Crystal Skillman

Crystal Skillman

An award-winning dramatist who writes for theater, comics, & audio. Upcoming: THE ROCKET MEN (2024 NNPN Showcase Nomination) RAIN AND ZOE SAVE THE WORLD (Upcoming American Premiere, London: 2022), NYT Critics' Pick OPEN (DPS ). Mid-Atlantic Arts Grant, Kilroys, NY Innovative Theatre Award, Earth Matters on Stage Prize, Bway World Winner, MUT Prize, EST/Sloan, Offie Nomination, O'Neill, BAPF,...
An award-winning dramatist who writes for theater, comics, & audio. Upcoming: THE ROCKET MEN (2024 NNPN Showcase Nomination) RAIN AND ZOE SAVE THE WORLD (Upcoming American Premiere, London: 2022), NYT Critics' Pick OPEN (DPS ). Mid-Atlantic Arts Grant, Kilroys, NY Innovative Theatre Award, Earth Matters on Stage Prize, Bway World Winner, MUT Prize, EST/Sloan, Offie Nomination, O'Neill, BAPF, McKnight Finalist.


Plays

  • THE ROCKET MEN w/PHOENIX THEATRE (NNPN CORE MEMBER) F 2025 - SEEKING PARTNERS FOR ROLL
    "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 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.
  • Tragedy: A Comedy
    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-...
    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. Epically hilarious, that is. Written by Crystal Skillman and Fred Van Lente (King Kirby).

  • RAIN AND ZOE SAVE THE WORLD
    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.
  • OPEN
    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. 
  • KING KIRBY (co-written with Fred Van Lente)
    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?
  • PULP VÉRITÉ
    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."
  • THE SLEEPING WORLD
    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.
  • ANOTHER KIND OF LOVE
    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