David Hilder

David Hilder

DAVID HILDER is an award-winning playwright and director whose work has been seen across the United States. His plays and musicals include Those Days Are Over (winner, Ashland New Plays Festival; finalist, O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference; semifimalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival); three short plays for “Heal the Divide” (Protest Plays Project); Misfortune (Finalist, National Short Playwriting...
DAVID HILDER is an award-winning playwright and director whose work has been seen across the United States. His plays and musicals include Those Days Are Over (winner, Ashland New Plays Festival; finalist, O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference; semifimalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival); three short plays for “Heal the Divide” (Protest Plays Project); Misfortune (Finalist, National Short Playwriting Contest, City Theatre); The Moment Before it All Went Wrong (Great Plains Theatre Conference; finalist, Lark Playwrights Week); Drown (Acadiana Rep; Holland New Voices Playwriting Award, Great Plains Theatre Conference; finalist, Princess Grace Award; ESPA Drills at Primary Stages); Drop of Kindness (The Blank Theatre’s Living Room Series); The Insidious Impact of Anton (Acadiana Rep; Absolute Theatre, Los Angeles – winner of seven StageSceneLA Awards; winner, Ashland New Plays Festival; finalist, Lark Playwrights Week); Just exactly like (The Flea Theater; finalist, Heideman Award); Shake the Santa (GrooveMamaInk); anAtrainmusical (with composer Jess Klein; Neighborhood Playhouse); Gikh-kaa (Raw Impressions); I Have Something to Tell You (with composer Gihieh Lee; Raw Impressions); Maps (with composer Gilles Chiasson; Clear Space Productions; Dixon Place’s WARNING: Not for Broadway Festival; Raw Impression); Leave the Room (finalist, Lark Playwrights Week and Abingdon’s Wolk Award); Bay Orchard High (Expanded Arts; Cullen/Dumas Productions); Dinner Party! (EST; Smatterfest; Particle Wave Theatre); One for the Books (the intentional theatre group; EST); and, naturally, others. He is also a recovering actor, as well as an alumnus of Hunter College (MFA), the University of Pennsylvania, and the O’Neill Center’s National Theater Institute. He tweets, too: @hilderthtrguy. www.davidhilder.com

Plays

  • What You Wish For (short)
    A Rumpelstiltskin adaptation for the 21st century. And not for kids, really.
  • Those Days Are Over
    Those Days Are Over concerns the five MacKillop sisters in the immediate wake of their mother's death. They're not exactly close, these five, and as they tussle with each other they're also tussling with the past. Alliances are formed and broken; detente is reached one moment, dissolved the next. Those Days Are Over is a vigorous collage, a deeply felt comedy, a joyous journey into grief.
  • Drown
    Bonita jumped off a pier and never came up for air. Now she and her survivors have to figure out where they're going next.
  • Twenty-Seven
    16-year-old-ish Stef and Oyster are siblings with a problem: Their wealthy mother’s new boyfriend has just moved in, and he’s sure to come between them and their easy lifestyle. As they plot and scheme, they discover their agita may in fact be covering something else, far more disturbing. Stef ends up confronting the history of that disturbance years later in an effort to come to grips with the unfathomable.
  • Everything Here Is So Delicious (short)
    As Jocasta and Antoine dine at their favorite mountaintop cafe, the world falls apart. Should they stop eating, though? Just because everything is in decay? A ten-minute play about privilege.
  • The Insidious Impact of Anton
    Francesca is a 30-something urbandweller who knows who's who and what's what, and will be more than happy to tell you exactly where who should put what. She has it all, from the job that's not too demanding, to the superintendent ex-boyfriend who still fixes her plumbing (to speak in euphemism), to the gay friend next door. Who needs ups and downs, she figures, when you can have contentment?...
    Francesca is a 30-something urbandweller who knows who's who and what's what, and will be more than happy to tell you exactly where who should put what. She has it all, from the job that's not too demanding, to the superintendent ex-boyfriend who still fixes her plumbing (to speak in euphemism), to the gay friend next door. Who needs ups and downs, she figures, when you can have contentment? Then she meets Anton, a mysterious stranger who keeps turning up, and the oddest things start happening. She gets fired from the cushy job. Her friendships actually start to deepen. And worst of all, she ends up dating Anton – a peculiar little man with an Eastern European accent. Ultimately, Francesca has to face what it means to be alive, and what it means to be human.

    7 characters (3W, 4M). Two acts, one intermission.
  • Drop of Kindness
    Next year, but sideways:
    In Lanna’s kitchen, in her childhood home behind its strong electrified fence, she works and writes and grows herbs in a drawer. But when Gwennie returns – after more than 20 years – two sisters have to get reacquainted. Stalwart Jerry is next door, Lanna’s faithful friend, but it is the magnetic, gorgeous James who draws both women to him like moths to a beacon of light. A...
    Next year, but sideways:
    In Lanna’s kitchen, in her childhood home behind its strong electrified fence, she works and writes and grows herbs in a drawer. But when Gwennie returns – after more than 20 years – two sisters have to get reacquainted. Stalwart Jerry is next door, Lanna’s faithful friend, but it is the magnetic, gorgeous James who draws both women to him like moths to a beacon of light. A play about the perils inherent in an increasingly fractured society, with laughter and woe.
  • Just Try!
    In this loose and possibly impertinent adaptation of Kafka's THE TRIAL, Our Dude wakes up in a black and white world that is anything but sensible. Then he wakes up again. Then again. What do Our Dude's struggles show him about himself?
  • The Moment Before It All Went Wrong
    Viveka Granič is a perfect fit for the international conceptual art scene. But when an unexpected visitor invades her own home, will art and life collide, or crash and burn? Responsibility and accountability meet desire and dread in this caustic, funny look at the meaning and costs of individuality.
  • Good King What's-His-Name (a 10 minute holiday play, for Zoom or live)
    Wenceslas and his page, Jackie, relate what went down that age-old Feast of Stephen night.
  • Figurine on the 6 (short)
    There's no NYC subway line more crowded than the 6. When a young mixed-race woman and a middle-aged white man find themselves in closer proximity than either of them might like, the friction causes sparks, and minds are spoken, revealed to be fully themselves. Warts and all.
  • Misfortune (short)
    Margaret and her grandson, Stephen, are in the dark -- for who knows how long. What happened to them?