Crystal Skillman

"The Rocket Men" is a play about the former Nazis who sent us to the moon.
In this unique theatrical experience, we are carried through time in a blink of an eye to present the story of the German "Rocket Men" who used their scientific skills to flee Nazi Germany and settle in the most unlikely of places...North Alabama. These men form the backbone of NASA’s rocketry program. Told through the point of view of Heinz- Hermann Koelle, a lesser-known young German rocketeer, who joined this "Operation Paperclip" team several years later, the play explores the dynamic relationship of Wernher von Braun and Koelle as these two have set their sights on space exploration and colonization beyond the moon. Still, as the play counts down to the launch of Apollo 11, Koelle is befriended by a Jewish engineer who is hell-bent on exposing the truth: the Germans' technology is based on the V-2 rockets built by slave labor. Koelle finds himself caught between his passion for making rockets (not to mention his need to stay in the country) and helping Sol expose this secret. But the clock to launch is ticking... Played by six female-identifying women who force us to theatrically re-examine this explosive story - still widely not known in America - for a purpose to be revealed by the night's end, “The Rocket Men” asks what it means “to be an American”. It shines a modern, unflinching light on this story, as NASA prepares to fly to the moon once more asking who gets to be remembered in the history books, and why.

NEW. It’s the annual tragedy-writing festival in ancient Athens, and all your favorites are here: Sophocles is premiering Oedipus Rex, Euripides is premiering Medea, and Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus…is premiering a fraud. His play was secretly written by an enslaved woman, Harmonia. Her attempts to get her production done in the face of blasphemy accusations, threatened execution, an advancing army, a foul-mouthed chorus, the usual backstage backstabbing, is nothing short of epic. Especially hilarious, that is. Written by Crystal Skillman and Fred Van Lente (King Kirby).

US Premiere 2024-25; UK Premiere, 2022. Two Seattle teenagers embark on an impulsive motorcycle journey to join a group of oil protesters on the East Coast. But as they follow a major pipeline across the country, what began as two young activists' longing to belong to something greater than themselves gives way to Rain and Zoe discovering that the true danger in this world might just be growing up. Available for License on request.

An outsider stumbles into a foreign land in search of a perfect photograph, but ambition draws her dangerously deep into the lives of her subjects when she participates in a ritual that exposes her own desires. Developed in the Soho Rep Writers Director Lab.

When a NYC playwright can’t get in touch with her aging, disabled, and fantastically weird parents after Hurricane Helene hits, her life is changed forever. An only child who only learned of the outside world from two drop-outs of society: Her Dad, an amature race car driver, and her Mom, a woman with no direct skills but a wild imagination who is only slightly taller than a Smurf, our motherless mid-career playwright faces what it means to truely grow up - warts and all - when she has to return home to take care of these two. Nursing home call drag out fights! Insurance claim zooms! Cutting up trees! Keeping these two from killing each other! Wheeling her Dad to get refills! But boring, heck no! Set in their Floridian living room, this is a living room play that is not just a living room play. Memories flood out of the fridge, lost promises bubble up from the warped floorboards… and uh, Henry, her mom’s secret ex-husband might just knock on their door. For this whole house was built upon an affair - and the bond of these two very old people helping each other was formed the day they ran away together as just kids, abandoning Henry. A comedy about the awfully true myths that keep us alive, the glorious, harsh realities of aging, and of course two very old people helping each other. Well, maybe four.

AWARD WINNING NYTimes Critics' Pick. Recently published with Dramatists Play Service, OPEN is a magic show without magic. A woman called The Magician seems to pantomime a myriad of tricks, but her act reveals she is attempting the impossible—to save the life of her lover, Jenny.  Impossible as it may seem, this Magician’s magic act may be our last hope against a world filled with intolerance and hate. 

NOW A RIVETING AUDIO DRAMA with BROADWAY PODCAST NETWORK. NYTimes Critics Pick. A true life story about Jack Kirby, the man who co-created of the Marvel universe, King Kirby is an epic comic book story of the most famous cartoonist you never heard of. A real-life "Adventures of Kavalier & Klay", King Kirby asks what happens when an artist doesn't own his own legacy? Can he ever get it back?

Playwrights Center March 3rd 2021. Joy is an active member of the filmmaking collective Pulp Vérité when she is captured and held overseas for years until she escapes to the United States for the impossible: to bring her sister who is still a captive with ISIS home. "Pulp Vérité owns the naiveté of these young American filmmakers; with all we are currently politically facing, Pulp Vérité is a race against time."

NEW. When an unfinished play by the late Peter Abbey is discovered, his four closest friends - all fellow playwrights - meet in their old theatrical home to finish it. The content of the play, however, complicates matters, as they discover that the play is about them, their friendships, and what was lost eight, long years ago.

In Another Kind of Love, A punk rock star comes back home to her former bandmates and sisters after 15 years in Seattle, for a one night gathering to honor their mother a legend in the rock world, seeking a relationship with her fifteen year old rock-star-to be niece... at the price of destroying the only family she’s got left. "A female-driven punk-rock masterpiece"! -Chloe Riley, Chicago Reader