close-knit group of wealthy, white, liberal parents gathers for their monthly night of friendly competition on the same day that the NYC Department of Education assigns their 5th grade children their lottery numbers for middle school admissions. What was intended to be a relaxing kid-free night turns tense as these "nice white parents" play mind games and board games that prompt them to wrestle with their privilege and principles. Would you work towards the collective good if you felt that the collective good would not benefit you? What is the difference between having privilege and hoarding privilege? TABOO! is an incisive dark comedy about the fear that being a good parent is at odds with being a good progressive.
  • The Communist Revolution: A Ninth-Grade European History Project (There Will Be a Practical Demonstration)
    Sasha takes her ninth-grade European history class project to the extreme by pitching a tent in the backyard of her family’s Westchester home and inviting Tommy Rivera, a boy in her class, to move in and start the Communist Revolution with her. The targets of her righteous anger are her dad, Mark, a self-made venture capitalist hell-bent on proving to her that having money doesn’t automatically make you a bad...
    Sasha takes her ninth-grade European history class project to the extreme by pitching a tent in the backyard of her family’s Westchester home and inviting Tommy Rivera, a boy in her class, to move in and start the Communist Revolution with her. The targets of her righteous anger are her dad, Mark, a self-made venture capitalist hell-bent on proving to her that having money doesn’t automatically make you a bad person, and her mom, Caroline, whose true stances on the issues are overshadowed by her desire to make everyone get along. Parents vs. kids, house vs. tent, capitalism vs. communism: the ultimate showdown ensues in this black comedy about rich white liberals whose desire to be “good” runs up against their own fragility.
  • Herland
    After graduating from high school, Natalie gets a summer internship working for Jean, a recently-divorced woman in her 70s who has no plans to move into a typical retirement home. Natalie helps Jean and her two best friends design an alternative: a DIY utopia where they can live out the next chapter of their lives. They plot the future together inside Jean’s garage, where relics of Jean’s ex-husband (and his...
    After graduating from high school, Natalie gets a summer internship working for Jean, a recently-divorced woman in her 70s who has no plans to move into a typical retirement home. Natalie helps Jean and her two best friends design an alternative: a DIY utopia where they can live out the next chapter of their lives. They plot the future together inside Jean’s garage, where relics of Jean’s ex-husband (and his locally famous Bruce Springsteen cover band) still linger. HERLAND is a play about women growing up, growing old, and rocking out to the beat of their own drums.
  • 2007
    It’s February 2007 and Lucy’s world is falling apart around her. Her mom Eileen has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, high school isn't what she expected, she can’t ignore her growing feelings for her best friend Alison, and her idol -- a certain world-famous, blonde pop star -- is newly bald and undergoing a very public breakdown. 2007 is a queer coming-of-age comedy about mothers and daughters,...
    It’s February 2007 and Lucy’s world is falling apart around her. Her mom Eileen has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, high school isn't what she expected, she can’t ignore her growing feelings for her best friend Alison, and her idol -- a certain world-famous, blonde pop star -- is newly bald and undergoing a very public breakdown. 2007 is a queer coming-of-age comedy about mothers and daughters, what it really means to be a "good" role model, and the crippling pressure to maintain our public selves in times of private crisis.
  • ZOOMPROMMM.mp4
    Annabelle and Max hate each other. But for the next hour, they have to create a video presentation on "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" for their final project of high school. It's May 2020, and the thin line between meaninglessness and meaning, living and surviving, and Zoom and real life is growing thinner by the second. Also, they have a Zoom Prom later. Ew. Tacky.
  • Scare Me
    When Alex gets hired at a Halloween pop-up store in Chicago, she's thrilled to start her gap year with her first real job. As she and her older, jaded co-workers scramble to meet their sales goal and push superhero capes and fake blood on strangers, they each struggle to distinguish the masks they wear from the masks they sell. SCARE ME is a dark comedy about the fear of being yourself, the desire to be...
    When Alex gets hired at a Halloween pop-up store in Chicago, she's thrilled to start her gap year with her first real job. As she and her older, jaded co-workers scramble to meet their sales goal and push superhero capes and fake blood on strangers, they each struggle to distinguish the masks they wear from the masks they sell. SCARE ME is a dark comedy about the fear of being yourself, the desire to be somebody else, and the danger of getting attached to something that was always meant to be temporary.
  • you, too
    Kat and Sam are sisters. Sometimes best friends. Sometimes enemies. Sometimes acquaintances. Always sisters. “you, too” follows them from early childhood in the 70s through adulthood in the present, chronicling the specific frustrations and joys of sisterhood, aging, and navigating the relationship between our younger selves, older selves, and all the selves in the middle.
  • Harder, Faster
    Alone in her bedroom, a horny queer teenager journeys deep into her own personal dreamscape in search of satisfaction. A ten-minute play about having your First Orgasm.